Vote For Me Peasants.

Like most people I am glued to the Canadian election which will deliver pretty much the same result as the last few.

Even so the hilarious implosion of the Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff is fun to behold. Essentially he lived his entire adult life outside of Canada until he swanned in a few years ago to be anointed Liberal leader and PM in waiting. Footage of him describing himself in those years as "an American" (despite having denied doing so) is destroying his campaign.

Ignatieff is best known here as one of the talking heads who used to appear on chin stroking fests like the Late Show so he is sort of the equivalent of Tom Paulin or Johann Hari.

As you can imagine Canadians aren't impressed.

The only parallel I can think of is the Australian monarchy referendum in which similar celebrity intellectuals- Germaine Greer, Geoffrey Robinson etc- flew in to tell Australians that they shouldn't be ruled by people with no connection to Australia and then flew out.

In short Ignatieff is probably a perfectly nice man, but to have picked him as leader suggests that despite the many protestations to the contrary intellectuals really don't get the notion of patriotism.