It's hard to think of a figure in public life even roughly comparable in stature to Michael Ignatieff. British people often know him as the Booker prize-nominated novelist, academic-celebrity and host of the highbrow-ish Late Show. His contentious theories on nationalism and democracy feature on politics students' required reading lists. And, for a brief period just over a year ago, he was the man hailed as "Canada's Obama", an impossibly charismatic and heavyweight political leader, set to recreate Canada's 1968 golden era of Trudeau-mania, his gravitas and glamour blasting away Stephen Harper's gloomy and John Major-ish reign over a minority Conservative government.

Now, it looks like he may not last the year as Liberal party leader, and speculation in the Canadian press has implied that even the Liberal party – one of the two, historic national parties – may disappear itself. Earlier this month, a former aide to Ignatieff revealed that the party had held talks to merge with the NDP, the other main progressive party in opposition to Harper's Conservatives. More than simply a coalition to oust the Tories, this would entail the disappearance of the Liberal party itself.

And while one of the preconditions of the merger talks was apparently that Ignatieff remain leader of any new Liberal-NDP party, Ignatieff's grip seems to be slipping on his old, existing party. To much embarrassment, a recent poll revealed that Ignatieff currently ranks third among voters' choices for Liberal party leader. It seems that perhaps, among his many guises and achievements, Ignatieff has failed to be something meaningful for Canadians themselves.

Beyond the celebrity-intellectual buzz his turn to politics received abroad, Ignatieff's failure to connect with his constituency emerged early on. There was an undeniable aura of arrogance in his announcement that he'd returned to Canada after almost 30 years abroad, because "his party needed him", and the Conservatives ran attack-ads mocking Ignatieff's return as "just visiting". In 2005, his campaign for a parliamentary seat was marred by derogatory comments Ignatieff had written about Ukrainians in his book Blood and Belonging – that "Ukrainian independence conjures up images of embroidered peasant shirts, the nasal whine of ethnic instruments, phoney Cossacks in cloaks and boots, nasty antisemites".

Ignatieff claimed the quotes were taken out of context as part of a Conservative smear campaign. But his writing on identity draws a sharp, value-loaded distinction between ethnic and civic nationalism, claiming only the latter is compatible with liberal democracy (a position that becomes harder to maintain in the face of xenophobia perpetuated in the name of "civic" nationalism – rising French Islamophobia and Turkish exclusivism spring to mind). At times it seems that Ignatieff wants to be leader of Canada while dictating to the nation the "right way" for them to feel Canadian.

In this way, the comparison with Pierre Trudeau was always misplaced, even more so than the comparisons with academic-turned-charismatic-politician, Obama. Unlike Ignatieff, Trudeau's popularity wasn't imported from his stature abroad, and even his detractors on issues like bilingualism recognised his effective leadership skills. What is likely hurting Ignatieff now is that he isn't losing to a worthy opponent, or even to a sweeping change of popular sentiment, he's just losing. The internal problems of the Liberal party haven't increased the popularity of the Conservatives, and Stephen Harper's minority government continues to hang on by the skin of its teeth. The media are beginning a summer game of "leadership death watch", placing bets on both Ignatieff and Harper.

For both party leaders to go may be exactly what Canada needs to move forward after the stagnation of the minority government years. And Ignatieff will never be short of offers in his capacity as celebrity-intellectual – particularly outside of Canada.