[PHOTO] Gemütlichkeit by Ossington Avenue

I saw this front yard on a side street east of Ossington Avenue this summer, and I just had to preserve the sight of it. The whole small parcel of land was so carefully tended and densely populated, with chipped-paint swing and birdhouse and wildflowers growing under a pruned tree. It felt comfortable.

[BRIEF NOTE] On Justin Trudeau and the Liberal Party of Canada

The Montreal Gazette is one news source of many reporting that Justin Trudeau, eldest son of famed Canadian prime minister Pierre Elliott Trudeau and federal MP for Papineau, will be running for the leadership of the Liberal Party of Canada. (This CBC report traces the leak of his plans to Radio-Canada.)

Trudeau refused to answer questions on Parliament Hill on Wednesday morning, saying he had nothing to announce before disappearing into a Liberal caucus meeting.

The reports could not be immediately verified, but if correct, the move will generate a massive amount of excitement and interest in the upcoming leadership race — at a time when the party needs it the most.

The 40-year-old son of Pierre Elliott Trudeau has been under immense pressure from Liberals across the country to throw his hat in the ring.

But there have also been fears that if he does so, other potential candidates will opt not to challenge him, and that the race will become little more than a coronation.

Trudeau had initially said earlier this year that he was not interested in the leaders’ job, but that position began to soften after he defeated a Conservative senator in a charity boxing match in March.

Then when interim Liberal leader Bob Rae announced in June that he would not be seeking the permanent position, Trudeau publicly acknowledged he was considering a run.

But Trudeau, who has spoken in the past about the devastating impact politics had on his parents’ marriage and how it affected him as a boy, has cited his young family when explaining why he is hesitant to throw his hat in the ring.

The Liberal leadership campaign officially begins on Nov. 13, with the next leader to be revealed during an event in Ottawa on April 13.

Justin Trudeau is probably the only viable candidate for leadership that the Liberals have, if (as makes good sense) one limits the candidates for party leadership to people with national name recognition who actually still hold seats. John Ibbitson's Globe and Mail analysis is something I basically agree with. Can his charisma really overcome the long list of problems facing a man with little political experience running for the leadership of a broke and fragmented political party that is facing collapsing support nationally?

[T]he young aspiring leader is also potentially a great danger to his party. He lacks, for one thing, any real experience leading a complex organization, and the Liberal Party is, if nothing else, complex.

Not just complex: atomized, disorganized, unpopular and broke. It would take a leader with the skill, patience and steadiness of a Stephen Harper to weld its disparate parts together and then lead it against a foe as intimidating as Stephen Harper.

[. . .]

While the Trudeau name may evoke nostalgic affection in the East, it remains anathema in the West. Choosing Pierre Trudeau’s son as leader may alienate the party from the Prairies and British Columbia for another generation. Do Liberals want to be that ostracized from the part of Canada that embraces the country’s future, its potential?

Finally, having Justin Trudeau in the Liberal leadership race may doom that race. Other credible contenders may decide it’s not worth the effort and expense to fight so prohibitive a favourite, leaving the young champion only fringe candidates to contend with.

[. . . T]he Liberal Party is being offered a politician with little experience, organizational acumen or concrete ideas for where he would take a troubled party if its leadership were entrusted to him.

That an individual with such a slender C.V. could be considered so strong a contender speaks to the fragility of the organization he seeks to lead.

[LINK] "Note to self: don’t fear the anglosphere"

Contrary to the title of Paul Wells' MacLean's article debunking talk about a merger of Canadian and British diplomatic installations, I do fear the Anglosphere, or at least the "Anglosphere", that trope used to justify all sorts of ideological silliness. Wells' analysis is otherwise quite solid--British Euroscepticism, here at least, is great for gossip.

The story’s distinguishing characteristics included quotes from Hague that said nothing about the sharing of resources; and truly excellent quotes from a nameless “one British diplomat,” who saw this as revenge for the Blitz: “The EU is so burdened by history it doesn’t know what it wants to do and is hopeless at speaking with one voice. We Brits know who we are, who our real friends are, and between us we have been a rather good influence on the world in the past century.”

The story was picked up immediately at Conservativehome, a group blog dedicated to holding the hands of Conservative supporters as their party is buffeted in the polls. (There are similar sites for every party.) “Eurosceptics don’t always have cause to celebrate,” the writer notes mournfully, mentioning (this seems significant — ed.) a titanic merger of British and French aerospace defence contractors that could be worth tens of billions of euros. That’s the sort of real, consequential story Brits who are skeptical of the EU would really want to be distracted from with a handy bit of pixie dust. And here comes one now! “William Hague has good – exciting – news for those who despair,” the writer said, before launching into the anglosphere super-embassy yarn. This will “seek to head off the creeping influence of European Union diplomats,” the blogger said. Loooook. Shiny object.

Fast forward to Monday, when Hague and John Baird spent the afternoon lamenting all the wild speculation Hague’s faceless diplomat and the PR arm of his struggling party had spent the weekend working hard to whip up. Hague by now had slept on it and was eager to realign his project with the real world. “I’ve seen it written up a bit too excitedly in some places,” he told Peter Mansbridge. “What is doesn’t mean is that these countries are not having their own foreign policies or sharing ambassadors, it’s nothing like that.”

There’s been less chatter in the Mail and at Conservativehome since Hague explained his project than there was beforehand, when it was possible to depict this as a Europe-killing expedition. To be on the safe side, I put out a couple of calls to European embassies in Ottawa, and I can report to you that the continentals are not the least bit upset that Canada and the UK are playing administrative footsie. Turns out it’s a sport the Europeans engage in sometimes,with one another and with third parties. One diplomat told me it’s hard to carry these projects to completion — “We have seen a lot more engagements along these lines than we have seen marriages” — but that the appeal of the notion is such that somebody is always attempting it.

Philippe Zeller, France’s softspoken ambassador, called to chat about the many French-German joint diplomatic missions, of varying sizes and geometries, in such places as Bangladesh, Kuwait and Mozambique. In Kazakhstan, he said, there is a three-country joint mission: France, Germany and (don’t tell the Mail) the UK share space and resources. France also has shared representation with non-EU countries including Switzerland at times.

“In the world of diplomats, these are accords such as we’ve practiced before,” Zeller said. “They do not surprise us.”