A week to remember?

We’re about to see the real lay of the land. Canadians go to the polls on Monday, and many Brits will follow suit on Thursday next week. Here opinion polls suggest big gains for Fartage’s Reform party in the local elections on May 1st (n.b. I’ve had no complaints about adding a ’t’ to Farage’s name so I guess everybody is happy with that). In Canada the Liberals led by Mark Carney are predicted to win with a smallish majority, but I guess even without that would still form a government with a bigger choice of suitors. The Canadian result may be the more significant, if it tells us of the toxicity of Trump. A short while ago the Canadian Trump loving Tories were on course for victory. Now the air is thick with Trump u-turns and doubts about whether he actually has the faintest idea what he is doing, apart from mistaking his dreams for reality. Could Canada, so often ignored as a somewhat politically boring entity set a trend, or at least dent the dominant narrative of the ascendant right? Let’s hope so, although it will only signal reborn-again centrism, rather than a leftist march. The markets will approve. In the UK, Thursday’s election results will inevitably be measured against Reform’s performance, and one might hope that that will be bad. Largely because their newby councillors, and probably mayors will have little sympathy for the roles they have been awarded. Local government is hugely complex. Reform is hugely simplistic. Yes, life should be simple. How strange that it isn’t.