Tim Murphy, the chief of staff to Prime Minister Paul Martin, will be part of Liberal opposition leader Bill Graham's office, PoliticsWatch has learned.Murphy's appointment was made during a meeting of chiefs of staff on Parliament Hill Wednesday.
It is not clear exactly in what capacity he will serve the new leader of the opposition, but one source said he will be "playing a role."
Let's remember that Murphy was involved in GrewalGate and didn't come out looking exactly squeaky clean in the Ethics Commissioner's report.
This is another development that has some of us wondering.
Murphy staying on in a key position will confirm suspicions that Martin's team is refusing to let go in playing a role in caucus.The news of Murphy's role was met with some bewilderment and eye rolling at the chiefs of staff meeting.
...
There is much speculation about Martin's team of advisors latching on to another leadership candidate.In the final weeks of the campaign La Presse reported that Martin's team would support Canada's ambassador to Washington, Frank McKenna, if Martin lost the election.
But McKenna announced this week he will not be seeking the Liberal leadership.
There are two other possible candidates that people in Ottawa believe some Martin team members could get behind.
Liberal MP Belinda Stronach has given the strongest signal of all possible hopefuls that she is considering jumping in the ring and she has the resources to mount a serious campaign.
There is also former B.C. Liberal cabinet minister Christy Clark, who is considered a possible darkhorse candidate.
While it's true that I've voted NDP in recent years, it's also true that I don't fly anyone's colours. I don't let any party take my vote for granted and I take each election as it comes. So I might be just the kind of voter that the Liberals might want to woo come the next campaign. It may be early in the game but I'm not at all impressed with what I'm seeing.
And the thought of Belinda Stronach as the next Liberal leader makes me laugh uncontrollably. To keep from crying.
I don't really have anything against Belinda but with little experience and not much more credibility she would be a poor choice to lead the Liberal Party comeback. For a party that has been as dominant as the Liberals, they have remarkably slim pickings when it comes to leadership candidates.
I never thought the words would ever cross my lips but, with a talent pool this shallow, it might be (gasp shudder) time to try to woo Sheila Copps out of retirement. (I can't believe I actually said that - it's the lack of sunshine, I swear it's the lack of sunshine.)
What, the en anglais, s'il vous plait exchange didn't win your heart and your vote?
:-)
Seriously, though -- don't discount her ability to win. She has somehow impressed many of my Liberal friends... (I don't understand it either, but I report what I see.)
Ben,
I'm hearing the same. No, I don't get it, either.
Perhaps we should interpret the growing 'Belinda-for-leader' tendency as an attempt to find a sacrificial lamb--an admission on the part of the Liberal party that whoever leads them next will complete the immolation of the party, which they hope will rise from the ashes under [insert credible candidate here].
Belinda is not the way back from the wilderness for the Liberals. I think it's time to break away from anyone carrying baggage from the Chretien and Martin years (and Belinda certainly has baggage).
I've been looking into Gerard Kennedy, a fellow I heard about first over at Calgary Grit. He's got some real promise: strong progressive street cred, bilingual bona fides and a strong history in business. Check him out:
http://www.gerardkennedy.ca/co/index.html
Neither Stronach nor Clark have any fluency in French. Clark has no credibility beyond BC and not much here. I've argued in the past (and been ridiculed for it) that Stronach could become a serious player and shouldn't be dismissed as a lightweight merely because of looks, money or genealogy. But no french...that's close to insurmountable.
Dryden would be Canada's version of a Reagan. :-)
Now that's an interesting comparison. Dryden, whatever else he may be, is a pretty intelligent guy while I've never thought of Reagan as a genius. Reagan, on the other hand, had the charisma thing and a common touch with the language. Neither are things that Dryden is known for.
Or do you just mean that both were celebrities in other fields before entering politics?
Yeah, Dryden's a celebrity.
Reagan was a movie star - that's why and how it was the accepted wisdom grew that he had both the common touch and charisma. Neither were natively his, they were the possession of his iconography. I don't say this as a way of negating the power of either the accepted wisdom or of the iconography but as a way of re-patterning the current perception of Dryden. Dryden's iconography, in Canada, is equally potent.
Not that I wish to help the LPC in any way at all, but I agree with Tim that Kennedy - if he had had any kind of earlier start at all - would be the strongest of all the candidates so far suggested.
To me (attempting to think according to Liberal logic), Kennedy really does have it all - all except for one thing. He has accepted to keep his profile in the provincial government fairly low - I assume because McGuinty forced that - so even in Ontario, it would take some fast campaigning to make him any kind of serious contender.
