The Economist on Stephen Harper

The current version of The Economist has an article on Stephen Harper's minority government:

In freakishly warm weather, Stephen Harper met the press earlier this month in the snow-free gardens of his official residence to discuss his new-found commitment to the environment. He candidly admitted that his Conservative minority government had let the public down when it presented a climate-change plan whose main targets were set 50 years in the future, and vowed to do better. He promptly named a new environment minister with a reputation as a political pitbull.

A different politician might have chosen a different backdrop for this confession of failure. But as Canadians have learned from watching Mr Harper over the past year, their young prime minister is not a man to dodge realities, however unpleasant. On issues ranging from revisiting same-sex marriage to ending favourable tax treatment for business entities known as income trusts he has followed his instincts rather than the opinion polls.

It has worked. Instead of falling within months, as Canada's liberal punditocracy had predicted, Mr Harper has become an increasingly assured performer. The talk in Ottawa now is that, despite commanding just 125 of the 308 seats in the House of Commons, his government may even manage to carry on until 2008.

The article isn't totally a tongue-bath for Mr. Harper, although it's rather odd to read this sort of thing here. The Economist, like so many other British publications, has been moving away from traditional free market policies (most of the others weren't all that much in favour of free markets to start with, but they've gotten worse lately), so it's almost a surprise to see positive comments about the current prime minister from that side of the pond.