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. Earlier this month, prime minister Stephen Harper secured the Tories’ first majority government since that defeat.
British Tories will be elated at his success. But comparisons go only so far: 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 emerging Quebec: Scotland. Faith, flag and patrie didn’t work in Quebec as voters looked at class interests and social policy as major reasons to vote. The results in Quebec allowed Labour’s sister party, the New Democratic party, to leapfrog the Liberals and become the official opposition. That said, 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 the 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 last year, the performance in TV election 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 issues by the NDP, Iggy, as he was tagged, could not connect to the small business owner, the fearful ‘squeezed middle’, or women. Harper had incorporated much of the multicultural charter of rights and feminist language that the long-reigning Liberal administration of Jean Chrétien used to transform Canada in the 1990s and early 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 offered more support for Palestinians. Tory attacks on Liberals for being soft on Hamas and other Islamist ideologues were dishonest and unfair but they worked.
Now Harper 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?
Too often British political commentators focus on the US and ignore news from Europe or Canada. This election shows that interesting parallels and contrasts emerge in Canada where the political style and culture is closer to the UK than to America. In this case, this was an important victory won under a Conservative mantra retuned to modern Canadian parameters. To be sure, 60 per cent of voters backed non-Tory parties, but under first past the post Harper is entrenched in power. With his Liberal Democrat coalition partners flailing, David Cameron might yet spot an opportunity for outright victory.