Still. The field at the moment is so thin. If I were him and interested, I would jump now, or soon.
Kennedy would be considerably to the left of almost all the other candidates remaining.
I am of the opinion that the next leader of the Liberals cannot have had too close an affiliation with either the Chretien or Martin leadership. If that happens then the Liberals are likely looking at opposition for some time to come. There is only one person that changed parties in the last several years in the Liberal ranks in Ottawa that I think could have a chance leading the Liberals back into power, and that is Scott Brison. If this was happening after the last election instead of this one I would not say that, because he would not have been in the party long enough, nor demonstrated good party loyalty and competence. However, his time at public works (assuming no scandals come out in the next few months from that department during this change in government, or rather real scandals and not a la Dingwall expense accounts scandal or God forbid like the Grewal scandal) and his constant having to defend the Martin government during the Gomery investigation should have earned him some real credit on that score within the party.
He is not tied to any of the old Chretien scandals or as far as I can tell to any scandal in the Martin government either. He was a Progressive Conservative whose social policy views fit well with the Liberals, and the fiscal conservatism has become a part, a good part in my view, of the Liberal brand thanks to the time of Martin at Finance. He did not leave out of opportunism or because he was wooed, but because the party he had fought for the leadership of and narrowly lost (and lost only because MacKay was willing to sign a contract he was going to break right after becoming leader) had been sold out from under him. He is young, telegenic, fairly well spoken in English, although I cannot say as to his French and that would be a problem if he lacks it and he is not from the center of Canada representing a break from the Quebec/Ontario domination of the leadership with is the history of the Liberal party for the most part.
Assuming he is the leader, then the Liberals also look to have gone to younger leadership. Brison also will be married by this point which will underscore social tolerance and Charter respect as a mainstay of the Liberal image, another area the Liberals need to reaffirm themselves on in more than simply words. His circumstances for becoming a Liberal will once again remind everyone of how he came to the party, how the PCPC was dissolved, and how the CPC is comfortable having as a deputy leader of the party and at a minimum a Minister of a Harper cabinetsomeone that ran a campaign on one set of fundamental promises only to do the exact opposite once in power. As well, I suspect some of the more hard-line Conservatives in the party and out in the country will tend to take their negative comments regarding Brison too far, either on his orientation or on his change of parties, and either way that would work to the Liberals advantage.
As people may gather I like the idea of a Brison candidacy and win. When he was a PCPCer I though the Liberals would have done well if he had been in their party, but that he was too principled a man in his political beliefs to jump ship from the PCPC. Then the PCPC was no more and he had a choice to make, and he made it in accordance to the principles he had consistently represented in the PCPC. He can be a bit shrill at times, but that can be worked on, but other than that aside from being a Liberal for a bit under three years I see him as a fairly viable candidate for the Liberal leadership if he were to chose to run. Even if he lost, it would certainly increase his profile and responsibilities in the party, and I think he would be quite useful/helpful to the Liberal party in its rebuilding and the more responsibilities he is given the better.
Just my two cents on this matter. As for Murphy, as I said in the top he is too close to the former leadership leaving aside his "gaffes" of the past year. This is not a good idea, hopefully it is one corrected before too much time goes by. I think at the moment things are in a bit of turmoil in the Liberal party and in such circumstances some stupid decisions get made. What will count though is how quickly such mistakes are corrected once things start to settle down in the next weeks to a month or two. So far though this seems a continuation of the excellent thinking that won the Liberals the last election campaign with such scintillating wit and glamour. (sarcasm, of course)
people really like Kennedy, hey?
he's not much older than I am, that's makes him very young : ) do y'all think he'd garner support among the old buggars who still pretty much puppet politics (corp's)? or it's all about party politics now, cash later? might win over a younger swath of the voter population tho..
i like what i know about his history, but can't understand why he started up with the liberals... i suspend judgement just based on that premise alone (*snigger*).
Murphy's out.
Seems he was never actually in.
Alison:
That or the mistake was recognized and corrected with this being the cover explanation. Either way though the important thing is that he is not there going forward.
Link to Politics Watch story which reports neither Murphy nor any other individuals from Martin's former PMO "will be involved in the transition process."
I think Scotian may have a point. Maybe somebody heard me. ;-)
http://draftdiamond.blogspot.com/
Here is the man to lead the Liberal Party back to power!