Ottawa

‘Get a better messenger’

Michael Ignatieff offers his parting words to the Globe.

I think we opened up the breach in a way against Harper and against what he stands for, and someone else surged through and benefited, and at that point maybe the attack ads had an impact on my capacity to capitalize on a longing for change. There was a longing for change that I think we played an honourable part in creating, but we couldn’t benefit because someone else surged through. Good luck to him. And then what happened, of course, is, as the NDP surged through, the blue tide began to rise in counterbalance and we got squeezed in between.

I’m conscious, I’m always conscious, that a leader has to take responsibility. And I take responsibility fully for anything we failed to do. But I think it was a pretty complicated story and I don’t actually think this election was a referendum on me.

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