Daniel Hannan gets it spectacularly wrong again, part 472

Canada’s general election is widely considered a fiasco of historical proportions for the country’s Conservative Party.

Holding a seemingly unassailable 23-point lead in the polls as the election was called, the party of Trump wannabe Pierre Poilievre looked to be heading for a landslide victory on a so-called ‘maple-syrup MAGA’ ticket of fighting wokery. Alas, that lead quickly vanished as the real Trump reappeared, imposing potentially devastating 25 per cent tariffs on Canadian cars, steel and aluminum, claiming that his northern neighbour should be the 51st US state and sending voters scurrying into the arms of dull but safe liberal banker Mark Carney.

Still, not everyone thinks the election was an utter humiliation for Poilievre and his party. And you might not be surprised to hear it’s… Conservative peer and ‘brain of Brexit’ Daniel Hannan!

“It is nonsense to talk of @PierrePoilievre having ‘thrown away’ this election,” harrumphed Hannan on, inevitably, X, his sister party having just comprehensively thrown away the election.

“Canada’s Conservatives just secured their best result in 11 general elections and 37 years,” he added. “In any other circumstances, they’d have won. As indeed they will next time, assuming they keep their leader.”

It is certainly true that in other circumstances – say, one in which your leader doesn’t spend the campaign mimicking a man salivating over the prospect of annexing your country – the Conservatives may well have won. But it does seem unlikely that the party will keep Poilievre as their leader – what with him managing to lose his own seat in the process. Yet another triumph of punditry for Lord Hannan!

(Hannan also expressed admiration that “It is also very much to Pierre’s credit that he has fought the same marginal seat since 2004, turning down every opportunity to move somewhere safer”. That “marginal” seat had a majority of more than 14,000, or 20%.)