At the Calgary Stampede this month, Pierre Poilievre stood up and celebrated a BC Conservative leadership win over what he called “Liberal lobbyists from out East.” The men he was sneering at weren’t Liberals. Kory Teneycke ran Doug Ford’s campaigns and worked for Stephen Harper. Nick Kouvalis and Anthony Koch have spent years electing Conservatives. Their actual crime was telling Poilievre the truth last spring: that Trump’s trade war, not Justin Trudeau, was the thing that would decide the 2025 election. He didn’t want to hear it. He blew a lead of more than twenty points, finished with 144 seats, and handed Mark Carney the keys. So naturally, a year later, he’s on a stage at a rodeo calling the people who were right about him traitors.
What followed was exactly what you’d expect. Days of his own former staffers turning on him in public. Caroline Elliott — a candidate who actually supported him — posting a video reminding him the race was over and asking him to unite, not divide. MPs telling the Hill Times that caucus morale is “in the absolute shitter.” Fundraising sliding while he’s down six points to Carney, 41 to 35, the same Carney who’s been running the country for seventeen months and somehow still looks like the steady one. None of this was done to Poilievre. He walked to the microphone and did it to himself.
There’s a specific kind of loser who decides the problem was never him — it was everyone who saw the loss coming. Poilievre had a landslide on the board eighteen months ago and spent the time since proving why he doesn’t have it anymore. He’d rather be right about who counts as a real conservative than actually win an election, and he’s willing to torch his most talented people to prove the point. Carney doesn’t have to lift a finger. His opponent is out at the Stampede, in front of everyone, cheerfully demolishing his own house. Grab a beer and watch. It’s the rare political meltdown where the guy swinging the sledgehammer earned every last splinter.