First, a word of caution. Like its weather, Canada’s politics goes in for extremes. In 1993 the Canadian Conservatives were reduced to just two seats under their hapless leader Kim Campbell. The NDP, Canada’s equivalent of Labour, won power in Ontario in the same era but collapsed within 18 months as Ontario taxpayers and businesses revolted against demands from public sector unions who dominated the NDP.

Doug Saunders, the prize winning writer and Globe and Mail corrrespondent in London, says Canada has opted for a two-party system like America. He may be right but it will need one or two more elections producing a binary divide before a new 21st century paradigm for Canadian politics can be defined.

British Tories will be elated, and rightly so. But Harper has pulled Canada out of Afghanistan, supports multiculturalism, and has no control over wide swathes of policy which are controlled by provinces.

Nor are UK Tories likely to make inroads in Britain’s Quebec: Scotland. Witnessing the election in Montreal, the aggressive Quebec nationalism and the insistence that a nationalist vote would lead to independence seemed very 20th century. Faith, flag and patrie didn’t work in Quebec as voters looked at class interests and social policy as major reasons to vote. Quebec nationalist politics encourages croney, client and corporatist capitalism at its worst. Stories of contracts awarded to les copains of mayors and other nationalist politicians abound.

The Tory victory confirms an old truth that at times of economic uncertainty voters become defensive about reducing household income. Taxation represents a loss of income and Tory focus on reducing state expenditure found an echo.

Jack Layton, the NDP leader out-debated his rivals on television in English and French. As here in Britain 12 months ago, the performance in election TV debates is now central to victory or defeat. Layton, despite suffering from cancer and on crutches after hip replacements, has been a convincing social democratic leader.

By contrast, the Liberals’ Michael Ignatieff, despite his status in the New York Review of Books as a leading Islington intellectual, failed to find a message, or offer a convincing vision. Outflanked on social issuues by the NDP, Iggy, as he was tagged, could not connect to the small business owner, the squeezed fearful middle, or women. Harper had incorporated much of the liberal multicultural charter of rights, feminist language that the long-reigning Liberal administration of Jean Chrétien used to transform Canada in the 1990s and first years of the 21st century.

So Iggy was trapped with only his own intellectuality to offer. He lost his seat so severe was the Liberal defeat. In a nation worried about terrorism. Harper was overtly pro-Israel while Ignatieff, true to Islington, offered more support for Palestinians. Tory attacks on Liberals for being soft on Hamas and other Islamist ideologues were dishonest and unfair but worked.

Bagehot in the Economist argues that London is the most febrile centre of political intellectuality with thinktanks and ideas discussants having a giant influence on politics. Certainly the dying years of Labour saw the promotion of intellectual technocrats into commanding positions in cabinet and Downing Street.

Does Iggy’s defeat at the hands of the sports-mad, Beatles obsessed, frankly rather homespun and dull Harper suggest that a party perceived as being controlled by brain-boxes rather than men of bottom with their feet on the ground have lessons for UK politics?

Canada’s Tories have won an important victory. To be sure, 60 per cent of Canadians voted anti-Tory but under FPTP Harper is entrenched in power.

Now he has his majority will it lead to Tory hubris as his rightwing instincts are unleashed? Or will he become Canada’s Stanley Baldwin, centrist, avuncular and staying out of foreign entanglements. Can the NDP and Liberals merge? As Tory policy bites in Quebec will voters return to nationalism? More likely is that like Scotland or Catalonia, Quebec will moan and hint at nevereferendums on independence but stay within Canada’s federal structure.

British political commentators focus on the US and ignore new political developments and ideas from Europe or Canada. This important election shows that interesting political developments happen in Canada where the political style and culture is closer to UK than America. Time for some Progress or Fabian seminars and visits to see what lessons there are for Labour?

Photo: number10.gov.uk