Canada’s Liberal Party has had its troubles in recent years. Two years ago they suffered the worst election result in their history, returning only 34 MPs and falling to an unprecedented third place behind the Conservative and New Democratic parties.
The Guardian reports that Justin Trudeau was elected the party’s leader with a massive majority. He attained 80% of the vote, a good start for somebody who needs to unify the party after years of infighting. His acceptance speech attempted to put those divisions behind the party:
I don’t care if you thought my father was great or arrogant,” Trudeau said.
Student protests against tuition fee increases have been going on for weeks. In response, the government has introduced emergency legislation, legally curtailing demonstrations, hiking penalties and suspending classes at 25 colleges.
The initial promise of Canadian Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff’s campaign is fading badly as polling day approaches on Canada and one of the main reasons is one very familiar to British politics. It’s the failure to have a good answer to the question, “What would you do in a hung Parliament?”
As Adam Radwanski puts it The Globe and Mail when looking at how Ignatieff and Conservative Premier Stephen Harper are faring:
If the two men were being graded by civics teachers, Mr. Ignatieff would indeed be winning. His explanation of how another Conservative minority would work – the need
A politician running to lead the B.C. New Democrats says he is refusing to comply with a requirement of leadership hopefuls to hand over the passwords to their social media accounts.
Nicholas Simons, an NDP MLA who’s hoping to run in the leadership race, says he’s left that information off his nomination package.
The party’s intent is to try to ensure there are no skeletons hidden in candidates’ private profiles.
As the report mentions, leaving aside the gauche politics of this, it’s also rather unwise to demand someone hands over passwords when it is a common feature of terms …
Despite the similarity of the Canadian and British political systems – far, far more similar than the US and British ones – it’s American rather than Canadian politics that usually gets talked about for political lessons for Britain. Hence in the run up to the general election TV debates there was plenty of talk of the US debates (Presidential system) rather than the Canadian ones (Parliamentary system).
The Canadian approach to cutting a large government deficit was briefly all the talk of London think tank circles last summer. That fashion for of Canada quickly moved on, even though the comparisons …
Overseas places come and go as the fashionable one to talk about in Westminster political circles. After 1992 it was Japan, with the fourth Conservative general election victory in a row spawning comparisons with Japan and the long period of Liberal Democrat rule there. In the run up to 2005 it was the Australian state of Queensland, where an incumbent state government had seemed set for re-election but suffered a shock defeat, put down largely to complacency amongst its supporters. And of course, as a third example, when in doubt there’s always the 1960 US Presidential election, Barack Obama or …
It’s Sunday. It’s 9am. It’s time for jenga, but first the news.
2 Must-Read Blog Posts
What are other Liberal Democrat bloggers saying? Here are two posts that have caught the eye from the Liberal Democrat Blogs aggregator:
A failure of scrutiny on digital bill: Peter Black blogs about the letter signed by, amongst others, Liberal Democrat Parliamentary candidates Bridget Fox and Julian Huppert. Danger of Parliament rushing through legislation without proper debate? Who would have thought it.
Elementary errors: Giles Wilkes on the important difference between a stock and a flow. More interesting and useful than I’ve made it sound.
Spotted any other great posts in the last day from blogs that aren’t on the aggregator? Do post up a comment sharing them with us all.
2 Big Stories
BA fights to limit the impact of cabin crew strike
The political impact of TV debates in other Parliamentary democracies (and yes, yawn yawn, obligatory American reference, in the US too) has often been more about expectations than about absolute performance. Beat expectations and you benefit from the debate, even if that means people viewed you as the narrow loser. But if you were expected to be a big loser and then beat expectations and only just lose, you benefit.
Also the impact of debates has often been to reinforce people’s existing predilections rather than switch people between different parties or candidates. That has, for example, been a common feature in Canada, where TV debates have been held off and on since 1968. (Yawn yawn, US example, 1988 second Dukakis-Bush debate and others.)
In other words, you’re best placed to come out well from a debate if your party is the one most in need of motivating its supporters and if the expectations about your performance are low. Step forward then, Gordon Brown.
As for Nick Clegg?
Both of Brown’s advantages are advantages over David Cameron – and only over David Cameron. Liberal Democrat share of the vote is fairly static overall as turnout changes: from purely partisan motives, the level of turnout does not really matter, though of course from the perspective of health democracy higher turnout is much to be preferred. The expectations one is trickier, but the expectations amongst many in the media that Nick Clegg will benefit hugely from being in the debates is based on simply him being there, so he won’t go in to them with the pressure of extremely high personal performance being expected by the media.
Moreover, for Nick Clegg there is that third factor: TV debates can raise the profile of leaders beyond the main two parties.
For Nick and the Liberal Democrats this is likely to be a major boost, because consistently the party does best when it is in the news (even if, during the post-Kennedy leadership contest several MPs did their level best to disprove that). As simple a move as asking people about their views of party leaders before asking them which party they’ll vote for raises the third party’s vote in opinion polls. That’s why for many years Gallup gave the party higher ratings that other pollsters.
Compared to that, appearing in a trio of TV debates alongside Brown and Cameron will be a massive boost for Nick Clegg and the party.
Whilst we wait to find out what the televised general election debates will bring, enjoy this moment from the 1988 Canadian debates. The 1988 election was a re-run contest between Brian Mulroney’s Conservatives, who had won a landslide in 1984, and the Liberals under John Turner, still leader despite leading his party crashing out of power in 1984. John Turner is the silver haired one:
Defendants in Canada are facing an eye-watering $6 billion payout in a court case over repeated breaches of music copyright over several years. Claims for unpaid royalties total $50 million, but on top of that the defendants face having to pay $20,000 for each copyrighted song which has been used without payment. Records show that the total number of such songs is more than 300,000.
Although the songs involved have easily identified copyright owners who would happily accept payment and who are paid by other law abiding users of their music, no such payments have been made in the case of …
Daniel Walker @David Raw "I didn’t say that, Daniel, though what I imply is that the party needs to prove to and make clear to the electorate the value and choices that ...
Andrew Tampion "England is too much larger than the other three for that to work in any satisfactory way, as I mentioned to Kira."
I don't agree. If all matters other than th...
Jeff How relevant is this to Trump’s MAGA movement, to Farage and Reform?
Of little to none I would have thought. The political ideologies that came to d...
Nonconformistradical I second Henry's comments about Barrow - this south-eastener has at least, albeit not recently, set foot in the Barrow constituency (visiting friends who lived ...
John Peters I would not have classed Barrow-in-Furness as post industrial. For decades it has had the same major employer - the dockyards. It manafactures the UK's nuclear ...
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From Norman settlement to a civic square
Northern Ireland debates the future of its railways in 1957
Church Green video
Thinking of standing for election or re-election next year? Helpful questions to consider
Daniel Walker 
Andrew Tampion 
Jeff 
Nonconformistradical 
John Peters 