GANATSEKWYAGON, ON. OCT 7, 2019, 12:30 AM ET. According to CBC Poll Tracker analyst Éric Grenier, as updated on October 6, 2019 at 11:34 AM ET : “Though the gap remains insignificant, the Liberals have moved ahead of the Conservatives in the national polling average for the first time since February.”

(And on the same day Liberals had been a little ahead of Conservatives for three straight days on the Nanos “Nightly Tracking, three day rolling average” : 36—34, 36—33, 37—33. Oh and btw : “Trudeau opens eight point advantage on Scheer as preferred Prime Minister.”)

Tonight will be the English-language debate with the leaders of all “six main political parties,”onstage at the Canadian Museum of History in Gatineau, Quebec (across the Ottawa River from Parliament Hill), and broadcast live across the country on TV, 8-10 PM AT/ 7—9 PM ET/5—7 PM MT/4-6 PM PT.

The big question in our minds right now : Is this just the beginning of a surge in the last two weeks of the October 21 Canadian federal election campaign, that will end with at least a bare majority of seats in the House for the Trudeau Liberals after all?

Will a Liberal majority be the ultimate big surprise that has been quietly cooking in the minds of undecided voters in various (and even surprising?) parts of the true north, strong and free?

Will the October 7 debate shed any further light here? Maybe, maybe not. Stay tuned.

CODA 1. Meanwhile, back across the North Atlantic Squadron : are the Bojo Brexotics destined to win in the end?

Reading William Davies and Ferdinand Mount on UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson (“Bojo”) in a recent edition of the London Review of Books gave us a largely negative view of the man :

• “Johnson has no ideology and no philosophy. It isn’t even clear he has ambition, beyond making a point of having got where he’s got. His residence in 10 Downing Street represents a personal triumph, which he will want to prolong as long as possible, by whatever means possible.” (Davies).
• “Who first implanted the obsessive belief that breaking out of the prison house of Brussels was our only possible salvation? If Enoch Powell had never existed, I very much doubt that Boris Johnson would be where he is today.” (Mount – also the source of that elegant term “Brexotics”, as in : “This ominous preening [of Enoch Powell in days now long gone by] is a feature of the rhetoric of many a contemporary Brexotic”!)

On the other hand, the most recent installment of the weekly “Dateline London” on BBC TV offered a more positive assessment of UK PM Johnson. In particular (as best we can remember) Thomas Kielinger – the “German journalist, political commentator and author, who for a long time used to be London correspondent for Die Welt” – suggested Bojo is actually quite popular in the UK today (as he was as Mayor of London some years ago?). And that is partly because he does in fact have “a magnetic personality.”

Mr. Kielinger (and at least one other Dateline Londoner?) also seemed to imply that PM Johnson might well do well in the coming UK election almost everyone now seems to think inevitable as the major next step in “Wither Brexit.” (With the Bojo Conservatives on one side and some kind of “Remain Coalition” of Labour, Liberal Democrats, Scottish Nationals etc on the other?)

Recent apparently informed talk on the subject we hear in Toronto bars has also been saying that some quite serious form of Brexit is now inevitable. But of course stay tuned here as well. As William Davies tells us : “Before very long, we will be witnessing an electoral showdown … These are strange and unpredictable forms of authority: only a fool would claim to know which way it will go.”

CODA 2. Trump Impeachorama .. or just how crazy can current US politics get ????

In their efforts to blunt the Democrats’ Impeachment Inquiry in the US House of Representatives what would still seem to be the Republican Party mainstream now seems to be saying that Donald Trump did nothing wrong or out of the ordinary in his crypto-gangster phone call, urging the president of the Ukraine to investigate Trump’s US domestic political rival Joe Biden and his son.

As best we can make out right now, this means the new Trump Impeachorama is probably going to be a very bloody (figuratively at least) and long-lasting ordeal, that may or may not do much to help defeat the Trump Republicans in the 2020 elections. While President Trump continues to do so much to weaken what remains of the benign and constructive influence of democracy in America around the world. And of course again stay tuned here as well. We do live in troubled times, on many fronts. (Without even mentioning the struggles in Hong Kong and how they have compromised the 70th anniversary of the Peoples’ Republic of China, and all its genuine and even breathtaking strides ahead – or, for that matter, Donald Trump’s wild and crazy new trade war with China today! Or the troubles that the Canada having an federal election this October 21 has recently been having with the government of China too …)