Stephen Harper: master manipulator | Nick Davies

Despite several scandals worthy of Watergate over the past decade, Stephen Harper could win a fourth Canadian election next week. Can the master manipulator work his dark magic? By Nick Davies

An unkind cartoon this summer showed the Canadian prime minister, Stephen Harper, kneeling before the statue of another politician, asking: “What now, O Great One?” That in itself would not be unkind. The punchline is that the statue is clearly labelled as that of Richard Nixon, famed above all for his attempts to corrupt democracy.

As Harper tries for a fourth term in office at the Canadian federal election next week, he is trailed by an extraordinarily long list of allegations. In the Watergate scandal, all the president’s men were accused primarily of breaking the law to get Nixon a second term in the White House. In Canada, some of the prime minister’s men and women have been accused not simply of cheating to win elections but of conspiring to jam the machinery of democratic government.

Related: Canada election 2015: a guide to the parties, polls and electoral system

Harper has perfected the tactics of taking and holding power – in spite of the demands of democracy

Harper is a loner – a suburban boy who went trainspotting with his dad; whose asthma stopped him playing ice hockey

Harper has his roots in the same ideological soil as Thatcher and Reagan: cutting tax and rolling back the state

Soon after taking power in 2006, Harper started to clamp down on research into global warming

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