Much of the hallway chatter at a summer Liberal retreat that ended Thursday revolved around shedding the government's minority status - and why that would be good for Canada.
Though he cautioned MPs to avoid sounding "cocky," Prime Minister Paul Martin took the opportunity at a closing news conference to sing the praises of majority - Liberal - government.
"Obviously with a majority government it's much easier to fulfil an agenda," he said after the four-day meeting.
It's no great surprise to see the Liberals testing the boundaries of their current popularity - the polling numbers seem to have stabilized, and it's easy to see how the Libs would want to try to add the extra couple of points to move into majority territory.
But there's going to be an awfully fine line to walk in order to make the case. After all, the bulk of recent Lib policy (most notably Budget '05) was put together in a minority situation: in order to claim that minority government doesn't work, it seems to me that the Liberals would have to try to point to what they'd rather have done with the budget in comparison to what they did do. And that'll leave them facing serious attacks from both sides.
If the Liberals try to argue that they should have been able to pass their attempted corporate tax cut, that'll have the effect of bleeding centre-left support to the NDP. Likewise, any claim that they'd rather have veered left would give the Cons an advantage with fiscal minimalists.
Moreover, the great branding fight after the ultimately-popular budget was over which party could take the most credit for it. If the Liberals start disclaiming responsibility for parts of the budget, or at least implying that they'd prefer to have done otherwise, that gives the NDP a great chance to get on the right side of the apple-cart argument.
The other possibility would be for the Libs to try to claim that the budget roughly approximates what they'd have done anyway. But given how public the negotiations were with the NDP, as well as the Libs' stated intention of reintroducing tax cuts later, that's a claim that would be shot down in a second - and likely to the benefit of the NDP.
So what if the fall session turns into a sniping match where nothing gets done? Even that could backfire on the Liberals, particularly if the NDP continues its full-court press for cooperation. If the governing party can't get anything done despite having a relatively cooperative partner for negotiations, that'll speak to the Liberals' competence in government as well as to the desirability of a minority. The effect would be a highly conflicted mix of factors: some voters might lean toward a Con majority to try to get both the majority factor and a change, others might reward Layton for continuing to be the leader who acts most like he's willing to govern by consensus, and the Liberal outcome would be at best uncertain.
With that said, the NDP shouldn't do much to try to counterbalance the Libs' current bravado. I stand by my position that the best situation for the NDP is to take a substantial chunk of the opposition benches away from the Cons to position itself as one of the two main contenders next time out. That'll be much easier if the Liberals appear to have an easy win than if there's a genuine threat of Harper moving into 24 Sussex. And if the majority talk inspires an angry response from Harper to sink the Cons even further, then all the better for the Dippers.
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