Indeed, our pilot did announce the preliminary election results to us on the plane, as we made our approach on Frankfurt! To close the parenthesis I opened with the last post…we indeed ended up with a Conservative minority — a minority with even fewer seats than the previous Liberal one. Our new PM-elect is 46-year-old Stephen Harper. Here are the results:
| Party | Seats | Previous |
| Conservative | 124 | 99 |
| Liberal | 103 | 135 |
| Bloc Québécois | 51 | 54 |
| New Democratic Party | 29 | 19 |
| Independent | 1 | 1 |
For fun, you might take a read of Blog Boy’s blog. These hilarious entries were posted — on the official Liberal website — every day of the election campaign, by (ex-)Liberal Leader Paul Martin’s speechwriter, Scott Feschuk. I found it amazing that he was “allowed” to write so humorously and candidly about the behind-the-scene goings-on. Politics needs more humour and more poetry. To whit, more wit.
If Feschuk was providing the humour, what about the poetry? Well, since today is Robbie Burns’ 247th birthday (hold your own Burns Supper!), I thought I’d drop in a relevant bit of poetry from the bard…
Suppose I take a spurt, and mix
Amang the wilds o’ Politics-
Electors and elected,
Where dogs at Court (sad sons of bitches!)
Septennially a madness touches,
Till all the land’s infected.
—Robbie Burns, from his Election Ballad