There has been a lot of talk in the past week or so about the possibility of some kind of political alliance between the LPC and the NDP. Mr. Ignatieff is reported to have said today that while he has no intention of any kind of pre-election deal with the NDP, that a post-election coalition is not something he would rule out.
I doubt Mr. Ignatieff liked being put in the position of having to say that he’s open to a post-election coalition. No leader wants to tell the voters that they can safely vote for an irrelevant political force like the NDP because there will just be a coalition anyway. It is unfortunate that the people advocating a coalition within the LPC ranks don’t understand basic electoral strategy.
What I am much more interested in that the actual mechanics of how we got to this point is the reason behind it: Fear.
What are we afraid of? Well, for many members of the LPC (and the NDP, for that matter), I think there is a legitimate and very real fear that we will end up with another term with Stephen Harper as our Prime Minister. Many of us look at what Mr. Harper is trying to turn Canada into, and we fear for the soul of our country. I think this fear, while understandable, is perhaps the most overstated of the reasons for considering a merger. But more on that in a bit.
For many Liberals, I think that this isn’t really about what Mr. Harper and the Conservatives may or may not be doing. I think this is about us. Our Party, our perceptions of ourselves, and our fear that we are not what we thought we were. And, unlike the fear that Mr. Harper will destroy Canada’s soul, this fear is rooted firmly in the reality that the Liberal Party is not what it used to be. But how we are reacting to that reality is further degrading our Party, not helping it.
Andrew Coyne wrote an article for Macleans at the beginning of April called The End of the Liberal Empire. In it, Mr. Coyne suggests that the source of the Liberal’s current problems is rooted in our past success instead of any current failure. I’ll leave a detailed examination of this idea to a future blog entry, but I bring it up here because the Liberal Party has to redefine its identity if it ever hopes to overcome its current problems.
But too many Liberals are too busy pointing the finger at everyone else in the party, saying that they aren’t doing enough (or doing too much, in some cases) to fix the party, while never once looking at themselves and asking “What can I do?”. The reality is that our leaders can’t provide the solution to this crisis on their own. The members of the Liberal Party must stand up for ourselves and tell our leaders what it is we want our party to be.
Despite what many people seem to believe, good leadership is not about defining the destination, but in charting the course. I don’t know how we expect Mr. Ignatieff to lead us to the promised land when we all have different ideas about where that is!
We must take the long view on the current government. While I dislike Stephen Harper and his policies as much as the next Liberal, there is absolutely nothing he can do in two or three terms in office that can’t be undone by a Liberal government in the future. We fixed the mess left by the Conservatives before, and we can do it again. Panicking over the prospects of a continued Conservative government does not help us address the core issues we have as a party.
To be blunt: Why would Canada vote for us when we are having such huge problems getting our collective act together?
We are at risk of completely destroying our party — something that would damage Canada far more than another Harper term in office — by refusing to acknowledge that we have a problem. Instead of trying to create mergers or coalitions with the NDP, we need to focus on fixing our party.
We need to trust that Canadians will understand if we take some time to solve our issues, in fact I think they will be far more likely to vote for us if we cop to our issues. Canadians respect honesty. I think they would reward us for it at the polls.
