A Risky Play
The implications of the Dion-May accord are easy to see - it's a risky political play. I just hope Dion has the guts to follow it through to its logical conclusion. He could be acting here on a stroke of brilliace. It may not work, but at this point, he has very little to lose. If an election were held today, he'd lose pretty badly, and the Liberal party is in no mood to tolerate a loss with both Ignatieff and Rae still hoping to lead the party. He may survive a leadership vote, but he'd probably rather just avoid it altogether. And the only way to do that is to become prime minister. So it makes sense for him to make a risky play; again, I just hope he makes it.
The play I'm talking about is, of course, uniting the left. Coyne has already outlined the idea better than I could. A united left, with candidates of the Liberals, Greens and possibly the NDP agreeing not to run against each other, but against the Conservatives, similar to the arrangement Mackenzie King had with the Progressives in 1926. In many ridings, Liberals and Progressives did not face each other, and many ran as Liberal-Progressives, because they shared a common enemy - Arthur Meighen's Tories. It worked then, and it could work now. Dion wouldn't be crazy for trying, he'd just be trying to hold onto his job.
Labels: dion
posted by Ryan Ringer @ 4/13/2007 09:04:00 p.m.
2 comments
2 Comments:
Except Ryan, from most of the posts I having reading, the target isn't the Harper cons, it's the NDP, which is what Coyne was saying. Funny way to beat the Cons by trying to destroy the left wing of the political sphere.
The cons are laughing all the way to a majority govt, as Dion fiddles behind the scenes by rigging ridings.
I will believe all the unit the left guff, when I see them not targeting NDP held ridings, because aren't they progressives.
Thanks for the relatively honest post.
I think a formal coalition of anti-Tory parties is a definite possibility. If such a coalition did happen, they'd most certainly institute electoral reforms, making such coalitions commonplace on the federal scene. Personally, that's what I'd really like to see.
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