Everyone Knows How This Ends
The strange limbo between knowing something is over and actually getting there
Holly's out this week. Andrew claims she's started a rival podcast called "Raft Politics." We soldier on anyway — and this week, we're covering two stories that share a common thread: the strange limbo between knowing something is over and actually getting there.
Starmer’s slow-motion collapse
The Mandelson crisis has become something else entirely. What started as questions about vetting and judgment has triggered a cascade: chief of staff resigned, comms director gone, cabinet secretary potentially next. The Scottish Labour leader publicly called for Starmer to step down. Cabinet ministers are releasing their own text messages to get ahead of briefings against them.
The leadership contest seems to be happening already. Starmer just hasn’t recognized he’s toast.
Andrew was in Westminster this week and described something I found striking: Labour MPs are depressed. Not angry, not defiant — just defeated. Imagine winning a 174-seat majority and finding yourself under 20% in the polls before you’ve even hit the two-year mark. Every week brings another comms disaster, another U-turn, another own goal.
The upcoming by-election will be framed as a referendum on Starmer’s leadership. May’s local elections will be brutal. And at some point — everyone seems to agree on this — there will be a final straw. We’re just not there yet.
What I keep coming back to is how much of this is self-inflicted. You have to go back five prime ministers to find one who completed a full term. And when you trace the reasons why, it almost always comes down to basic competence failures. I don’t love saying that — it’s easy to armchair quarterback — but it really does seem to be that simple.
Poilievre’s leadership math problem
Pierre Poilievre secured 87.4% support at his leadership review. No surprise. But here’s the tension worth watching: party polling is stable in the high 30s, yet his personal approval keeps ticking down.
Six in ten Canadians say they’re satisfied with Carney’s government. That includes a not-insignificant number of conservative voters.
I think it’s premature to assess Poilievre’s ability to win a general election. He’s spent the last few months clearing hurdles — winning back his seat, securing the leadership review — that required him to keep appealing to the base. Now that’s behind him, the real test begins: can he adjust his image over the next six to eight months to close the gap between party polling and his personal numbers?
The challenge is that he built such a strong brand as the angry guy making sharp arguments on behalf of frustrated Canadians. That worked brilliantly in opposition to Trudeau. It’s less clear whether you can pivot from that to something with broader appeal — or whether you even need to, if the Carney honeymoon eventually fades.
The snap election temptation
Polymarket currently has a 44% chance of a Canadian election by June 30th — and it’s trending up.
If I were purely playing political chess, I’d be tempted to call it soon. The Liberals are polling well. Carney’s approval is high. The NDP is weak. The Conservatives have a leader who may be weighing down the brand. And the Trump threat — which has been a tailwind for Carney — might look less urgent after midterms if Democrats perform well.
But Andrew made a point worth remembering: the electorate can be unforgiving of unnecessary elections. In 2017, UK Conservatives were 20 points ahead, called a snap election, couldn’t explain why they were having one, and nearly lost. Campaigns change things. World events turn on a dime. You can start an election with six in ten Canadians behind you and finish on the defensive because the narrative shifted to crime or cost of living.
There’s no genius here. It’s art, not science. And the honest conclusion we came to is that we don’t have an effing clue what happens next.
But you should still tune in next week. Maybe we’ll figure something out.