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Globe and Mail Article
The looming Conservative-separatist-socialist coalition
Andrew Steele, today at 12:49 PM EDT
A few days ago, I wrote about the potential for the NDP to support the Conservatives in the face of potential losses to a resurgent Liberal Party.
That shift made it exceedingly difficult to see how the Grits would engineer a fall election, as Jack Layton's campaign director was testing the waters for voting to sustain the Conservatives in power.
Today, the chances of a fall election fell further, and are now much closer to zero than 50 per cent.
The reason is the latest CROP poll from Quebec:
LPC - 37
BQ - 31
Cons - 15
NDP -12
For the first time since the Gomery inquiry, the Liberals are leading in Quebec, and by a healthy margin.
The Bloc is not quite in the position of the NDP, which stands to lose as many as half its seats were an election called today.
Gilles Duceppe can probably count on winning the lion's share of the ten Conservative seats that Stephen Harper immolated with his “separatist†rhetoric and general anti-Quebec disposition in the coalition crisis. He can also count on the routine super-majorities Liberals rack up in the West Island of Montreal to dilute the new Grit lead and leave a large number of seats within reach.
But certainly the BQ is far less enthusiastic for an election than they were a few days ago. Caucus members - who put their seats at risk in any election - are notoriously unsupportive of defeating the government, and this poll will only exacerbate that trend.
As a result, it is entirely possible the Liberals will be unable to engineer an election anytime in the spring or fall. If that's the case, we won't see an election until a time of the Harper government's choosing, with current thinking landing at after the Vancouver Olympics in 2010.
The reason is the current composition of the House of Commons. The Conservatives only need one of the three opposition parties to abstain - let alone vote with the government - to sustain confidence, ensure supply or pass bills.
For the Bloc, who are quite open about their willingness to vote in any way that furthers Quebec's interests, open or tacit support of the Conservatives is relatively easy. As a party whose aim is to withdraw from Canada, withdrawing from voting in the Canadian parliament is hardly a difficult sell to the membership.
For the NDP, which spent the last three years vilifying any votes by Liberals that sustained the government as ideological treason, voting with the Conservatives will be a more damaging decision.
There is a theory that the first time the NDP votes with the Conservatives, there will be a heavy price. But the price of further votes is built into it, and by the time a year or more passes, outrage and any electoral penalty for voting with the Conservatives will have evaporated.
However, the NDP leadership would certainly prefer to avoid testing that scenario, especially given Jack Layton's wobbly place at the top of the party. Dawn Black, who represented the NDP in the coalition negotiations with the Liberals, has left to run provincially in BC, taking away one of Layton's key allies and a defender of how he handled himself in that crisis.
Chantal Hebert writes today about the rabid opposition of the NDP grassroots to any preservation of the government by Layton, and that the cost of such support would potentially be his job.
But with the Bloc now as fearful of an election against Ignatieff as the NDP and the Conservatives, the electoral math changes again.
There is an understanding among the NDP and Conservative leadership that pantomime spats between them actually help both parties beat Liberals.
Harper must recognize that forcing the NDP to sustain his government is self-defeating; a divided NDP will allow the Liberals to consolidate more centre-left votes and potentially defeat Conservative incumbents in Ontario and the Maritimes. The Lower Mainland of B.C. is one of the few places where the NDP and Conservatives go head-to-head, but even there the Liberals remain a threat to come up the middle if the NDP vote falters.
Instead, the Conservatives can help maintain a healthy NDP protest vote (and a split on the centre-left) by finding ways to get the Bloc to abstain.
Abstentions by the BQ cost Duceppe's party nothing, allow the NDP to maintain its symbolic opposition to the Conservatives and keep the Conservatives in power, while freeing all three of those parties from losing seats against a resurgent Liberal Party in a sudden election.
The fact is that the renewed vigour of the Liberals has created a new majority coalition in the House of Commons: a Conservative-Separatist-Socialist coalition that will almost definitely secretly conspire to keep themselves in office for another year.
Mere months after decrying the Liberal-Separatist-Socialist Coalition, it's impossible for any of the three coalition party leaders to admit their implied understanding.
But the joy of Parliament is that every vote is public.
And over the next year, if conditions maintain themselves, we will see countless times when the government is sustained through the tacit or explicit support of one or both of the BQ or NDP, thanks to either abstention or sustaining votes.
