Programming note: Tomorrow, Wednesday, at 3pm North American Eastern (8pm British Summer Time), I hope to be here for our regular midweek Clubland Q&A, taking questions from Mark Steyn Club listeners around the world. Hope you can swing by.
~So in the end two-and-a-half years of Pierre Poilievre micro-gatekeeping the Tory party so as not to frighten the horses counted for less in Canadian politics than two-and-a-half hours of Tony Blair having dinner at Lady Rogers' agreeable Michelin-starred River Café in West London. Not a bad Dover sole, should Sir Tony ever invite you to join him so he can pitch you a stint as prime minister of New Zealand or the Netherlands.
As to M Poilievre's micro-gatekeeping, here is a fine example of that from close to home: Two years ago the alleged "conservative" leader called the views of a Mark Steyn Show guest "vile" and forced three of his backbenchers to apologise for lunching with her. Yes, I know there's a lot of lunching and dining in this column and, if you're stuck in the drive-thru lane at Wendy's, it might already be getting to you. But that's the point: the globalists handle even the restaurant bookings better than the faux-conservatives do.
Poilievre's target that day was Christine Anderson, whom he called "racist" and "hateful". As it happens, Frau Anderson is an elected representative of the people - unlike Pierre, at the time of writing - and her party, the AfD, is currently leading in the German polls - also unlike Pierre. I rose gallantly to defend my guest's honour and, disinclined to forego the low-hanging fruit, mocked the Tory leader as "Pierre Pussievre". Then he munched an apple (more dining, albeit lower budget than Blair) and became an Internet sensation. After that he sat on his Granny Smith and was content to leave it to Justin's Pride Parade socks as they began their remorseless descent down his ankles.
Tony Blair had a better idea. That night at the River Café in Hammersmith his dinner companion was Mark Carney. Everyone's favourite Knight of the Garter suggested to everyone's favourite central banker that it was time for Carney to become Prime Minister of Canada. After Sir Tony had pulled out a map to remind him where it was, Mr Carney protested that he'd just moved his business interests to Bermuda and the Isle of Man. If you're wondering why a chap who has dedicated his life to "public service" is in need of tax havens, well, why not get a thirty-grand-a-year job as a bigshot newspaper reporter and ask him at the next press conference?
Carney required some persuading that night. It is reported that Blair perambulated his guest around the restaurant multiple times before Carney warmed up to the idea. But he had a vague recollection from the last time he was back "home" that Canadians already had a prime minister, didn't they? Indeed, said Tony. So the plan would only work if they could remove Justin very swiftly and surgically. We are deep into Macbeth here, if you can imagine Duncan played by an effete mammy-singer:
If it were done when 'tis done, then 'twere well
It were done quickly: if the assassination
Could trammel up the consequence, and catch
With his surcease success...
And that's exactly what they did. 'Twere done very quickly: two months after that dinner, Chrystia Freeland quit as Trudeau's deputy, precipitating the final crisis of Justin's decade-long tenure. Another month later, he was surceased. A month after that, Carney was elected Liberal leader with eighty-six per cent of the vote. Which is pretty impressive for a guy who's been out of the country for twelve years, has never been elected to anything, and had minimal name recognition. I mean, how many Governors of the Bank of England, or of Canada, or of any central bank, can the average Canadian voter name?
Not to mention that he's incredibly arrogant and unlikeable.
Yet it was a brilliant plan, and they pulled it off, soup to nuts, in just four months. As the SAS motto has it, who dares wins. Pierre Poilievre didn't dare, and he didn't win. Instead, he spent three years munching his apple. An apple a day keeps the doctor away; an apple video every three years keeps the prime ministership away. He was by far the least worst Tory leader of the last decade, but in the end he was very much Pierre Pussievre: as the Christine Anderson episode demonstrated, he was merely the latest useless wanker loser tosspot, content to accept the left's framing on everything that matters. Peter Dutton Down Under is another. Get back to me after the weekend if you disagree. I'm so bored of so-called "far-right" "leaders" who are indistinguishable from their leftie opponents.
What's that? It's all Trump's fault? Yeah, well, Trump happens. To countries and their politicians all over the world. Even Nigel Farage, who as recently as January was still promoting himself as the Orange Man's best pal (not true and never has been), has fallen silent on the subject. But Trump happens most to weak, passive figures who are mere creatures of events. If you look at how easily Pussievre got bounced into "distancing" himself from Christine Anderson, it should be no surprise to find he lacked the nimble wit to adapt to changed circumstances in both Washington and Ottawa.
But it was the latter that proved decisive: if you're sitting on your lead as the Non-Justin and Justin gets taken out, what's your back-up plan? Carney is not an appealing figure: he has the undead mien of a vampire gagging for a couple of pints very urgently; the ultimate 1-800-NOWHERE candidate, who cannot tell you where he filed last year's tax return; a man whose acquaintance with the land he now governs is so thin that his consultants feel the need to put him in hockey garb to campaign under the slogan "Elbows up!" Should he decide to stand in Dublin or London or any of the other places for which he holds passports, will he be running as a shilelagh-brandishing Riverdancer under the slogan "Begorrah!" or as an East End Pearly Queen talking only in Cockney rhyming slang?
Yet Poilievre failed to lay a glove on Carney. Because the Christine Anderson episode told his enemies he's a crap squish you can crush like a bug.
By contrast, it's not too difficult to see what appealed to Blair about Carney: he is the very model of a modern major globalist. During the Brexit campaign, Carney was one of the most prominent faces of the establishment's "Project Fear", according to which quitting the EU would visit upon England's green and pleasant land Biblical plagues without end - up to and including a new strain of lethal gonorrhea untreatable without access to the Euro-drugs from Cruella von der Leyen's buddies at Pfizer.
Project Fear didn't work, in the formal sense that the masses voted for Brexit. But whoop-de-doo. Carney was one of those who never accepted the result and worked with a tight group of senior civil servants and judges to subvert it. So, in a more important sense, Project Fear did work, because no meaningful Brexit was permitted to occur.
We're now told Carney is a threat to "Canadian unity". I don't doubt it. But let's say Alberta did vote for Albexit or Saskatchewan for Saskatchewexit. You think Carney and the globalists would let you check out any more than they let the UK?
Dark days ahead. And that's before we've learned who the next Pierre O'Toole/Erin O'Scheer/Andrew O'Pussievre is gonna be...
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