Archive for stephen harper

What not to say about a hung Parliament

24 April 2011 , , ,
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 [...]

Predicting the future: we didn’t turn Japanese

15 February 2011 , , , , , , , , , , , ,
Shortly after the Conservative Party won its fourth general election in a row in 1992, a symposium met to consider the question of whether Britain – formerly a country with regularly rotating government between the two main parties – was turning into a political version of Japan, where the same party had been in power [...]

TV leaders' debates – the dos and don'ts, featuring Batman

15 April 2010 , , , , , ,
Total Politics asked me to pen some words of advice to the party leaders ahead of tonight’s first TV debate. Here’s what I said: Dear Party Leader, The impact on campaigns of debates in other countries shows how your debate could be not only be historic but also campaign changing. Lower expectations The lower the [...]