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The government of Dorian Gray is showing its age.

Some months ago, I suggested an analogy to the portrait in the story: the prime minister out in public, smiling, unblemished, seemingly ageless, while in an attic somewhere his face was accumulating the marks and lines of his government’s many sins.

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But something has gone wrong. Justin Trudeau does not seem so visibly unburdened by office any more. The image of youthful idealism is wearing thin. The cracks are starting to show.

Indeed there is accumulating around this government, and more and more around the prime minister himself, an unmistakable odour of hypocrisy and deceit, made more sickly-sweet by the sanctimony in which both are in the habit of expressing themselves.

It won’t show up in the polls yet, but they are storing up trouble. Liberals have always to guard against arrogance and self-satisfaction — envy and resentment are the Tory equivalents — and this current generation of Liberals are, let us just say, immensely pleased with themselves. That kind of smugness can lead to overreach and unforced errors, and if not checked will eventually give rise to public loathing. People fall out of love as quickly as they fall in it, as any number of once popular leaders can attest.