Justin Trudeau’s career is the stuff of 21st-century political drama, with an arc that has taken him from glamorous liberal standard-bearer to the butt of jokes by President-elect Donald Trump and his acolytes. Trudeau burst onto the international scene in 2015, of Canada whose father was also a popular prime minister. And he spent the next decade building a brand around being a feminist, an environmentalist, a refugee and Indigenous rights advocate, pursuing the same message of change and hope as Barack Obama.
While he drew fawning reviews in the news media – including over his poster boy looks – his honeymoon with Canadians really lasted only about two years; had already tarnished his picture-perfect image. His party went on to lose the popular vote in two elections, in 2019 and 2021, requiring him to form minority governments propped up by a left-wing opposition party. That support, too, has now evaporated.
Today, Trudeau finds himself – like other Western leaders – facing an angry constituency and losing control. He will soon either call elections that he’ll most likely lose, or he’ll step down as leader of his party and as prime minister and let a different leader take the Liberals to the ballot box next year. In Stephen Maher’s 2024 biography of Trudeau, the author recalls separate occasions in which Trudeau’s family members called him a “prince”.
“I’ve always known my whole life that this would be available to me if I want,” Maher quotes a y.