In Canada, constituency-level results are released as they are counted, so there remain many unknowns about the outcome of the country’s general election. What seems clear is that Mark Carney’s Liberal Party has pulled off its extreme makeover and eked out a victory, with the Conservative opposition conceding in the last hour. At the time of writing, the Liberals have managed 166 seats, with 172 required to form a majority.

Meanwhile, Pierre Poilievre’s Conservatives increased their seat count to 146 and over-performed polls in terms of the popular vote, achieving figures which in almost any other election would have guaranteed a Tory government. This may be the highest Tory vote share since 1988, when the Progressive Conservative Party, the precursor to today’s Conservatives, won a majority victory in the election.

Despite these numbers, it was not to be for Poilievre’s party. The mathematically proximate reason for the Conservative disappointment lies in the collapse of the New Democratic Party. Roughly equivalent to Britain’s Labour Party (both were traditionally the vehicle of the trade unions), the NDP’s vote count has crumbled, along with its seat count.

This was not a surprise for anyone: Jagmeet Singh, the NDP leader who has a good claim to be the most useless Canadian party chief in living memory, campaigned as though he wanted the Liberals to win — as he all but told journalists when dictating his political obituary in the days before the election (it goes without saying that this is not the sort of thing which impresses voters).

Without the vote-splitting on the Left, the Liberals were able to increase their vote share and outgun the Tories. Flush with his pension, which he just about qualified for, 46-year-old Singh — who has lost his seat — can spend the rest of his life indulging his taste for Rolexes and Maserati cars, idiosyncratic tastes for the leader of what is supposed to be a blue-collar party.

But the real reason for the Conservative defeat, when a few months ago its victory seemed inevitable, is Donald J. Trump. The US President’s threats about annexing Canada — which by all appearances he sincerely believes — have rallied Canadians around the flag. As the Liberal Party has managed to associate itself with patriotism, it has benefitted from Trump’s regular interventions.

Poilievre and the Conservatives tried to counter their perceived proximity to Trump (more imagined than real, it has to be said — the Tory leader is really a Milton Friedman-style libertarian at heart) and focus on domestic issues, on which the Conservatives could run against the Liberals’ disastrous record. It was not enough. How do you make Canadians — who at the best of times consume as much American news as domestic coverage — focus on crime and the cost of living, when every few days Trump threatens Canada’s statehood?

Carney, the carpetbagger the Liberals imported from New York to wash away the stink of Justin Trudeau, took full advantage of the moment, portraying himself as Captain Canada, even though there are suggestions that his public anti-Trump rhetoric may have diverged significantly from what he told the US President on the phone. None of this mattered: the political novice will remain as Canada’s Prime Minister.

The Liberals will continue in office, but the Carney honeymoon is guaranteed to come to an end at some point. Conservatives will hope that they will get another shot at victory in 18 months or so, when the national mood, which is at its most volatile, will turn again.

Liberals, meanwhile, will hope that a stint in office allows them to consolidate their vote. But will the NDP collapse — or for that matter, the Bloc Québécois under-performance in Quebec — be permanent? No one knows. Canada is entering yet another period of uncertainty.

Yuan Yi Zhu is an academic and writer. He was a policy adviser to Pierre Poilievre.

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Yuan Yi Zhu is an academic and writer.

yuanyi_z

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