The Liberal Party has swept to power, winning 184 seats out of 338, an overall majority of 30. The election platform included such policies as
- Cutting income taxes for the middle-classes while increasing them for the wealthy
- Running deficits for three years to pay for infrastructure spending
- Doing more to address environmental concerns over the controversial Keystone oil pipeline
- Taking more Syrian refugees; pulling out of bombing raids against Islamic State while bolstering training for Iraqi forces
- Legalising marijuana
This comes after a bad result in 2011 coming third with 34 seats behind the left wing NDP and with the Conservatives winning a majority.
With Cananda having moved into a budget surplus this year, the policy of borrowing to spend on infrastructure seems particularly well-timed. Might there be a lesson here for the UK in 2020?
The NDP didn’t have this policy, and some are arguing that this, and a policy to scrap the purchase of some new jet fighters, placed the Liberals to the left of the NDP. The Guardian live feed at 9.49 sees this argument played out in our Labour Party.
I hope we will hear over the next few days from people on the ground as to how these issues played out. Was “austerity” an issue any longer now that the budget was in surplus? What other lessons are there to learn?
There is more from the BBC on this result here.
Congratulations to #TeamTrudeau from all of us at Liberal Democrat Voice towers.
The thumbnail image advertising this post at the top of our home page is by Canadian Pacific from Flickr CCL.
* Joe Otten was the candidate for Sheffield Heeley in June 2017 and Doncaster North in December 2019 and is a councillor in Sheffield.
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54 Comments
The Liberals are not to the left of the NDP in any meaningful sense. Canada is in recession, has low national debt, and has no deficit, so running a small deficit now to help lift the economy out of recession isn’t an “anti-austerity” position… it’s an obvious and eminently sensible position that even a sane conservative party should want to pursue.
The Liberal Party are also pro TPP (their equivalent of TTIP) and are running on a platform that Corbyn would find unbearable, but that we would find very comfortable indeed.
This result has given me a lot of happiness this morning. The plucky underdog Trudeau who until a few weeks ago was still tied with the other two parties.
Whilst the Liberals are our sister party, they are not strictly liberal in the way we’d understand and have over the years been a big tent party, rather than a liberal one.
So i’d caution against assuming this is a good sign for us, there are lessons to learn from them, but neither is this an omen either.
But if we were to copy the Canadian Liberals, and take inspiration from their incredible revival, then we would need to reject the strategy of the last five years – we would need to reject equidistance and centrism, and become anti-austerity and anti-Conservative. I don’t think the Party dislikes being as low as it is in the polls enough for this.
“Whilst the Liberals are our sister party, they are not strictly liberal in the way we’d understand and have over the years been a big tent party, rather than a liberal one.”
Which perhaps explains why they are in power, and the lib-dems are not!
I am very excited by what Nick Barlow writes on his blog about the Liberals’ commitment to electoral reform (albeit via a committee to look into options).
I hope this produces results and we can finally point to a large North American democracy with a voting system that recognises plurality and diversity.
The cynic in me says that they need to move fast and decisively if this is really going to bear fruit, challenger parties who promise big on consittutional reform that might make their future hold on power less tenable can blow bit hot and cold if they secure a larger majority than they thought…
I didn’t want them to win this big. From what I’ve seen Trudeau has been weak on terrorism and is also weak on defence.
I don’t even know why there are votes in ending combat missions against ISIS, but I don’t mind people wanting to do this, the problem I have is the self-righteousness of saying things like “hope has won over fear” whilst running away from terrorists.
After the Ottawa attack all he had to say was “those who did it will be punished”, whilst assumingly ignoring those who are plotting attacks who are also criminals.
What the Canadian Liberals have demonstrated is that by running a positive campaign not on a conservative agenda with many issues that we would also feel comfortable in promoting you can come from behind ,surprise the pundits and challenge for government .unlike Citizen Corbyn and his peoples protest party there was clear pragmatism underlying their campaign .We should be inviting his campaign team to meet with us ,learn a few lessons and be positive campaigners for change in 2020.
@Paul Pettinger
“But if we were to copy the Canadian Liberals, and take inspiration from their incredible revival, then we would need to reject the strategy of the last five years – we would need to reject equidistance and centrism, and become anti-austerity and anti-Conservative.”
