Looking Ahead to 2026-2027 or So: The Conservative Party is Cooked

A short, definitive, in-no-way-guaranteed account of the future right wing collapse.

What, me worry? Source: TVA news, June 2024, Wikimedia Commons.

Some people get upset when I say the Conservatives will win the next election. It’s a probabilistic statement, not meant to be fatalist as much as it’s meant to be a description of the state of things as they stand. If I looked outside and it was dark and cloudy and the leaves were doing that thing before it rained, I’d say “Hey, I think it’s going to rain.” I’d pack an umbrella.

It might be more accurate, if less succinct, to say the Conservatives, as things stand, are clear favourites to win a majority government some time in 2025 subject to Events™. Campaigns matter, events can change things, nothing is guaranteed, opponents should still try to beat the Conservatives and citizens should organize to do the same, etc., etc., etc. But ask yourself, if you had to put down $5,000 at 2-to-1 odds on who’s going to win the next Canadian election, who are you betting on? As a thought exercise it, ah, focuses the mind. My money (figuratively, never literally when it comes to politics) is on the Conservatives. I wish it wasn’t so. Yet it is. But the victory could be short-lived.

As I wrote for Time last weekend, Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre is an angry man for an angry time. He’s capitalizing on the unpopularity of the Liberal government and Justin Trudeau — a downturn in support that’s a function of being in power for the better part of a decade, with all that entails. Trudeau’s decline is probably also due in part to a post-pandemic anti-incumbent backlash fuelled by an affordability crisis that’s been common around the world. That’s hard to survive, especially when you cling to power as long as Trudeau did.

Poilievre’s approach to defeating Trudeau entails focusing on pocketbook issues, the sorts of issues people tend to care about above all else no matter what they tell the pollsters or anybody else. It’s an iron law in politics that people tend to care about how much things cost and how they feel about how much things cost before other concerns. Poilievre dips into culture war nonsense — he simply can’t help himself — but his primary message is about cheaper housing, food, and gas, and more “powerful” paycheques.

That’s a message that resonates right now; one that a plurality of voters may be willing to tolerate being wrapped in barbed wire.

But for how long? Not for long, I think.

I’m not raising a novel prediction when I say I think the Conservatives are poised to flame out within a few years of winning government. Others have said as much. I think we’re on to something. With a majority the Conservatives will last at least four years, but they’ll soon find themselves on the coarser side of the sandpaper when people discover that “axing the tax” and “building the homes” are fine slogans but light by way of solutions. Poilievre’s ‘common sense’ revolution, like Mike Harris’s before it, will be a disaster.

Killing the carbon tax won’t lower prices appreciably just as ‘unleashing the power of the free market’ or whatever won’t solve the housing crisis. Police won’t solve the drug poisoning epidemic. Locking people up won’t lower crime. Cutting taxes won’t lead to trickle-down wealth. Cutting social programs won’t free citizens from an ‘overbearing state’.

Poilievre seems to understand what he’s facing. Talking to Jordan Peterson, he used a line that’s come up before, something to the effect that Trudeau got the party and the Conservatives are getting the hangover — as in, Poilievre is set to deal with the fallout of the last decade of Liberal governance. He also noted that he’ll have to move fast on housing, since work done in his first year in office won’t yield appreciable results until his fourth year. That may be true, if he gets policy right and manages provincial and municipal intransigence, which I doubt he will. And speaking of, he’ll also have to deal with the provinces and the ever-present threat of a national unity crisis that’s been looming or brewing or bubbling or whatever you want to call it.

Then’s there’s Donald Trump.

The Trump administration is a wild card, emphasis on wild. I doubt Poilievre is better suited to deal with Trump than Trudeau. If the White House slaps tariffs on everything and they stick, Poilievre will himself be stuck with the bill and it’ll be costly. The Liberals may eat the blame for a while, but eventually, as ever, people will get tired of the new government blaming the old one for everything.

A combative, bulldog, anti-media, low-blow, schoolyard bully messaging approach, the one the Tories use now, will also wear thin over time. That’s opposition ball. It doesn’t work when you’ve got possession. People are going to want lower prices and to feel better about their lives, livelihoods, and security. And between Trump, climate change and extreme weather, global political realignment, war, and a capitalist marketplace full of robber barons with their hands in your pockets 24-7, well, good luck with all of that.

Some point towards the south, to Trump’s win, as evidence that the angry, non-actual-solutions oriented approach works. It does and it doesn’t. Trump lost in 2020 and could have lost in 2024 if the Democrats hadn’t been so…well, so much the Democrats. But Trump may find himself and his side wildly unpopular in a few years, especially as the cost of tariffs hit US consumers hard.

Moreover, the US and Canada are different countries. At least for now. Political partisan affiliation is more pronounced south of the 49th parallel and much more identarian and toxic. Again, at least for now. Canada is home to more flexible voters.

The upshot of it all is that Poilievre and the Conservatives are set to become, if you’ll pardon the cliché, the dog that caught the car it was chasing. I think the Tories are likely to win the election, though I think it’s still worth fighting against them. But I also think that they’ll spoil fast. When they do, the left ought to be there. And ready to capitalize and remake Canada once and for all.