A coalition may make perfect sense
Liberals-NDP: Doubts about Trudeau, aura of confidence around Mulcair make the idea palatable
Igather it has now been conclusively established that Tom Mulcair and Justin Trudeau never met at the Irish embassy. Quite why they would have was a bit of a mystery. Neutral ground? A trusted intermediary? Someone with experience of irrational sectarian warfare?
But no, it seems it was all a misunderstanding. When Mulcair said it was there, a year ago, that he had “opened (the) door” to the NDP forming a coalition government with Trudeau’s Liberals after the next election, and that Trudeau, in response, had “slammed the door so hard on my fingers, it wasn’t even funny,” he did not mean that Trudeau was literally there, or had slammed any literal doors. He meant he gave a speech.
Still, if Mulcair’s meaning was not entirely clear, geospatially — mystified Liberal officials on Tuesday denied their leader had ever set foot in the Irish embassy, though it’s possible they were referring to the pub — it’s as clear as day what he’s up to. The NDP leader never misses an opportunity these days to talk up the possibility of coalition government, the better to suggest to wavering left-wing voters that they can vote NDP and still dispose of the hated Conservatives.
For his part, Trudeau never misses an opportunity to dismiss the idea, for much the same reason. The Liberal campaign, like all Liberal campaigns, is heavily predicated on herding fearful lefties into the Big Red Tent, lest they “split the vote” and let the Tories back in. Having jumped well ahead of the NDP in the polls, the Liberals argue they are the best choice between the two to deliver Canada from the scourge of the Harperites — but more important, that a choice must be made. Coalition? Not a chance.
To maintain this stance, Trudeau is obliged to insist, not only that the parties are separated by vast, unbridgeable disagreements over policy — my God, do you realize that these people eat their eggs starting at the little end rather than the big? — but that these would deter him even momentarily from striking a coalition deal, if that was all that stood between him and power. This lovely idea might have been more persuasive, if only to pets and children under four, before last month’s astonishing backflip on carbon pricing, wherein the Liberal leader abruptly jettisoned what had until then been the only plank in his platform.
Of the two, then, Trudeau has the greater credibility problem. True, Mulcair can’t make him agree to a coalition, but neither can he pretend it’s out of the question. Mulcair’s own credibility might be impugned with reference to his previous statements on coalition, when it was his party ahead in the polls and the Liberals behind. (“N.O.,” he told the Huffington Post in 2012. “The ‘no’ is categorical, absolute, irrefutable and non-negotiable. It’s no. End of story. Full stop.”) But we don’t have to believe his word. We just have to analyze his motives.
Of course, it’s always possible that, having used the coalition to persuade NDP-Liberal switchers to stay with his party in the election, Mulcair could abandon them afterward, refusing to join a coalition even when the Grits offered it. In a way, he’d be wise to: the smaller parties rarely come off well out of these things. But if the alternative was to leave the Tories in power, he’d have a party revolt on his hands, and in any case the lure of cabinet seats would prove too great.
All that is clear enough. The more interesting strategic dilemma is Stephen Harper’s. The Conservative leader has used the coalition bogeyman to great success, notably in the last election, and will be tempted to use it again. His argument is one part fraud, one part legitimate.
The fraudulent part is the suggestion that there is something dirty or undemocratic about the other Parliamentary parties, in the event the Conservatives were to win a plurality but not a majority of the seats at the next election, combining forces to form a government in their place. That’s not undemocratic: it’s the way our system works. The only way they could do so, after all, is if between them they controlled a majority of the seats in the House.
The legitimate part, at least for the disaffected centre-right voters to whom the argument is addressed, is this: There is no “safe” Tory-minority option, in which the Conservatives are duly chastened but still the government. If they lose their majority, they lose power — to be replaced, not by the relatively “safe” Liberals, a known quantity at least, but by who knows what kind of coalition, with who knows what kind of policies. “King or Chaos,” meet “Harper or High Water.”
But what worked for him in the past may not work for him in the future. The coalition that attempted to seize power in December 2008 was a uniquely rickety construct. The Liberals had just been reduced to their lowest Parliamentary standing ever, behind a hugely unpopular leader who had just quit; they were not even a majority within their own coalition. The NDP was still viewed as a marginal left-wing boutique; its leader, while well-liked, had never held executive office. And there was that little matter of the Bloc Québécois.
Contrast that with the most probable coalition scenario this time out: a resurgent Liberal party with something like 100 seats (triple their current total), the NDP with 70 or so, the Bloc nowhere to be found. And consider the differences in how the parties and their leaders are perceived. In this case, it is the Liberal leader who is well-liked but untested, and the NDP leader — relatively moderate, a former provincial cabinet minister — who might be regarded as the steadying influence.
Given the doubts about Trudeau’s abilities, and the aura of competence around Mulcair, a coalition might not sound like such a scary proposition to cautious centrists any more. It might even be a plus.