You mean copying the Canadian Liberals who the BBC refers to as the “centrist Liberals”?
BTW what do you mean by “equidistance”? I’m not aware that it is or ever has been our strategy. It may be used as inaccurate shorthand for NOT positioning ourselves to the left of Labour, but that is obviously a sensible strategy.
As to your suggestion that we we should become anti-austerity, I’m sure all parties will be able to call themselves that in a few years when the budget deficit has been cut to manageable levels, but we need to talk about our strategy for the present, not for five years’ time.
I agree Simon. The Canadian Liberals are further to the right than the UK Lib Dems are – so if they are winning in opposition to austerity and the Conservatives, what the hell were we doing championing the Conservative policy approach to the Great Recession and giving serious consideration to staying in coalition with them?
I don’t really think that you can use the result of the Canadian Liberals as a suggestion that we should move to the left. The Canadian Liberals have a record of sound economic management. They have inherited a budget surplus and they are going to retain it apart from investing in capital projects – something which makes sense anyways and something which makes sense given Canada’s position in their economic cycle.
I am sure that the people you so strongly disagree with on spending in the UK would have no problem endorsing this position from the Canadian liberals.
FWIW, whilst direct UK comparisons to Canadaian politics are always flawed, I think we should look at Justin Trudeau’s Liberals as being very similar to Blair’s Labour in 1997: a party once acustomed to power and being at the centre, not accesing it for some time, making both cosmetic changes and radical policy promises in tandem with a young leader who whilst well able to work the media and be approachable has a slight air of entitlement about their background.
Justin Trudeau is agnostic on TPP, as he says that the agreement was made in secret and he has not had a chance to see what is in it. Of course in theory international trade agreements are a good thing, but there are companies lobbying for deregulation that includes a watering down of environmental standard, labour rights and consumer protection. So it is right to be sceptical without being dismissive.
@Simon,
I think Simon is bang on the only similarity between the 2 parties is the word Liberal to copy them and ditch the last 5 years of work would just turn the Lib Dems into a Corbyn lookalike party.
But Peter, I think we should have spent much more on infrastructure and primarily through borrowing (https://www.libdemvoice.org/we-need-to-stand-up-for-liberal-democrat-distinctiveness-on-economy-44074.html), as the Canadian Liberals are proposing. In contrast, capital spending in the UK is set to continue to decline during this Parliament.
Any Liberal party that can win power will inevitably be a big tent party but I don’t think anyone can say they are not Liberal in the sense of other parties of that name such as in Australia.
Surely you have to admit there were a few differences between the financial position of the countries and of the capital markets comparing 2010 UK to 2015 Canada? I mean, they’re almost two extremes – how can that not have a bearing on spending plans?
Sorry folks but didn’t our MPs the gang of 8 just vote against the Fiscal Charter on the basis that it did not encourage investment in infrastructure at a time of low interest rates .How does that differ from the Canadian position ?
The Canadian liberals are not to the left of the NDP – the Canadian NDP are social democrats, the Canadian liberals are in the centre when it comes to economics and they are socially liberal.
Most Canadians didn’t vote for the liberals, only about 40% of them did and Canada uses FPTP in constituencies roughly the size of the UK’s. About a third of people voted for the conservatives, about a fifth for the social democrats. About 5% voted for the nationalists and about 3% voted green.
You would get a similar result in the uk if labour remained well on the the left and we had a liberal party like that here.
The lib dems are nothing like the Canadian liberals.
The Canadian liberals came from third place to win, when they moved from third to second in the opinion polls the leader refused to say a vote for the NDP was a vote for the conservatives.
When asked about cannabis on the campaign trail the leader refused to dilute their position for full legalisation and cop out for mere decriminalisation as the NDP wanted.
The polls were not predicting a liberal majority victory and the leader stuck to no formal coalitions as a policy when nobody believed they could win out right. Justin’s position was always party with most seats gets to form minority government with no majority.
This a very different party to the lib dems. The lib dems are a mix of liberal and social democrats. The lib dems have different messages in different areas and I couldn’t see them being able to resist playing the old a vote for labour is a vote for the tories here card. No way would they stand behind a policy of drugs legalisation with no wavering in the face of such intense pressure, they’d be scared I think.
