Ignatieff resigns after Canada poll loss

Liberals came in a distant third in Monday’s elections with just 34 seats giving Stephen Harper’s Conservatives a majority Michael Ignatieff, the man once hailed as the “bionic liberal”, has stepped down as Canada’s Liberal leader after leading the party to its worst ever election defeat. The Liberals came in a distant third in Monday night’s elections with 34 seats, giving Stephen Harper’s Conservatives, on 167 seats, a majority in the 308-seat House of Commons. The collapse of the Liberals, the traditional party of governance for the 20th century, has redrawn the map of Canadian politics. The leftwing New Democratic party, led by Jack Layton, nearly tripled their strength to 102 seats, emerging for the first time as the official opposition. Voters also elected the first Green party MP, Elizabeth May, in British Columbia, and threw out all but four members of the French-speaking separatist Bloc Québécois. Ignatieff’s humiliation was compounded by the loss of his own seat. On Tuesday morning, the exhausted-looking leader blamed the Liberals’ collapse on negative attack ads. Canadians liked him once they got to know him, he told a press conference, but “there were these negative attack ads that made it very difficult for me to connect with people who weren’t in the room,” he said. “I had a very large square put around my neck for a number of years.” But Ignatieff, who became a public figure in the 1990s as the telegenic host of BBC’s Late Show before decamping for a job at Harvard as a human rights professor, said he took responsibility for the defeat. “The only thing Canadians like less than a loser is a sore loser and I go out of politics with my head held high,” he said. The party will meet next week to choose an interim leader. Ignatieff said he wanted to return to academia, the career he gave up in 2005 to make his first run for office in a suburban Toronto district, though he said he had had no offers as yet. Ignatieff, who was cast by some party grandees as the great hope for an ailing party in search of a charismatic leader, became leader in 2009. But under his leadership, the Liberals were reduced to less than 19% of the popular vote and Harper got his first majority after five years of minority rule. Commentators said Harper now had an historic opportunity to move the centre of Canadian politics further to the right. In the immediate future, the Conservative majority gives Harper a chance to push through an economic agenda of corporate tax breaks and government spending cuts. At a press conference in Calgary on Tuesday, he said the result would bring stability to Canada, which has seen four elections in seven years. He also offered reassurances about an immediate lurch to the right because of pressure from his party’s right wing. “We are intensely aware that we are and we must be the government of all Canadians, including those who did not vote for us,” Harper said. Layton, whose party won more than 30% of the popular vote, must now fashion a credible opposition force from a large and inexperienced group. The party’s biggest wins came from Quebec, where it became the default choice for voters fed up with the Bloc Québécois. One of the winners from Quebec on Monday night, Ruth Ellen Brosseau, works in a bar in Ottawa, does not speak French, and may not have ever visited her district, Canadian press reported. She also spent part of the campaign on holiday in Las Vegas – but she still took 40% of the vote. Other prominent casualties include the leader of the Bloc Québécois, Gilles Duceppe, who stood down after his party lost nearly all of its members. The Liberal party collapse claimed other high-profile figures. In Toronto, Ken Dryden, a goalie in the National Hockey League before entering law and politics, lost to a conservative. However, Justin Trudeau, the son of the late prime minister Pierre Trudeau, held on to his seat in Quebec. Michael Ignatieff Canada Stephen Harper Suzanne Goldenberg guardian.co.uk

Posted by on May 3, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.