Justin Trudeau is imbued with the political tactics of his father’s Liberal party: that you’re on the winning team until you lose; and that you must never be trapped on the defensive.

“If your opponent says ‘you’re fat’, you say they’re bald,” former Liberal campaign director, Keith Davey, used to say.

Trudeau used his platform as the star witness at the public inquiry into foreign interference on Wednesday to go on the offensive against Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives, ensuring that, for the next news cycle at least, the headlines will not be about the incipient coup in the Liberal caucus.