Peter – I don’t think we were at any serious risk of default. The UK and Greece are a poor comparison. Greece doesn’t control its own monetary policy. It also had difficulty simply collecting tax. The years of low interest rates are a sign of a distressed economy rather than a flourishing one. They also provide a good basis for the state to borrow to invest for the future, boosting growth and ensuring the UK finds it easier to meet financial obligations.
Will – you seem to be falling into the trap of defining Lib Dem economic policy by whatever is the position of other parties, an approach that has served us so poorly. I don’t know what current Labour economic policy is, and I am not sure many do. Ours should be based on solid analysis and Liberal economics. Otherwise what’s the point?
Simon – ‘equidistance’ is putting the party in the middle of the big two and not making any official statement of preference between the two. It was the Alliance position, and the Lib Dem position in 1992, 2010 and 2015.
Matt (Bristol) – yes, there is a committee for options, but they’ve promised to bring legislation to Parliament within eighteen months, and have a clear electoral mandate to be able to go ahead and bring in changes (and I expect the support of the NDP too), so it does look like FPTP will be gone by the time of the next federal election. Though just to add to the confusion of the Canadian system, I think the provinces decide their own electoral systems, so they could still be FPTP…
Will, When you say “ditch the last 5 years of work” do you mean “ditch the last five years of undermining the broad church approach successfully adopted by the Lib Dems over the last 30 years and continue with a strategy that has almost destroyed us?”
Should say ” … or continue with a strategy that has almost destroyed us ?”
Am delighted that the Grits won this election. There is no point trying to position them on the UK’s (also flawed) notion of left, right or centre. They are a progressive liberal party, and the most successful in the world. The’left of centre’ NDP split from the Liberals and has become sometimes a rather embittered former partner. As always, when progressives split the conservative minority prospers. and because of that Canada has had a period of divisive government. Good to see the end of Harper, and Canada returning to something we would all like to live under. The Grits have very little in common with the Australian ‘liberal’ party and it seems to me to be belittling a great progressive triumph to suggest that they have.
This was an election the NDP threw away. They had it all, right up to early to mid September, 35 – 40% in the polls, but economically they were not radical enough, sounding a bit like the then ruling party, and when the Niqab issue was brought up by Lynton Crosby who was advising the Conservatives, they adopted a worthy liberal type moral stance which perhaps unfairly reduced significantly their Quebec base from the last election. In several polls 60% of those asked said thay would be “apoplectic” if “Harper got back”, there was a majority mood for change and once the Liberals were seen as the main challenger, particularly in Ontario, the anti Harper Conservative vote moved to the Liberals. The swing from the NDP was prodigous in the last few days. In a way it was like a national by election!
Is Trudeau on the phone to Obama now, explaining who Canadian bombing raids on ISIS will stop. Presumably they will. Does this have an impact for us and the coming debate. If Canada pulls out why should we replace them? It is a fascinating question.
Do you know if the Canadian Liberals employed a ‘world class’ strategist?
I am deeply sad, but am intrigued that journnalists have not picked up on Justin Trudeau’s over referencing of ancient (Canadian) Liberal Party history with his phrase ‘sunny ways’ borrowed from Sir Wilfrid Laurier…
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilfrid_Laurier
It’s amazing what can be achieved by having liberal policies, principles and not being scared. Maybe a bad defeat is what it takes for a party to be able to do this? Having nothing left to lose.
Eddie Sammon: You are unjust to Justin Trudeau. After the Ottawa attacks, which were disturbing and frightening for everyone on Parliament Hill, he spoke very well and seemed to offer the leadership that was lacking from Stephen Harper. He said a lot more than you have quoted.
How did the Canadian Liberal Party come from a lowly third place to a thumping majority? In his message to supporters today, Justin Trudeau explains how:
“For three years, we had a very old-fashioned strategy. We met and talked with as many Canadians as we could. And we listened.
“We beat fear with hope. We beat cynicism with hard work.
“We beat negative, divisive politics with a positive vision that brings Canadians together.
“Most of all, we defeated the idea that Canadians should be satisfied with less. That good enough is good enough, and that better just isn’t possible.