The looming Conservative-separatist-socialist coalition
Andrew Steele, today at 12:49 PM EDT
A few days ago, I wrote about the potential for the NDP to support the Conservatives in the face of potential losses to a resurgent Liberal Party.
That shift made it exceedingly difficult to see how the Grits would engineer a fall election, as Jack Layton's campaign director was testing the waters for voting to sustain the Conservatives in power.
Today, the chances of a fall election fell further, and are now much closer to zero than 50 per cent.
The reason is the latest CROP poll from Quebec:
LPC - 37
BQ - 31
Cons - 15
NDP -12
For the first time since the Gomery inquiry, the Liberals are leading in Quebec, and by a healthy margin.
The Bloc is not quite in the position of the NDP, which stands to lose as many as half its seats were an election called today.
Gilles Duceppe can probably count on winning the lion's share of the ten Conservative seats that Stephen Harper immolated with his “separatist†rhetoric and general anti-Quebec disposition in the coalition crisis. He can also count on the routine super-majorities Liberals rack up in the West Island of Montreal to dilute the new Grit lead and leave a large number of seats within reach.
But certainly the BQ is far less enthusiastic for an election than they were a few days ago. Caucus members - who put their seats at risk in any election - are notoriously unsupportive of defeating the government, and this poll will only exacerbate that trend.
As a result, it is entirely possible the Liberals will be unable to engineer an election anytime in the spring or fall. If that's the case, we won't see an election until a time of the Harper government's choosing, with current thinking landing at after the Vancouver Olympics in 2010.
The reason is the current composition of the House of Commons. The Conservatives only need one of the three opposition parties to abstain - let alone vote with the government - to sustain confidence, ensure supply or pass bills.
For the Bloc, who are quite open about their willingness to vote in any way that furthers Quebec's interests, open or tacit support of the Conservatives is relatively easy. As a party whose aim is to withdraw from Canada, withdrawing from voting in the Canadian parliament is hardly a difficult sell to the membership.
For the NDP, which spent the last three years vilifying any votes by Liberals that sustained the government as ideological treason, voting with the Conservatives will be a more damaging decision.
There is a theory that the first time the NDP votes with the Conservatives, there will be a heavy price. But the price of further votes is built into it, and by the time a year or more passes, outrage and any electoral penalty for voting with the Conservatives will have evaporated.
However, the NDP leadership would certainly prefer to avoid testing that scenario, especially given Jack Layton's wobbly place at the top of the party. Dawn Black, who represented the NDP in the coalition negotiations with the Liberals, has left to run provincially in BC, taking away one of Layton's key allies and a defender of how he handled himself in that crisis.
Chantal Hebert writes today about the rabid opposition of the NDP grassroots to any preservation of the government by Layton, and that the cost of such support would potentially be his job.
But with the Bloc now as fearful of an election against Ignatieff as the NDP and the Conservatives, the electoral math changes again.
There is an understanding among the NDP and Conservative leadership that pantomime spats between them actually help both parties beat Liberals.
Harper must recognize that forcing the NDP to sustain his government is self-defeating; a divided NDP will allow the Liberals to consolidate more centre-left votes and potentially defeat Conservative incumbents in Ontario and the Maritimes. The Lower Mainland of B.C. is one of the few places where the NDP and Conservatives go head-to-head, but even there the Liberals remain a threat to come up the middle if the NDP vote falters.
Instead, the Conservatives can help maintain a healthy NDP protest vote (and a split on the centre-left) by finding ways to get the Bloc to abstain.
Abstentions by the BQ cost Duceppe's party nothing, allow the NDP to maintain its symbolic opposition to the Conservatives and keep the Conservatives in power, while freeing all three of those parties from losing seats against a resurgent Liberal Party in a sudden election.
The fact is that the renewed vigour of the Liberals has created a new majority coalition in the House of Commons: a Conservative-Separatist-Socialist coalition that will almost definitely secretly conspire to keep themselves in office for another year.
Mere months after decrying the Liberal-Separatist-Socialist Coalition, it's impossible for any of the three coalition party leaders to admit their implied understanding.
But the joy of Parliament is that every vote is public.
And over the next year, if conditions maintain themselves, we will see countless times when the government is sustained through the tacit or explicit support of one or both of the BQ or NDP, thanks to either abstention or sustaining votes.
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