The Tory leader, Pierre Poilievre, has done a reasonably good job at moderating his image from that of a hard right-winger – narrowing any chance Trudeau had of capturing enough of the centre he needed.
My best guess is that, faced with this imminent defeat, Trudeau believes getting out now will insulate him and make it more likely that he can return to frontline Canadian politics further down the line, after a period of time in the wilderness.
Is such a return likely?
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While in the US, figuratively dead presidents rarely come back to life – with Grover Cleveland and Trump the only ones to return after a re-election loss – in Canada, there is a bit more of a tradition of political resurrection.
This stretches back to the country’s first prime minister, John A. MacDonald, who resigned in 1873 amid scandal only to be re-elected five years later. William Mackenzie King served three non-consecutive …