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Less easily dismissed, they ran on a platform that was largely divided between promises they had no intention of keeping — balancing the budget by their fourth year, say, or reforming the electoral system — and promises they hadn’t the first clue how to achieve. This is a government, and a prime minister, much given to the grand gesture, the sweeping statement, with the details left to be filled in later. And it is those “details” that may pose the greater threat. Nobody minds a broken promise half so much as a cocked-up one.

It was one thing to adopt the same stance on transfers to the provinces as the Harper government, having campaigned on a promise to increase them, or the same targets for carbon emissions they had earlier attacked as inadequate.

People have been educated to expect no more of incoming governments. The promise to end the combat mission against ISIL was likewise easily fudged, transformed into a “non-combat” mission that involves firing on the enemy in a war zone. No body bags, no pictures; no pictures, no story.

But the revolt of small business over a package of proposed tax changes will not so readily be set to one side. No doubt the closing of a few tax preferences, of benefit mostly to the well-to-do, was intended to fit with the Liberals’ preferred image as defenders of the middle class against the predatory rich.

But the effect, with the Tories’ encouragement, has been to offend a great many not-so-rich small business owners — even those unaffected by the changes. The immediate damage is probably containable, with a few tweaks. But the longer-term impact may be to add to the picture the Tories are trying to paint of an entitled prime minister with no feeling for the struggles of the average person — one who vacations on the Aga Khan’s private island and dines with Chinese billionaires at private fundraisers.