“Well my friends. This is Canada. And in Canada… Better is always possible.
“You built this platform. You built this movement. You told us what you need to be successful. You told us what kind of government you want, and we built the plan to make it happen.”
That’s the inspiration we should take. That’s the example we should follow.
Mr. Harper’s anti-niqab gambit had some initial success, there are clear indications it was not a winning strategy.
Thanks Ian, I think overall he is better than Stephen Harper, but I can’t help feeling uneasy about adulation of him.
I thought Tim Montgomerie summed up Harper’s problems very well in CapX: he said he was a “borecon”, similar to Tony Abbott and some other typical centre-right conservatives banging on about the economy and playing down climate change. The best thing I can see coming from this is that hopefully it will be the political end of these borecons.
Eddie, you’re that we shouldn’t adulate politicians, but I think it’s permissible to celebrate this victory. There is a huge weight of expectation on Justin Trudeau’s shoulders now and the Liberal family has to be as ready to support him when things don’t go right as it is to adulate him now.
Tim Montgomerie should not be allowed to get away with his description of Stephen Harper as a “borecon”, as if he were lovable in other ways. Harper was an arch manipulator whose electoral abuse stole the last election. He brought an unwelcome nastiness to Canadian politics. His party is the merger of the old Progressive Conservatives and a populist right-wing and anti-immigration party the Canadian Alliance, formerly Reform, that is said to be an inspiration for Ukip. The merger and new party was disowned by former Progressive Conservation prime minister, Joe Clark. Harper came from the Alliance/Reform. Canada will be better off without him. Putting right 10 years of his government is a huge task for JT and the Liberals.
Just to be clear about the Australian “Liberal” Party, it is not and does not pretend to be a “small-L liberal” party. To an Australian, “small-L liberalism” and the politics of their Liberal Party are distinct concepts.
Justin Trudeau is a liberal Corbyn.
He is the rejection of the Chretien flavour of liberalism, the laizzes-faire orange book liberalism, that took hold of the Canadian party in the 1990s. He’s the same repudiation of Clintonite Blairite style of politics that brought Corbyn to power.
He’s anti-austerity, anti-tax-avoidance, and a positivist. Like the SNP and Corbyn, he ran a distinct campaign of positivity, even though some in his base didn’t get that ‘new kind of politics memo’. He’s the same force that is fueling Sanders in the US.
This makes me hopeful for Corbyn in 2020.
As has already been said, the word ‘liberal’ means different things depending in which country you live. In terms of holding on to power in Canada over the last 100 years, the Liberal Party of Canada is more like the Tories over here.
What the Liberals’ victory does show is that the power of the name Trudeau is still strong. I lived in Canada during the early 1970s when Justin Trudeau’s father was in his pomp. Despite his wife going AWOL Pierre managed to cling on and develop into an elder statesman that many Canadians still remember with affection, despite his faults. With parents like Pierre and Margaret, it’s no surprise that Justin is exciting.
@phyllis: if you’re hopeful of corbyn in 2020 I think you’re going to be very disappointed. Jeremy corbyn is on the far left and simply unelectable.
I wonder if the liberals being nearly wiped out in 2009 in Canada freed them the be bold and honest. They refused to back down on drugs legalisation, full legalisation that is, not decriminalisation. They refused to be drawn into all this getting tough on xyz nonsense. They refused to let the threat of terrorism be used to push them into agreeing to water down civil liberties. They refused to play the classic lib Dem trick of saying that a vote for someone other than them or the tories was a defacto vote for the tories, even when the polls said they had moved to second place. They said they would refuse a coalition. Etc, etc.
In the end the majority of Canadians didn’t vote liberal, about 40% did. Guess what? About 40% of British people are liberal too.
The lib dems would have been to scared to do any of this prior to the 2015 election, but now in Westminster they’re becoming bolder. I am particularly impressed with Norman lamb, less so with Tim Farron. I’m hoping that the Lib dems lose all their seats in Scotland in 2016. It is sad that it needs to happen but I can’t see them getting the courage to be bold any other way. It’s easier said to be bold when there is nothing left to lose.
But for a liberal being bold does not mean being left wing, it means being liberal.
