The Liberal Party has swept to power, winning 184 seats out of 338, an overall majority of 30. The election platform included such policies as

Cutting income taxes for the middle-classes while increasing them for the wealthy

Running deficits for three years to pay for infrastructure spending

Doing more to address environmental concerns over the controversial Keystone oil pipeline

Taking more Syrian refugees; pulling out of bombing raids against Islamic State while bolstering training for Iraqi forces

Legalising marijuana

This comes after a bad result in 2011 coming third with 34 seats behind the left wing NDP and with the Conservatives winning a majority.

With Cananda having moved into a budget surplus this year, the policy of borrowing to spend on infrastructure seems particularly well-timed. Might there be a lesson here for the UK in 2020?

The NDP didn’t have this policy, and some are arguing that this, and a policy to scrap the purchase of some new jet fighters, placed the Liberals to the left of the NDP. The Guardian live feed at 9.49 sees this argument played out in our Labour Party.

I hope we will hear over the next few days from people on the ground as to how these issues played out. Was “austerity” an issue any longer now that the budget was in surplus? What other lessons are there to learn?

There is more from the BBC on this result here.

Congratulations to #TeamTrudeau from all of us at Liberal Democrat Voice towers.

The thumbnail image advertising this post at the top of our home page is by Canadian Pacific from Flickr CCL.

* Joe Otten was the candidate for Sheffield Heeley in June 2017 and Doncaster North in December 2019 and is a councillor in Sheffield.