I have a hideous premonition of the future. I see Canada’s woke politics spreading across the rest of the Anglosphere but divorced from that vast country’s redeeming qualities of courtesy, generosity, and humor. I see parties competing with one another to virtue-signal, to trash their national heroes, to engage in identity politics of the lowest kind. I see illiberalism with a warm, inclusive smile.

“Will the world’s wokest leader be reelected?” asked this column a couple of weeks ago. Silly question, really. Despite the cost of living crisis and the mounting debt, Canadians again plumped for a lightweight former teacher who says he doesn’t think about monetary policy. Economic issues are normally considered the Right’s strong suit, but despite having an eminently sensible recovery plan, the Canadian Conservatives were unable to get much more than a third of the popular vote, with most of the rest going to parties further to Trudeau’s left.