Liberals having a rebirth in their own right

We interrupt our regular Tory programming to bring you this bulletin from the other side of the partisan divide.

We promise to resume the death watch — and resurrection story — as rival Progressive Conservative saviours emerge to lead the party faithful from the political wilderness to the promised land at Queen’s Park.

But meanwhile, in other news: The governing Liberals are showing surprising signs of life after their own near-death experience — a rebirth in their own right.

While the Tories are hard at work stabbing each other in the back, Ontario’s Liberals have been busy with party unity. Their birthright.

At their weekend pre-election convention, a gathering of Liberal disciples displayed the discipline of power. Delegates didn’t just cheer Premier Kathleen Wynne’s pep talk, they demonstrated something you won’t find in the coming PC leadership race: Not just party unity, but unity of purpose.

Never mind fidelity to their leader through thick and thin, for Wynne’s personal unpopularity has assuredly tested their loyalty. While taking their chances on personality, they are putting their money on policy.

That’s why the Liberals are focusing, for now, on their party’s increasingly popular policies rather than the personalities in the PC party. Notably on the economy.

“The rich are getting richer while too many people get left behind,” Wynne cautioned Liberal partisans.

Beyond that bromide, she got to the larger point: “It’s not about who we’re fighting against. It’s about who we’re fighting for.”

And what the Liberals are fighting with.

As various rivals vicariously blow up the PC election platform — axing their carbon tax and possibly divesting themselves of sexual diversity — the Liberals are going all-in on their own policy promises: A $15 minimum wage, free pharmacare up to age 25, free tuition for most college students, hydro rate reductions and child-care increases, with more to come.

And a bifurcated battle cry from the premier that goes something like this: Yes, times have been good these last few years, with the best economic growth in the West and the lowest unemployment in recent memory, not to mention a balanced budget. But uneven growth feels unfair, producing prosperity and precarity.

Amid economic anxiety, Liberals also pondered the political uncertainty this weekend, wondering whether the Tory disarray and disunity are merely temporary.

The PCs have unburdened themselves of the unbearable lightness of being Patrick Brown’s party — their leader having been publicly disgraced and decapitated last month.

Now, with the Tories determined — or predestined — to reincarnate themselves with Caroline Mulroney, Christine Elliott, or Doug Ford at the helm, are the Liberals not feeling nostalgia for Brown?

Given the volatility and unpredictability in public opinion, Wynne’s party knows it is fighting an uphill battle.

The premier said as much to reporters later, and her strategists reminded supporters of that reality the next day.

Wynne had been banking on Brown as a weak campaigner who would become less popular the more people saw of him. But that doesn’t mean she must start from scratch. Liberal research never yielded much beyond the obvious about her previous opponent — that women in focus groups never warmed up to him, to put it politely — because most voters knew so little about Brown to begin with.

Instead, the premier’s strategists spent more time developing policy ideas that would stand the test of time. By contrast, we shall see how long the PC platform lasts.

Rival leadership candidates are talking about dismantling its key plank — a carbon tax (conforming to federal law) that would, in turn, bankroll promised tax cuts and other election sweeteners.

As bad as Brown was, his Tory team came up with a winning platform by essentially promising to perpetuate the most popular Liberal policies.

Under Brown, the platform amounted to, “We’ll take it over from here.” Post-Brown, the PC promise may well be, “We’ll take it all apart from here.” Under Ford, watch for a policy of disruption leading to, “We’ll blow it all apart — including ourselves.”

Wynne gave her party a preview of what to expect if Ford Nation takes over the province’s PCs.

“We will not let the poisonous politics of division and hate take hold in Ontario,” she intoned, perhaps inspired by Donald Trump.

“Four more years,” Liberal activists chanted back at her in a moment of irrational exuberance.

That’s probably not a wise or winning rallying cry for Wynne, given that voters are suffering from dynasty fatigue after 14 years of uninterrupted Liberal government — the last five under her premiership. The bigger question for party activists this weekend was whether they will be seen as promising “four more years” of the same, or proffering something different — and better.

It’s a question the Tories will also have to answer for voters if they ever get their act — and platform — together. And, lest we forget, the New Democrats — not to mention the forgotten Greens.