If politics were a rational enterprise, an opposition leader whose party won the popular vote and increased its seats in the Commons by 20 per cent, while reducing the governing party to a minority, would be hailed, if not as a hero, at least as a significant achiever.

But politics, like the stock market, is not a rational endeavour. Achievement is not judged by results alone. It is also measured against expectations.

They say history doesn’t repeat itself, but it makes a pretty good stab at it when it comes to the federal Conservative party and its leadership.

In 1966, 13 years before Andrew Scheer was born, John Diefenbaker was humiliated and dumped from the leadership by a party that had been persuaded he could not lead it back to power – a fate that Scheer is struggling to avoid today.

Let’s hope the new 43rd Parliament will not deteriorate into the ugly partisanship that marred the final months of the previous Parliament and that dominated the October election campaign.

Let’s hope that the election outcome has had a sobering effect. Let’s hope there will be more cooperation and less obstruction. Finally, let’s hope the new minority government, surely knowing its survival depends on it, will be more flexible than its majority predecessor and more disposed to move quickly on current issues and overdue reforms.

Andrew Scheer is never going to be prime minister of Canada.

And his Conservative party is never going to be closer to power than it is today – a strong opposition in a minority Parliament – until it recognizes that the country is changing. A political party that cannot adapt to change faces a bleak future.