Ideologically the Liberal Party of Canada is much closer to the UK Lib Dems than to the Tories or any other UK party. Radical yet pragmatic and coherent (this is where comparisons with Corbyn fall), the Canadian Liberals show how we should be fighting elections.
Someone further up the thread wrote , “The lib dems are nothing like the Canadian liberals,” but all political parties are shaped by their national political landscape, meaning that no two parties are exactly alike even if they regard themselves as sister parties.
As to what “liberal” means, there is a difference between use as a proper ideological label and as a term of abuse. And sometimes it really is just a party name, with no pretence at following any sort of liberalism (e.g. Australian Liberal Party, and Japanese and Russian Liberal Democratic Parties).
Yep, Trudeau is pulling out of Iraq, even though the mission is legal. He supports local soldiers, which is fine, but why is he calling us selfish for risking our necks by taking a more aggressive approach?
He winds me up, I don’t even know if I could have voted for him.
I hear this all the time. I understand if someone wants to cling to this myth, but it’s really unproductive and unhelpful. The great losers of the GE 2015 and its aftermath were the centrists. The centre was absolutely devastated in May.
Voters went to the fringes, to the left and to the right. Voters went to UKIP, to the SNP, to the Greens, and to the Tories. They fled the centre. Where the centre was, there’s a smoldering hole now. The aftermath of the GE saw Labour lurch to the left. The blandness of Milibandism left an as smoldering hole in the centre of the Labour party. The LibDems were devastated after your explicit attempt of equidistant centrism.
There is no scenario where the centre can be said to have won anything. We’re in a great polarising phase of politics now. People are angry. People feel revolted and frustrated. They seek to enforce their will on cowardly parties who daren’t believe anything but what the focus groups tell them.
Trudeau is a part of that repudiation. Just as Corbyn was. Just as Sanders is. Just as Trump, Farage, Tsipras and Le Pen are. This anger, this repudiation takes different shapes in different parts of the world. It’s channeled into easily filled vacuums. Where the left is strong, it channels into right-wing parties. Where the right is strong, it becomes a left-wing movement. In some places, both sides benefit, like in the USA.
We’re going into another age of populism.
Phyllis
Why? In 2020 Mr Corbyn will not be seeking relection having stepped down from the Labour ieadership in 2018.
@colin: the lib dems weren’t destroyed electorally in 2015 because they had moderate economic policies, it’s actually far simpler than that. They lost almost every seat because their voters deserted them because of who their voters were.
The lib dems were never the liberal policies party, they were the anti Tory party. The lib dems built their voter base over several decades by campaigning locally with the message “it’s a two horse race here, vote lib Dem to keep the tories out”. Most lib dem voters didn’t care about politics, just as long as they weren’t tories. One coalition with the tories later and that base was destroyed.
The only policy people voted lib Dem for was the one about pledging to vote against any rise in tuition fees.
What you had in 2015 was a party that had alienated its supporters and was believed to be untrustworthy. That’s why they lost, not because their economic policies weren’t extreme enough.
Something tells me the leaders of the Conservative party fully understood this in 2010 when they offered the liberals a coalition but insisted that they break their pledges…
Manfarang – yes but you omitted to say that the Tories lost a No Confidence motion at the end of 2017 and Corbyn was swept to power on the 17 th March 2018. Oh wait I’m sorry I should have the 19th March 2018……..
Drawing parallels between the political set up in the UK and Canada is difficult. Like our other former colony, Australia, Canada is a federal state. A great deal of power resides with the Provinces, whose Premiers (not Prime Ministers) guard their independence from Ottawa assiduously. As a former resident of the province of Alberta I can remember the resurgence of the Conservatives in the early 1970s as the preferred alternative to the largely defunct Social Credit Party. Indeed, several Albertan provincial politicians went on to become Prime Ministers.
In some ways there is less to play for in Federal Elections for many Canadians, especially those who live west of Ontario. I believe that support for the Federal Liberal Party there had virtually disappeared until last weekend. In terms of where they stand – and this could be a lesson for us here – the Liberal Party under Justin Trudeau has generally sought to occupy the middle ground, even openly supporting the Harper Administration on certain issues, despite the fact that the previous administration would appear to have been clearly to the right. The NDP, which has always been more to the left, went into the 2015 election in the lead in many opinion polls and then clearly blew it. It would appear that the pragmatic approach adopted by Mr Trudeau, together with that name, did the trick.
