The Liberals have begun the search for their own Kim Campbell.
For those too young to remember, Campbell served as Canada’s prime minister for about four months in the latter half of 1993, taking over the helm of the country from Brian Mulroney, who had retired from politics amid plunging poll numbers.
Canada’s only female prime minister, Campbell led the Progressive Conservatives into the fall election where the governing Tories were decimated, reduced from majority status to just two seats.
Given history has a way of repeating itself, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s announcement on Monday that he will step down as soon as his party finds his successor has put the Liberals on a path reminiscent of Mulroney’s Tories three decades earlier.
And that didn’t end well.
Trudeau’s growing unpopularity had become a weight the Liberals were no longer willing to bear, but a switch at the top, particularly if it’s to a veteran cabinet minister, or former cabinet minister, won't be anywhere near enough to change the party’s fortunes.
Campbell was a cabinet star, a bright, well-respected justice minister who initially gave the party a jolt in opinion polls, but come election time, it was the record of the Mulroney Tories that voters overwhelmingly rejected.
The same principle applies more than 30 years later. It doesn’t matter who is chosen in the leadership race, and how much that victor attempts to distance himself or herself from Trudeau, at the end of the day, all Liberals are answerable for the past decade, one in which the average Canadian has increasingly struggled to make ends meet.
Author Will Ferguson joked that Campbell taking over party leadership from Mulroney was a lot like taking control of a 747 just before it plunges into the Rockies.
Another flight is ready for take-off.
