But the unfolding nature of Canadian politics has pointers for Britain as classic binary 20th century politics – left vs right, blues against reds – evaporates into a miasma of sectoral, regional, special interest, and party-hopping politicians scrambling for power.
The incumbent government led by the wooden but very rightwing and sports-mad Conservative prime minister, Stephen Harper, lacks an overall majority. Like David Cameron’s Tories he has had to patchwork together votes in the Ottawa parliament to get legislation through. The early election is meant to clear the air but Harper has nothing strong to sell. Instead he promises to complete motorways to nowhere in the frozen north like a Berlusconi offering to building bridges between small islands off southern Italy. Each constituency, or ‘riding’ as they are called in Canada, has to be cosseted and offered goodies to win a majority.
Canada has not had a majority government since 2004. But his opponents are so divided, Canada’s Tories may achieve what David Cameron wants next time – a narrow majority. The Liberal party is now headed by Michael Ignatieff, the most prominent public intellectual Islington produced in the 1980s. After a stint at Harvard, Ignatieiff returned to bring a cerebral touch to Canadian politics. But even he is reduced to offering to pay for a bridge across the river that separates Ottawa from its French-speaking suburb in Quebec. If all the civil servants can get to work a bit faster maybe they will vote Liberal, he believes.
The Liberals are a ruling party in Canada. They had a long run under a charismatic premier, Jean Chretien, who buddied up to Tony Blair. Then they chose as a prime minister a dour finance minister who had been Chretien’s mainstay as an effective economic manager. Sounds familiar? Brilliant as a No 2, Paul Martin was unhappy in the top job and Canada turned Tory.
Now the Liberals do not know whether to turn right to win disillusioned Tory voters or move to the left. But on this flank they face the social democratic, trade union-friendly New Democrats who look good in the polls as their leader, Jack Layton, is making most of the running in TV debates in French as well as English. The NDP’s moment of glory was in the late 1980s when it won power in Ontario under a young leader, Bob Rae. He tried to push though Keynesian demand-side policies, including increases in minimum wages and union rights, just at the moment globalisation personified by Reaganomics was taking off. Rae faced an investment strike and a revolt by Ontario voters who liked his progressive talk in theory but were not willing to pay ever-higher taxes for a growing army of public service workers.
Rae quietly moved to the Liberals and now sits as their shadow foreign minister. This habit of party-hopping is common with Liberal MPs moving to the NDP and vice-versa. Hanging over all of Canadian politics is the Quebec question. Quebec separatist politics is alive and well. As with the Scotland’s nationalists, there is demand for a referendum on full independence – but not yet. Meanwhile, the Quebec parties have to tilt left, right and like Alex Salmond’s SNPers in Scotland pray that the new 21st century identity politics will trump 20th century class alignments.
Both Harper and, if he emerges as leader of the biggest party after 2 May, Ignatieff, will have to make alliances with Quebec soft or hard nationalist MPs to have anything like a majority in Ottawa. Mix in strong low-tax almost Tea Party politics from the energy and timber producing far north-west and Canada has a permanently conflicted politics of coalition and opposition. It is the new politics of co-opposition.
Unlike the US or France where the obligation to elect one chief executive, the president, forces a final binary choice, Canada’s parliamentary system allows a mixture of different voices, interests, ideologies and personalities to be elected with endless conflicts in parliament making party discipline difficult. It makes for more cautious government. Harper has withdrawn troops from Afghanistan and promotes rather than disparages Canadian multiculturalism.
Is this the future for Britain? Most British political analysts, Tory as much as Labour, draw inspiration from the United States. They soak up the latest theories from US writers. Few read European languages or care about continental politics. But perhaps Canada deserves more attention as a guide to the future of politics in Britain. In Canada as in Britain, where government based on a parliamentary model, the politics of coalition, consensus and constituency are increasingly likely to deny any single party supreme power in the decades ahead.
Investment strike in Rae’s Ontario? A protest against Rae? That’s not really so. What happened was that there was shock therapy being directed from the right wing Mulroney government and Ontario in particular was targeted. The free trade deal promised to damage Ontario’s manufacturing and the Bank of Canada with the support of Finance Minister Michael Wilson pursued a “zero inflation” strategy that caused record bankruptcies and spiralling unemployment. Austerity measures were also implemented to offset the massive interest charges on debt and this included cuts in transfer payments to Ontario. David Peterson led the last pre-Rae government and he hid the true nature of the deficit at the time and so there was alarm in the media when the deficit jumped by several times in one Rae budget, which really got the hysteria rolling in the right wing Ontario media. This is because they saw the false numbers and then the real numbers with the inevitable revenue decline caused by the Mulroney-engineered unemployment as well as the expenditure increases caused also by this new army of unemployed. It’s not unlike in early 1980s Britain where Thatcher’s austerity did not prevent government spending to increase greatly caused by her make-unemployment schemes. She had North Sea oil to make up some of the difference, Bob Rae did not have this.
Although l liked the general substance of the article, particularly the comparative analysis of the UK and Canada, there were several mistaken facts and conclusions. Too many to list.