Like everything Trudeau does, his latest world tour will be all about himself

National Post, 13 November 2022

Trudeau has demonstrated that even the easiest of all imaginable foreign trips can be fraught with public relations peril if one insists on being always and everywhere the centre of attention

The prime minister is on a 10-day, four-summit, two-continent trip. Imagine how intense the preparation must have been in the Prime Minister’s Office: the travel agents seeking adequate accommodations for something less than $6,000 per night; the social secretary arranging suitable late-night company for a boozy singalong; the wardrobe department loading up the garment bags with Cambodian chic, Indonesian national dress, Thai formal wear and Tunisian hipster.

There’s no doubt that the PMO costume officials were galvanized by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s recent visit to the set of “Canada’s Drag Race,” a reality show for extravagantly arrayed drag queens. Bespoke haberdashery never knew such possibilities!

Justin Trudeau To Become 1st World Leader To Appear In ‘Drag Race’ Franchise, read one headline. He can verify that claim as he meets with dozens of his colleagues over the next week; one expects it will hold up.

Most foreign travel ought to be relatively easy. The script is agreed to in advance and the lines are not too complicated. But Trudeau demonstrated that even the easiest of all imaginable foreign trips — the funeral of the sovereign — can be fraught with public relations peril if one insists on being always and everywhere the centre of attention.

The traditional understanding of the first minister in the Westminster parliamentary system is primus inter pares. Trudeau insists instead upon being the prima donna.

Which is why the controversy over the $6,000 a night hotel room in London was so illuminating. Leave aside the explanation, such as it would be, for the extravagance, and the suddenly bashful reluctance to admit who used it.

The more interesting question is why the prime minister was down in the lobby for an apparently drunken singalong of “Bohemian Rhapsody,” given that he presumably had access to a vast suite of rooms and a butler on standby?

Could it be that no one would have noticed if he had been singing upstairs in his suite? It is quite possible that there was a piano up there; certainly there was a bar. He could have easily hosted the celebrities he brought along.

The press reaction to Trudeau’s bad behaviour on the eve of the funeral — in contrast, say, to Jason Kenney of Alberta, who kept solemn vigil as he waited overnight in line to pay his respects in Westminster Hall — was that it was embarrassing to be caught out. But what if the whole point was to be noticed, to transgress the protocol strictures that kept everyone else from generating headlines?

Perhaps there was no media aforethought in the prime minister’s comportment. Perhaps he just couldn’t help himself.

From the Queen’s funeral to the drag queens, from the Bollywood excess to the novelty socks, from a fondness for blackface to fighting in boxing matches — Trudeau incorrigibly insists that everyone be watching him.

His celebrity boxing match with Sen. Patrick Brazeau was 10 years ago last spring; in the fall of 2012, he announced his candidacy for Liberal leader. Pummelling an Indigenous man in the ring is rather off-brand for Trudeau’s politics, but prominence always trumps — or “Trumps,” to use that capitalization deliberately — policy for the prime minister. Publicity, obtained by throwing punches or singing around a piano, is always the goal.

Continue reading at the National Post.