Dalrymple took to the pages of the Globe and Mail yesterday to explain the outcome of the British election:

It had long been known that Mr. Brown, a former chancellor of the exchequer, was happier with a table of figures than with a roomful of people, but unfortunately nerdishness is not a guarantee of competence. On the contrary, he has presided over what threatens to be the greatest economic disaster in British history, caused largely by his own unfathomable incapacity.

….

You might have supposed, therefore, that the government was a target that no opposition could miss. But David Cameron, the leader of that opposition, contrived to do so. This was because he so self-evidently believed in nothing but office and could therefore criticize the government from no reasonably consistent standpoint.