The Ottawa Circus
Furey cannot catch a political break
Joanne Thompson got a nice Christmas present.
She’s the new federal minister responsible for seniors thanks to the fiasco that is Justin Trudeau’s cabinet. The latest round of lunacy started with Chrystia Freeland, whose resignation letter to the Prime Minister included a line that will live on for a long time in Canadian political lore because it states a simple truth of politics that some people do not see.
“They know when we are working for them, and they equally know when we are focused on ourselves.”
Joanne can thank Chrystia both for the seat in cabinet - without her resignation, there’d have been no shuffle no matter how minor - and for the good advice.
Thompson is sharp and thoughtful and has been a very good member of parliament for her riding but, sadly, that will not matter in a few weeks time. Her seat is not typically a Liberal one. It is normally either a Conservative seat or more recently a sort-of Dipper one. Sort of because the guy who held it ran for the New Democrats and was a life-long New Democrat but in the fashion of politics on the eastern coast of Newfoundland, the historic development of the NDP means it is closely tied to the old Pea Seas and what unites them is an anti-Confederate root.
Jack Harris won because he was someone the Blue supporters of the east end of Sin Jawns could vote for. He wasn’t a Liberal. He was also one of them in many ways socially and politically. As provincial Dipper leader - and for a long while the only Dipper in the House of Assembly - Harris staunchly backed the province’s first Dipper Premier Danny Williams, Harris’ old law partner.
Joanne has done yeoman service for her riding and has been loyal to the Grits even down to being a huckster for the tax holiday through her social media posts. Now she is a cabinet minister but in all likelihood hers will be a short term. Not the shortest-lived federal cabinet minister. That distinction goes to Roger Simmons, appointed as minister of mines in the dying days of John Turner’s administration and forced to resign a mere 11 days later after finding himself in a bit of unpleasantness with the tax man.
But Joanne will be short nonetheless since the federal Dippers have now declared they will vote to bring down the government early in the New Year. The House is back to work in late January. Dipper leader Jagmeet Singh’s pension is locked in as of 25 February so any time after that, the Trudeau Liberals are likely going to crash in a non-confidence vote. The image below is Abacus Data’s latest poll on party support, conducted right after Freeland’s resignation. Eighty-one percent of respondents knew of the resignation. Only 11% thought the Liberals deserved to be re-elected, 19% thought Trudeau should stay and 67% thought he should go.
If you want an appropriately blunt assessment of it all, look to Paul Wels, who’s put two columns to bed in the space of a few days that lay out the implications of all that is going on. One is “Vacuum” which is about the weakness in the federal government at the wrong time in many ways and the other is called “The Second Finance Ministers Club” which is about the initial reaction to Freeland’s resignation and the inner workings of the Prime Minister’s office.
For a guy who is supposedly trying to distance himself from the federal Liberals, Andrew Furey has spent a lot of time the past few weeks in Ottawa hanging around with his old friends and tweeting selfies of one kind or another that link him to the goings-on in Ottawa.
The deep and obvious contradiction between the cuddly-Liberal-family pictures and the claim from Furey that he will always fight for Newfoundland and Labrador against anyone tells all you need to know about the way Andrew Furey’s head works. It also helps you understand the provincial party branding - Team Furey and lots of white on the signs - that some think is about that distancing thing. Fred Hutton, Furey’s right hand staffer turned cabinet minister, explained it away as just “branding” and truthfully that is all it is. Furey’s ego gets exercised daily as much as his traps and lats and biceps and triceps obviously do so calling the provincial Liberals Team Furey fits. It is *all* about Andrew, all the time.
That may explain why the reaction to the New ‘69 Deal among the ordinary voters is very wildly different from the reaction of the people in Andrew’s office. Tepid at worst, cautious at best among the punters compared to the Brain Trust’s unshakeable faith that the amazingly splendiferous deal will win for Andy the Danny-like results he craves come the election. They do not see that Furey has managed to recreate the 1969 fiasco one perfectly. All of the 1969 deal’s key features that favour Quebec are there in spades, again, and there is nothing new, better, or different much less improved meaningfully for Newfoundland and Labrador in what Andrew’s noshing with Francois produced.
