Lands of the Lost

SteynonLine ^ | April 28, 2025 | Mark Steyn

[Twotone]

This is a big week for anglosphere elections: Canada today, Australia on Saturday, and, in between, England's local elections (except for the ones Sir Keir has cancelled) on Thursday. Don't worry, you sensitive types, in none of the three is there the remotest danger of a Trump or an Orbán, a Le Pen or Meloni ascending to power.

Incredible as it seems, the Aussie campaign has been even more dispiriting than the Canadian one, with the so-called "right-of-centre" leader, Peter Tweedledutton, alternating between huffing indignantly at the very suggestion that he as any policy disagreements with the leftie incumbent and fighting vainly the old ennui at having to feign the wearisome pretence of "fighting" an election for another week. Even the lame-o dinner-theatre of electoral politics requires more plausible actors than this. To channel Viscount Whitelaw in another context, Mr Dutton is going around the country stirring up apathy, and doing a very good job of it. "Consensus" of this kind is killing democracy, Down Under as in its Clinto-Bushite, Chirac-Hollande or Blairite-Cameronian variations. It's a good thing Australia has compulsory voting, because otherwise it wouldn't have any at all.

In Canada, which is in a far more parlous state than its Commonwealth cousin, turnout will be all. Also incredible as it seems, in opinion polls a consistent forty-three-ish per cent of Canadians have so enjoyed the last decade they're itching to give the Liberal Party another four years to hit the gas and floor the country off the cliff. You'll recall my old line that no change can be permitted to anything that matters. These Canadian and Australian campaigns seem to have more or less formalised the thesis.

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TOPICS: Australia/New Zealand; Canada; News/Current Events; United Kingdom
KEYWORDS: australia; canada; elections; uk

[Rummyfan]

Don't worry, you sensitive types, in none of the three is there the remotest danger of a Trump or an Orbán, a Le Pen or Meloni ascending to power.

And that's a damn shame.

[Buttons12]

Steyn. Monday morning isn’t miserable enough, you have to write this catchy lament?
I know you’re reading here, so I’ll take the opportunity to chide you for that remark about Hudson Bay. “The vast, sprawling body of water.” Sprawling?
There is no excuse for such a hackneyed phrase, unless you are declaring, “You’ll edit my jeremiad, over my vast sprawling body!”

[alexander_busek]

I know you’re reading here, so I’ll take the opportunity to chide you for that remark about Hudson Bay. “The vast, sprawling body of water.” Sprawling? There is no excuse for such a hackneyed phrase, unless you are declaring, “You’ll edit my jeremiad, over my vast sprawling body!”

Well, maybe he felt it necessary to differentiate it from a vast, non-sprawling body of water.

Regards,

[wildcard_redneck]

In America we lived under this illusion-of -choice with every Republican President Except Reagan and Trump being nothing but neutered puppets of the DNC.

[VanShuyten]

Aside from his main point, he mentions that Hudson’s Bay is closing. Back in the 80s, that was the place to buy Eskimo art, particularly carved walrus and narwhal pieces, and seal fur hats.