Red Tories and blue Liberals have found someone they like better, and trust more. Poilievre’s speech reflected a recognition that he had to change to be competitive.

Whether you liked it or didn’t, the speech Pierre Poilievre gave at the Conservative convention was, in a way, the speech Mark Carney made him give.

In Calgary, at the convention of Conservatives, Poilievre smiled a lot, teared up a bit, and said he was ready to huddle up with Liberals to do good work for the people. Poilievre was pro-hope and anti-despair. It seems, for him, Canada is no longer “broken”.

So, why this metamorphosis? (Leave aside for now whether it will stick. Time will tell.)

This new posture is because Mark Carney has repriced the political market.

What it takes to be competitive is very different today, compared to 15 months ago.

In today’s seriously troubled world, a snarl at the woke and a wink at the MAGAs comes off as juvenile and wrongheaded. Hating on Justin Trudeau just sounds like you can’t turn the page and don’t have anything useful to say about where we go from here.

Poilievre spent much of last year still performing the political equivalent of the song Who Let the Dogs Out. A song a lot of people sang along with, until they never wanted to hear it again.

So, if the old song won’t work, what else do you do, if you’re Pierre Poilievre? The answer starts with a few cold facts.

Our Spark Insights polling last week finds the Liberal Party with an 8 point over the Conservative Party. Meanwhile Mark Carney has a 30-point advantage over Pierre Poilievre.

Many conservative ideas are popular.

The Conservative brand is reasonably competitive.

The Conservative challenge is mostly about one person, and whether voters would choose him over his rival, to meet the challenges the country faces.

Right now, voters think Carney has more useful experience, better ideas, and is a nicer guy than Poilievre. Poilievre may try to chip away at that, but the risk in trying to persuade people that Carney’s an unlikeable dunce, is that people will be convinced that you’re the unlikeable dunce.

If that won’t work, can you simply count on motivating your base to pull you over the finish line? Right now, the Carney vote is more motivated than the Poilievre vote.

And, Carney has been working at opening up the minds of people who voted Conservative – while Poilievre has, until Friday at least, been proud of his disdain for people who would ever have voted Liberal. Conservative leaders don’t win, using this strategy.

If there were an election now, 25% of those on the right, 57% on the centre right, 69% on the centre left and 89% on the left would prefer a Carney win to a Poilievre win.

In Alberta, Carney’s net favourability of +45. Poilievre is -25. A striking 75% think Carney is doing a good or acceptable job when it comes to policy around “oil and gas”.

To even reprise last year’s result, let alone win enough seats to form a government, Poilievre has to be willing to risk his MAGA base. Canadians know who represents the biggest threat to Canada, and they don’t think it’s Mark Carney.

Poilievre struggles to sound like he gets this.

Trump did not rate a mention in Poilievre’s Calgary speech

The Liberals are vulnerable on chronic post-Covid issues like the cost of food and shelter, as well as crime, in some parts of the country. That’s why Poilievre homed in on those in his speech: they are the best ‘sword’ issues for the Conservatives.

But unless the endless chaotic threats of Donald Trump disappear, and/or until people think Poilievre would have better ideas to fix those problems, the Conservative leader will have trouble finding personal traction.

The bottom line: red Tories and blue Liberals have found someone they like better, and trust more, to be the hand on the tiller.

Poilievre’s speech reflected a recognition that he had to change to be more competitive. That waiting for people to like his old song again was bound to fail. It suggested he could be a more reflective and likeable leader than he has been. But it lacked an answer to the question of why he would be a better steward for the country than Mark Carney.

The market has found something it likes better than polarization.