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My prediction for 2016? It will be a lot like 2015. Except the Liberals will be getting the blame instead of the Tories.

What will be the same is that the irresistible force of rising public expectations will yet again crash into the immoveable object of government incapacity and failure.

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The predictable outcome will be a choleric outpouring of bile on social media as the disaffected heap scorn on the alleged incompetence of our leaders who supposedly could fix anything they like if only they tried hard enough.

The bitterness will be compounded by the still-widespread belief that the Tories were anti-government, whereas the Liberals came to power campaigning on the belief that government is a force for good and that every social problem can be made better by a timely and well-crafted intervention.

Neither of these beliefs stands up to scrutiny. The Tories wanted to re-equip the military but failed woefully. Ditto for their attempts to conjure up a fourth national mobile telephone operator out of thin air or to punish the railways for being efficient. They spent a tenth of GDP on largely ineffectual tax credits that were thinly disguised social engineering (“If you do what we want, we’ll give you back some of your tax money”). When they left office government spending was at an historic high. They continued with Paul Martin’s plan to pour billions in new money into the hands of the provinces for health care, despite the indisputable evidence that money is not the problem and that many other national universal-access systems get better value and cost less.