Dan O'Hagan on Paul Wells

[Dan O'Hagan]

Thanks for this thoughtful piece on a large topic. One doesn’t have to agree on everything in the piece to appreciate that.

Dion is a thoughtful person – perhaps not the most exciting speaker, and perhaps not the most skillful politician. And that’s not necessarily a criticism of him as a person. He may be in the right place at a difficult time.

Your switch from big picture thinking to Polish politics and the use of division and resentment is a big jarring - and the suggestion that, even in Canada, someone will eventually conclude that “I don’t have the luxury of fighting fair”. As we have seen, it has already happened in Manitoba. We can be grateful that it didn't work – and that the winner had the good grace to note that optimism and unity won over attempts to divide, without describing the content of that attempt. The best way to overcome this kind of low behaviour is to overcome it, with grace, and move on.

As with the people at the Warsaw Conference, we can only hope that our good luck continues to hold. But we need to be aware that it might not.