@John Marriott
I think it was more the honesty rather than the pragmatism that did the trick.
Liberal policies are obviously popular in Canada but they’re just as popular here too.
What percentage of British people do you think would agree with those polices here? I’d say at least 40%
If you said that the UK needed to take its fair share of refugees, that cannabis should be fully legalised, that the voting system needed to be changed to a proportional one (with a non partisan committee deciding which), that neither left or right were always wrong on economic matters and we needed to be pragmatic about these things and that airstrikes were not the solution in Syria I think at least 40% of the British people could see themselves putting a cross in hath at box.
Now what percentage of British people would vote lib dem if the liberal democrats offered that? I’d say less than 10% the reasons why should be obvious, the lib dems aren’t trusted. Not that the lib dems would have the courage to offer that anyway, they’re far to risk adverse. I read on this site that the MSPs are scared to propose putting a penny on income tax in Scotland to increase funding for the NHS. They’ll no doubt fight the next scottish elections on encumbrancy and a vote for anyone but us is a vote for the SNP rubbish and get all but wiped out in Holyrood.
DavidW,
I’m not sure I agree on that 40%. What I do agree with you is about having the guts to say what you mean and to mean what you say. For most of its history Canadian politics at Federal level has been a fight between Liberals and Conservatives. Provincial parties like the PQ predominantly in Quebec and Social Credit on the prairies have made brief inroads and then retreated and the NDP has occasionally threatened to break the mould there as the Lib Dems have here. However, despite all of this, Canadians generally have a straight choice. Our problem over here is that we have multi party politics with a two party voting system and the public in general has still failed to recognise this fact.
David Wallace 20th Oct ’15 – 10:34pm
“@phyllis: if you’re hopeful of corbyn in 2020 I think you’re going to be very disappointed. Jeremy corbyn is on the far left….”
I don’t see any evidence that he is on the far left now. The things he espouses are also supported by many Lib Dems. And he has started off well by winning a Tory marginal ward.
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/labour-win-marginal-ward-on-tory-controlled-cherwell-district-council-a6676766.html
@Phyllis: You don’t see any evidence that Jeremy Corbyn is on the far left? We’re talking about the same Jeremy Corbyn right? The leader of the Labour Party. He’s a full blown socialist, you do know that, right?
Colin, it is not impossible that you could be simultaneously right and wrong, i.e we are in a great polarising phase of politics and Corbyn is part of that, but he still can’t win.
Perhaps we should drop Democrats from our name as a first step towards emulating their success?
Dave Orbison
No that was Cameron who lost the challenge to his leadership and he was replaced.
Phyllis
Mr Corbyn has changed his dress sense but not his politics.
Those with beards and sandals Liberals may have been.
However there is a big difference between a well run state enterprise and a nationalised monopoly.
In 2011 the Canadian Liberla came 3rd. Instead of propping up the Conservative party they were opponents of them. – and rewarded at the ballot box. The opposite of the LibDems
David Wallace andManfarang
I still see no evidence that Corbyn is “far left” nowadays. Many of his policies were thIngs Lib Dems believed in before the Orange Book Infiltration. The renationalisation of railways is supported by the majority of the public; many Lib Dems support scrapping Trident. Of course he is a socialist as opposed to capitalist but have the Lib Dems moved so far to the right that “socialist’ is now automaticly synonymous with “far left”?
Phyllis, Isn’t it fascinating to hear the constant cries that Corbyn is on the “far left” without those who utter them ever providing any evidence or even defining what they mean by “far left”? When such people are asked to provide such evidence or definition they do not do so, but repeat the cry more loudly and more stridently.Apparently, they consider that repetition and noise are substitutes for evidence.
Sadly such substitutes for reasoned debate, the weapons of choice of the Tory Party and their allies in the tabloid press, will probably succeed so that it becomes “an established fact” that Corbyn is “dangerously left wing” and therefore unelectable. And it’s very sad to see the remnants of the LibDems adopting the same tactics