The rise and rise of Stephen Harper
Richard Adams www.theguardian.com
<p>Charisma-free and charmless, Canada's prime minister Stephen Harper is the very model of a modern political leader</p>
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the Guardian
In Egypt and Tunisia the people overthrew their political elite for a taste of democracy. In Canada, the political elite is doing the reverse: forcing an unwilling populace to troop to the polls for the fourth time in seven years. "Oh God, not another election," wrote one blogger.

Today Stephen Harper's minority Conservative government was brought down by a vote in parliament. There were no massive demonstrations filling Major's Hill Park in Ottawa and so far no Al Jazeera journalists have been "detained". Instead the damage was the result of a very Canadian coup: Harper's government was trapped by parliamentary procedure and defeated in a confidence motion.

So Canada has yet another federal election, a sequel to those held in 2006 and 2008, in which Harper's remodeled Conservative party won a plurality but not a majority in the federal parliament, chipping away at the Liberals in the east while maintaining its solid support in the west.

That's what the polls predict this time too – another victory of sorts for Harper, another weak showing by the Liberals, with the Bloc Quebecois sitting in glacial isolation, all part of the convoluted nature of Canadian politics and its electoral structure. But this time Harper may finally shunt his party over the line into a parliamentary majority, assuming Canadians are tired of the country's Sisyphean election cycle.

If he does, Harper will have done a remarkable thing merely by surviving in power since 2006, in a period when the governments of other western democracies have seen their economies trashed by the crisis of 2008 and its consequences.

Canada escaped the worst of the crisis, thanks to its sensibly regulated banking sector and its natural resources. As a result, Harper just keeps getting lucky, the prototype of the current crop of charisma-free middle managers that dominate leadership in Anglo-Saxon democracies. Harper's wonkmates are Britain's David Cameron, New Zealand's John Key and Australia's Julia Gillard – all of whom are the heads of minority governments and all of whom stress managerial competence. But none of the quartet can deliver a speech worth crossing a road to hear. (To be fair, all four replaced similarly downbeat technocrats as prime minster: Paul Martin in Canada, Gordon Brown in the UK, Helen Clark in New Zealand and Kevin Rudd in Australia.)

Today, though, "Election fever takes hold" according to a headline in the Toronto Star, making a brave bid to enthuse its readers ahead of May's poll.

Much can change in an election campaign, and Harper's government has suffered a mini-scandal that could harm it. But Harper will campaign on economic competence and the absurdity of an opposition coalition including the separatist BQ, while his decision to buy 65 hugely expensive fighter jets from the US may even be mitigated by the Nato-led military action against Libya. The fractured opposition, with Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff going around the country stirring up apathy, is unlikely to construct a coherent case to the electorate for a change at the top.