OTTAWA – High ranking members of Canada’s Liberal Party were shocked and dismayed by the results of the French election, with Trudeau in particular unable to fathom that Macron’s centrist coalition wasn’t able to scare their way into remaining in power.
“I don’t understand this, people in France were terrified of the fascists winning,” Trudeau is reported as saying as he watched in disbelief while the French left-wing coalition won the most seats. “How can people who are terrified not vote for the bland comfort of centrism? Bland comfort is literally the only thing we offer.”
The Liberals have been banking on Canada’s next election coming down to most voters holding their nose and voting for the unpopular Liberals solely to stop the increasingly radical Conservative Party under Pierre Poilievre from gaining power. But watching a large percentage of the frightened French public choose not to give in to fear and to instead vote for the candidates they wanted rather than voting against the ones they didn’t has the Liberals questioning if something like that could happen in Canada.
“It’s unlikely, but what if the NDP actually gets their shit together before the next election and offers the Canadian electorate a robust left-wing vision of a progressive, green, equitable country where the government prioritizes housing, healthcare, education and human rights over the needs of corporations and the wealthy?” said one Liberal insider. “We’d be fucked. How can we compete with that? I mean, other than by offering that ourselves, which obviously would make all of our corporate sponsors very angry.”
“Thankfully, we’ve got first-past-the-post working for us, and unlike France we don’t do runoffs for seats when no one gets a majority of the vote. So if we do lose, we’re looking at a right-wing majority government that we can spend five years loudly railing against as they make everyone’s lives worse, rather than the worst-case scenario of a left-wing minority government that might actually make people’s lives better. Can you even imagine, Liberals holding the balance of power in an NDP government, as though we’re not Canada’s natural ruling party? Gross.”
“Though we are probably going to have to draw up new, iron-clad contracts for all of our candidates. Seeing hundreds of French leftists and centrists put country before party and drop out of their races to avoid splitting the vote could inspire some unfortunate acts of bravery in our own candidates. We need to nip that sort of thinking in the bud. If the Liberals can’t win, everyone loses. That’s our entire platform.”
At press time, Trudeau was seen calling Macron to offer his condolences and to ask if whatever plutocratic think tank Macron will eventually leave the government to go work for will be hiring any other soon-to-be-former world leaders in the next year or two.
