I really have little joy of seeing the Tories throw away their election through arrogance, but I loathe the idea of a coalition under any banner.
The problem I have with the concept of a coalition government comes specifically from what I read and listened to from my short time in Israel, and the time I continued to pay attention to their politics since.
Israel is also a parliamentary democracy which is not much unlike our own, except that the President is very much like our own Governor General in terms of role, power and entry. However, being in the eternal land of yahoos, Israel has an extensive list of parties for their small country. Some vary between policy lines, while others vary between ethnicity and how hard they get for their monothesic idol. As a result, there are much more than four or five parties on the election roll at any given time. You may have heard of some parties including Likuid, who resemble our Tories, the newish Kadima party who seems to have a liberal taste to them and the Labour who are led by someone as bald and left as Mr Layton.
Then add all the fringe parties and say goodbye to any chance of a parliamentary majority.
So what you gain are multiple parties of multiple flags under a coalition which, who have very important interests that must be looked after. Otherwise, they pull the plug and you lose the majority, something which has been mandatory for sometime to be seen as capable of forming parliament.
They seem to try to accomplish many many things, but in reality, they sneak some pretty sneaky stuff along with all the good, many more times resulting in multiple steps backwards. For example, their last government was elected with the mandate to slowly pull out of the West Bank.
The amount of settlements has instead risen with more and more crazies habiting and barricading themselves within..
I see something like this happening in relation to the economy - a fragmented pork-barrel approach to fixing the shit we're along in when only a unified response can do.
I cannot see a superintelligent, yet polite and timid 'leader', a separatist and a man who'd promise his own mother for political gain going well as a coalition.
I also would hate to see this as a precedent for the fragmentation of parties and the increased reliance on coalitions. I hope this one never happens.
However at this point, we're just all along for the ride. And from where I sit, being on an island on the west coast in the far backwater is like being on the backseat of this rollercoaster. If the thing falls apart, there will be plenty of time to jump and hope I brought a parachute.
Well, if it's any comfort, remember three things:
1 - The chances of a new political party splintering off are slim.
Most Canadians seeking political power in this country tend to just gravitate to the existing parties. Anyone thinking of setting up a new party realizes that there are phenomenal hurdles to introducing a new national - or even regional - party and so the temptation is far lower here. Not a single party besides the Bloc has been successfully created that achieved anything at the federal level since the NDP back in the 60's.
Everyone remembers the vast wilderness that the old PC party found itself in for over a decade. And no one looking to simply start an alternative to our existing parties wants a repeat of that.
Yes, the Reform and Green parties made a showing, but in the end I consider those both failures. The Bloc on the other hand not only has a burning ideological reason to live, but they have successfully reinvented themselves multiple times, earning solid victories for their constituents. Or, more succinctly: Whatever else you might think of them, the Bloc gets results. This is why they have survived. No other political party - not even the NDP, really - has done this.
Finally, our geography should not in fact be overlooked. The barriers created by Canada's sheer size as compared to a much smaller state like Israel should not be underestimated. In Israel, not only can a small party be started up with lesser financial wherewithal, but it is also much easier to build a new and supposedly 'national' party with the support of a small close-knit local group. Canada's regional differences make it nearly impossible to build a national party out of anything but the vaguest premises.
The greatest danger probably is from new regional parties, but again, the Bloc is not a true example to follow here. Other regions don't have nearly the burning ideological drive. Alberta or BC threatening to separate sounds more like comedic hysterics then a serious threat (even if it
was a serious threat), and eventually anyone involved in such a party would be tired of being frozen out of power - if they even managed to get off the ground at all.
2 - Canada is facing an all-time nadir of leadership.
In stark contrast to the Americans who may have just elected their most able and intelligent leader in decades, we are faced with a crisis of leadership that may be unprecedented in it's dismal nature. I have racked my brains, and not once in the past century can I think of a time when Canada was faced with a worse selection of federal leaders. I find it hilariously ironic that the best party leader in Ottawa right now may in fact be
Gilles Duceppe (I posted about that a while back, some of you may recall).
At this point, people like Paul Martin or Joe Clark look like GODS, because for all their ground-level tactical faults, they knew what a Prime Minster should look like and how one should behave. They knew and empathised with Canada and it's problems and knew well how to talk to the people of this country. They knew what it meant to be a Statesman. Now? We have a miserable little pissant who puts his petty two-dollar revenge before the needs of the thirty plus million people he's supposed to lead, a hopeless academic with all the people skills of a dead turbot, a beau-geste idiot who forever wants to play Don Quixote, and a cunning opportunist playing the other three to his own endless advantage.
3 - Canada has the lowest party or ideological loyalty of any democratic nation on the planet.
In a way it's ancillary to the first point, but it also stands on it's own. New parties need a burning ideological reason to be created, but in Canada the desire for that is lower than almost anywhere else on the planet (which is something I adore about us). Remember the
Constitution BNA Act: It doesn't mention a damn thing about Life, Liberty, or the Pursuit of [Individual] Happiness, no it clearly states a desire for Peace, Order, and Good Government. And that still hold true today. All our parties are identical: They're all centrists. The labels are just window dressing. No party rises to anything in Canada without being blandly middle of the road.
And by god, if Canada is going to be the world's greatest embodiment of hopeless mediocrity, then at least we get the occasional
benefit of that too. Now and again, mediocrity cuts both ways (see: our banking sector, right now).
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I think that for a new party to really go anywhere in this country, the Liberals would have to be in a very bad place for a very long time. They would have to post consecutive election showings WORSE than their last, and under at least three separate leaders. Even then, it still probably wouldn't happen.
