27 SEPTEMBER 2008, Page 28

Canada’s example

Sir: John Kampfner (Diary, 20 September) relates an anecdote suggesting the Labour party might suffer the same fate as Canada’s Conservatives in the early 1980s, which dropped in one election from ruling the nation to holding just two seats. The sentiment’s right, but the date wrong. The election took place in 1993; the Tories (our colonial fetishes even extend to your political diminutives) lost all but two of 151 seats. Today the Conservatives are back in power in Canada. It took just over a decade. So it goes.

Linsey McGoey

Oxford