This election could have been a lot worse for Canada’s Conservatives. As I write, they have taken 41.7 per cent of the popular vote, their highest share since 1988, and are on track to pick up two dozen seats. They have also managed to make inroads with young people and unionised workers – groups that are famously hard for right-wing parties to win over.
Yet the victor of the night was Mark Carney, who will have a thin but real minority to work with as prime minister of Canada, and now the Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre is expected to lose his seat. Ill-informed pundits will say that the Tories threw away their double-digit lead ahead of the election, but it would be far more accurate to say that Carney’s Liberals closed the gap, and then some.
The Liberals, of course, had help, in the form of the President of the United States of America.
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