Election day in Ontario in 1985. On the way into a candidate’s campaign headquarters, Liberal Leader David Peterson’s executive assistant was leaving and we stopped to chat. There was no pussy-footing about the situation. “First thing tomorrow morning, you have to arrange a meeting with NDP Leader Bob Rae.” He was a bit taken aback by the bluntness but saw no point in sticking with any denial. We both knew that Frank Miller’s Conservative Party would win a minority government but that the combined Liberal and New Democrat seats could take over the government.
What went without saying in that brief encounter was that it was imperative that the deal be made. If the Peterson Liberals could not remove the Ontario Conservatives from office, we were faced with more decades of Conservative Ontario. It was so serious that long-time Liberal stalwart Bob Nixon headed up the negotiating team. The New Democrats trusted him and did not really know David Peterson.
The point of this story is that until election day the Liberals had never given any credence to a possible deal with the New Democrats. The NDP equally denied that there was any such possibility.
And that is the same to-day. Neither Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau nor New Democratic Leader Thomas Mulcair can give any suggestion of a deal between the two parties before the federal election scheduled for October. They would be wrong to suggest it, foolish to speculate and careless to hint.
Oddly enough, both parties see it as losing votes. The Liberals see it as losing some of the more right-wing Liberal votes to the Tories. They recognize that while they run hard as a centrist party, they need those soft right wing votes that Stephen Harper and his Reformer faction scare off. There are just too many of those voters who would go back to Harper if they thought there was a deal in the air between the Liberals and the New Democrats.
The New Democratic Party has a different problem. They have a solid faction of hard core socialist votes who might sit on their hands rather than support a deal with the devil—in this case those damn Liberals. These people would be sympathetic with Mulcair running a centrist campaign to try to woo left-wing Liberal votes. It is just that with a Liberal/NDP deal in the air, they are likely to stay home.
And that is why you can speculate all you want about a Liberal/NDP deal but nothing will happen until after the election.
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Copyright 2015 © Peter Lowry
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