Mathieu Vaillancourt

The success of Emmanuel Macron's 'En Marche', a party which is barely a year old, has taken some by surprise. But Macron wasn't the only alternative party candidate to do well in the first round of voting in the French Presidential elections. Nicolas Dupont-Aignan, or NDA as the French call him, is the leader of Debout La France - probably the closest thing in French politics to Ukip. The mayor of Yeres, a commune which sits in the suburbs of Paris, is firmly eurosceptic and anti-euro. For some, he is France's answer to Nigel Farage. And yesterday, he picked up 4.7 per cent of the vote - compared to 1.8 per cent in 2012.

What has Jeremy Corbyn got against McDonald's? He wants to block the fast-food chain from having an outlet at the Labour party conference, a position which has been blasted by quite a few MPs in his party, who presumably enjoy a Big Mac every now and then. It raises a more serious question though. According to their website, McDonald's employ about 85,000 people in the UK. Most of these workers are voters. Add to that the number of British people who dine at McDonald's - which must be in the millions - and you start to see why Corbyn's McBoycott has gone down badly. Is snobbism behind it? Possibly.

A few months back, Justin Trudeau looked like an unlikely candidate to be Canada's next prime minister. But Canada's Liberal Party has now won a majority at the general election, ending nearly a decade of Conservative rule. Back in August when the Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper called an election for 19 October, the social-democratic NDP was first in the polls, the Conservatives good second and the Liberals third. Justin Trudeau's majority win is a historic feat in Canadian politics, because a third-running party has never before won a majority. So what were the key issues in this election? Not much. The choice seemed to be between wanting 'more of the same' or wanting 'change', especially in leadership style.

Is it really possible for the Tories to win a majority in 2015 after five years in government? Perhaps they need to look at the Conservatives in Canada, who won their majority in the 2011 elections after two elections where they won a minority government. But the way the party won this majority was partly down to its active courting of the New Canadians - new migrants to the country from al over the world. Canada's largest city, Toronto is probably the most diverse in the world, with half of its population from 'visible minorities'.