Jeffrey Simpson in today's Globe & Mail reflects on the inability of the Tories and Liberals to move from minority to majority territory:
"Four blocks shape Canadian politics. The blocks are hard to move. Until one of them does, the shape of Canadian politics won't change … Canadians now tell pollsters that they prefer majority government. Until Canadians knock off a chunk of one of these four political blocks, however, there will be no majority."
A true commentary, but perhaps it – and many others – misses the point.
Right now we have a minority government headed by a rightwing leader and supported by the Liberals in Parliament. This government has been in power for several years now, and has survived everything thrown at it (including an almost successful formal Coalition government of the LPC and NDP, with a signed 18-month long no-confidence truce with the Bloc).
Take a step back, and think about it.
The Tories do not need a majority to govern. They only need a majority to fully implement their radical, right wing, destroy the power of the federal government ideology.
Until they get a majority, they can keep implementing little bits of their policies, mostly in a subterranean fashion.
And they keep the Liberals out in the wilderness, twisting in the wind and gradually wasting away through lack of leadership and insight.
Not a bad deal for the Tories.
And not a bad deal for most Canadians, who time after time have voted in a collective fashion that elects a minority Tory government and keeps the Liberals and Dippers at bay.
What does this mean for Canada?
Two things. Firstly, the name of the game is for the Tories or the Liberals to win one more seat than the other party, and so have a legal and political right to attempt to govern as a minority government.
Note that well, Liberals: the fight is over ONE MORE SEAT than the other major party. Not over a majority. Not over having more votes in more areas of the country than we've had in the past. Not over a 308-riding strategy.
Just over ONE MORE SEAT.
Harper gets it.
That's why he exercised all of his political canniness in snookering the new Liberal leader in one on one talks in order to break the Coalition formed by the LPC and NDP. As long as he can keep those two parties from forming a coalition BEFORE THE ELECTION and winning, as a potential coalition government, ONE MORE SEAT than the Tories do, Harper will be Prime Minister and Ignatieff will be writing more books in his spare time.
And that leads me to the other point.
The only way for the Liberals to win ONE MORE SEAT than the Tories, in the foreseeable future, is for the Liberals and the NDP to run as a potential coalition government, with such an agreement entered into before the next election.
If Ignatieff proves yet again that he cannot count, then he won't even think about this requirement, and he will be writing more books while Harper grows old gracefully as Canada's longest serving minority Prime Minister. Ignatieff's lack of realtime political exposure (in the trenches, see the whites of their eyes, cut deals to get things done) effectively blinkers him from seeing this reality.
And so all the good things a coalition government could do for Canadians will not happen.
