Ibbitson has the Globe and Mail's version of today's big political news: the announced departure of the PM's Chief of Staff Guy Giorno by the end of this year. After dealing with that specific issue, the story provides a bit of a forecast on what we can expect in federal politics in the coming months, including this:
...the Conservative Leader is already test-driving what will doubtless become a relentless message: that Canada is really a two-party state, with the Conservatives on one side and a "coalition," as he calls it, of the Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc Québécois on the other.
Never mind that the other parties don't think of themselves as a coalition. It is Mr. Harper's political good fortune that a coalition is governing Britain and will eventually be cobbled together in Australia. And a coalition is just what Mr. Ignatieff's predecessor, Stéphane Dion, attempted. So the idea is in the air.
If countries with which many Canadians are familiar and can more easily identify are now (or are soon to be) governed by coalitions and haven't descended into bloody chaos and anarchy, doesn't that make the idea of a coalition seem more familiar and benign as opposed to more exotic and dangerous? How is that good for Harper's intention to base his whole campaign on the idea of running against a coalition?
Or is this a case of: it's always good news for Conservatives?
What a load!! We already have a coalition of the Liberals and the CPC. Who has saved the CPC butt in the last few Parliamentary votes? Who has instituted the HST in coalition with the Provincial Liberals for the tax revenue good of the CPC and the Prov Liberals? They are all the same--Liberal/Tory/same old story. It doesn't matter who or what is government--we are finished as a democracy.
It is Mr. Harper's political good fortune ...
Wow -- leapin' logic, eh? I had to read that over and over to believe mine eyes (and then I finally read you).
I think he means "good fortune" in that it will be fairly easy for the Sun and the Post to present any bad news from either Britain or Australia as being the fault of coalition government.