The punters’ luke-warm reaction shows that they know when politicians are working for them, and they equally know when the politicians are focused on themselves. The staff reaction shows how little self-awareness everyone in Furey’s office has.
Andrew Furey is politically constipated. He has been trying to go to the polls for 18 months and despite all the grunting and clenching there is no result. Furey gave away as much as he could to get a deal with Francois Legault just so he’d have something to take to voters. Couldn’t get it done by last winter, when Furey’d originally planned to go vote-fishing in the ice and snow again, planned right down to the point of passing an interim supply budget half way through the fiscal year in November 2023 so he could have an election and delay the House opening in early 2024. Screwed out of that, then screwed out of the back-up plan in the fall of ‘24, lined up for the winter/spring of ‘25 but now that is shagged too.
In a couple of weeks, Andrew Furey will put on a dog and pony show in the House of Assembly he despises - his contempt for democracy and voters is naked for anyone willing to see, every day - and then go to the polls some time after. Well, that was the plan, to the extent that he and his Brain Trust plan anything beyond tomorrow afternoon. But that is all gone now thanks to events in Ottawa. We will likely be into a federal election right about when the provincial Liberals thought they might rub out a quick one.
Furey does not have time for an election without causing himself and Team Justin major problems. Furey will now likely have to go to the polls after Justin’s inevitable defeat. People do not see the difference between the two parties because there is none and in the provincial comparison they have not seen a big enough difference between the Liberals and the Pea Seas to endorse either strongly. That weakens Team Furey. The Liberals may be ahead of the Pea Seas in the polls according to Narrative polls (see the chart below) but the gap is so small that anything could turn it against the Liberals, err Team Furey. And if you consider how many close races there are in individual seats, the Pea Seas could even win a majority government without having the most votes overall.
Turn against is more likely than turn in favour of the Liberals because of those federal ties, as much as anything else. And with Prime Minister Pierre Poilievre after the next election and a federal Conservative Party that scares the hell out of only Liberal or Dipper partisans, ordinary voters may well want to put a Blue Team in charge in Sin Jawns to line up with the Blue Team up-along.
As it is, the Pea Seas are getting help from their federal cousins anyway and have been getting better at the political messaging. They are going hard on social media at the many fumbles of the furious New ‘69 Deal blitz. Social media is where it matters more than anything. And the Tories getting better is just the thing that the Liberals had going against them all along. The longer they waited to go to the polls, the more likely the Pea Seas would be on the upswing and the local Liberals would be still struggling.
That scenario of the federal Blue vote raising the local Blue ship is way more likely the outcome of the next provincial election than for the Liberals to rally the locals as a bastion against the national Blue tide. Way more likely but - as bizarre as it seems - there are those in the Liberal Party of Andrew Furey who think like Dom LeBlanc, Katie Telford, and whoever else told Justin to stay. These Furey caucus and cabinet folks think the provincial Grits can hang on to office here *after* Justin disappears in a puff of smoke. The federal numbers are so bad, remember, that in all likelihood the only federal Liberal seat left in Newfoundland and Labrador after the next election will be held by Yvonne Jones, if she runs. Yet there are those Grits here who think Andy can still pull it off.
People in politics will believe anything and the closer you get to the leader these days, the more and more delusional people get. Critical thinking hurts your career chances. They might even believe something as simplistic as the notion - once very popular across the local political scene - that only the leader mattered and as long as people thought you were fighting for Newfoundland, you were good. Some of Furey’s lines sound that superficial.
The truth is, voters “know when we are working for them, and they equally know when we are focused on ourselves.”
And that is a lesson both the federal and provincial Liberals seem unwilling to learn.
The voters are ready to teach them.
