Thomas Mulcair, leader of the federal NDP, recently reminded us that he’s open to a coalition with the Liberals. Liberal leader Justin Trudeau, in turn, reminded Mulcair where he could stick his coalition.
The idea of a “progressive” coalition is not new. In 2008, Mulcair was part of the NDP team that proposed uniting the Liberals, NDP, and Bloc under a single “progressive” banner. That failed. Since then, it hasn’t suddenly become a good idea.
It’s not hard to predict that the next election will see a split vote among the non-Conservative voters. That vote splitting might be the reason for another Conservative government. However, the only thing the Liberals have in common with the NDP is their appeal to ABC voters: Anything But Conservative, that is. When one discusses politics in Canada, it’s important to remember that we can’t speak strictly of left and right, but left, right and centre.
For years, the Liberals held that centre position on the political spectrum, if only in campaigns. Realistically, though, no party can run a country entirely on “centrist” policies. Things were a little “lefter” under Trudeau and “righter” under Chretien. Generally speaking, the Liberals were balanced by the NDP on the left and the Conservatives (whichever banner they operated under at the time) on the right.
The Mulcair that proposed this union is the same Mulcair that had nothing positive to say about the Liberals in an interview last year. Mulcair lambasted the Liberals’ past, saying their history speaks for itself. He’s reassured the Canadian voter that he is planning to run attack ads on Justin Trudeau. While he admitted he didn’t know Trudeau well, he refused to even use his name. And yes, Trudeau is the same guy that paraphrased the late NDP Leader Jack Layton’s dying words to make a partisan jab at the “negative, divisive party of Tom Mulcair.” Could there be a more perfect union?
The Liberals and the NDP hold similar positions on a few issues, but ultimately are based on different ideologies and different history. A coalition of the NDP and the Liberals might make short-term electoral sense, but imagining it trying to govern gives me the shivers much worse than another Harper majority.