On misinterpretations

Following up on my post about Brian Topp's upcoming book, let's note one utterly bizarre claim in the review by Norman Spector:

Moreover, though a draft of the book was read by members of Mr. Topp’s “tribe,” the final product is not completely scrubbed of material unhelpful to coalition proponents. We learn, for example, that Stephen Harper had not discussed formation of a coalition government with the opposition parties in 2004, as many claim; their letter to the Governor-General was about “sending the minority Liberal government [of Paul Martin] a message that it was going to have to govern in consultation with the Opposition parties.” Later on, when Mr. Duceppe explained that Mr. Harper would be prime minister of a coalition government, Mr. Layton “withdrew from the three-party group.”

Now, I'll be interested to see the full story from the book - at least to the extent Topp is able to speak to the discussions (and as I'll discuss, the major gap in knowledge seems to primarily involve the Cons and the Bloc). But from Spector's description of the 2004 arrangement, there's absolutely no indication that a coalition government was off the table at the time from the Cons' perspective.

The passage does suggest that at the time the three-party letter was signed, there hadn't been any explicit discussion of a coalition involving the NDP. But it's obvious enough that the Cons' willingness to sign onto the idea that the Governor-General should consider alternative governments had to be based on a willingness to rely on the Bloc and the NDP for support, allowing for no meaningful distinction between the Bloc's role then and the one which the Cons blasted in 2008.

Moreover, it would seem that the Bloc's expectation of a coalition arrangement would have to some from somewhere. And based on Layton's rejecting the concept of a coalition as soon as it was raised, there's absolutely no basis to suggest it was the NDP pushing the idea at the time.

That leaves two possible explanations for the course of events described by Spector. It could be that the Bloc developed the idea of a coalition out of thin air without consulting with either of the other parties who were supposed to be involved - which would effectively leave them on an island as the lone party which thought that any replacement government would take the form of a coalition, and leave wide open the question of the Cons' position at the time.

But there's another possibility which makes far more sense given the specific mention of Harper as the prospective PM: it could be that the Cons and Bloc had actually talked about a formal coalition before either approached the NDP about the idea. And if so, then all indications are that the Cons sent a positive enough message about their willingness to enter into one that Duceppe was able to approach Layton to pitch the possibility.

Of course, there's ample reason for argument as to whether there's any reason to exclude democratically-elected Bloc MPs from any talk of a coalition in any event.

But to the extent a party's willingness to attain power based on a deal with the Bloc matters, Topp's account (at least as portrayed by Spector) only figures to reinforce the fact that the Cons were no less willing than the progressive coalition to pursue a government which relied on the Bloc's support. And in fact, it raises the possibility that the Cons may have gone much further in discussing a coalition format including the Bloc which all parties agree wasn't on the table in 2008. So there's no apparent reason to buy Spector's attempt to spin the events of 2004 as "unhelpful to coalition proponents".