Sunday, May 13, 2007

Guess who's coming to dinner?

The Star had an excerpt from Linda Diebel's new book on Stephane Dion and the Liberal leadership race in yesterday's paper and it certainly looks like the book will be packed with behind the scenes stories and interviews.

The excerpts in the Star deal mostly with the post-leadership challenge of managing egos and bringing the team together. They certainly make for some interesting reading...

Labels: ,

posted by calgarygrit at 8:44 p.m.

4 Comments:

  • Yes, Dion is intelligent in a logical way. He would do fine as leader if everyone was the same. Unfortunately, they are not.

    My view is that Dion doesn't need to have a makeover.

    Rather, he needs to commit the LPC into action. This way, everyone would fall into line with the logic of battle.

    By Blogger JimTan, at 11:57 p.m.  

  • I agree with Warren, it is boring...

    seems like Linda Diebel is becoming more and more like Jane Taber

    By Blogger Anthony, at 12:07 p.m.  

  • Well the knives are out. MI comes out of this looking almost Martin like...Rae looked like a bitter old man over the weekend...GK looks classy if a little bit strategic...


    Ignatieff and Dion squabble over Liberal honcho

    JOAN BRYDEN

    Canadian Press

    May 14, 2007 at 6:20 PM EDT

    Ottawa — Stéphane Dion is resisting pressure to fire the Liberal Party's national director who suggested that former leadership rivals may be plotting against the new boss.

    Deputy Leader Michael Ignatieff told Mr. Dion over the weekend that Jamie Carroll should be fired, sources say.

    While he did not demand Mr. Carroll's head or issue any ultimatums on the matter, they say Mr. Ignatieff argued that Mr. Carroll can't remain ostensibly in charge of rebuilding and unifying the party after publicly casting aspersions on the loyalty of erstwhile leadership competitors.

    “He was forceful that it was his view that (Mr. Carroll) should go,” said one well-placed insider.

    Although displeased with Mr. Carroll's public musings, sources say Mr. Dion indicated that he would not fire his hand-picked choice for the party's top administrative post.

    Mr. Ignatieff, who was overtaken by Mr. Dion on the final ballot at last December's leadership convention, was incensed by comments from Carroll in a new book released Saturday.

    In Against the Current, author Linda Diebel writes that two months ago Mr. Carroll began to doubt the wisdom of Mr. Dion giving key roles to all his former rivals — including his choice to make Mr. Ignatieff deputy leader.

    “I am starting to wonder if he may not have been a little too good to his former competitors,” Mr. Carroll is quoted as saying.

    Ms. Diebel writes that Mr. Carroll “lived in fear of an all-out drive against Dion,” orchestrated by one or more of Mr. Dion's top three leadership rivals — Mr. Ignatieff, Bob Rae and Gerard Kennedy.

    “What they do in public doesn't bother me. It's the shit they do behind the scenes — which I may not know they're doing — that keeps me up at night,” Mr. Carroll is quoted as saying.

    Senior organizers for each of the former contenders were privately furious about the remarks, particularly those in the Ignatieff camp on whom Mr. Carroll's suspicions seemed primarily focused.

    Mr. Ignatieff acknowledged Monday that he'd spoken to Mr. Dion about the matter.

    “I've made my views very clear to the leader and I think he's communicated that to Mr. Carroll, as far as I know,” he said.

    Still, Mr. Ignatieff attempted to down play the controversy, declaring: “Look, I get up in the morning, I show up, I prepare for QP (Question Period), I do my job. We've united the party. All this stuff is kind of tired rehash gossip from a leadership campaign that's over.”

    But Montreal MP Denis Coderre, who co-chaired Mr. Ignatieff's leadership campaign, was clearly seething. He called Mr. Carroll's comments “totally misplaced” and “totally unacceptable.”

    “There is no clans and I will not accept that anybody from the party who's stating that there's some clans who are plotting right now because...it's not true,” Mr. Coderre said.

    He praised Mr. Ignatieff as “a model of dignity, a model of loyalty.”

    Mr. Kennedy took a more conciliatory tone, saying that regardless of Mr. Carroll's attitude, he's found Mr. Dion and his leadership team to be mostly welcoming and open.

    “I think it's natural for some of the folks that brought Mr. Dion the leadership to feel protective of him,” Mr. Kennedy said in an interview.

    “But Mr. Dion himself and by and large his folks have been pretty open to me so that's the main frame of reference I have.”

    Some of Mr. Kennedy's leadership supporters were actually more miffed about a weekend report suggesting that Mr. Dion had fired Mr. Kennedy as his special election readiness adviser. In fact, they said Mr. Kennedy quit six weeks ago when it became apparent there would not be an election this spring.

    Privately, many senior Liberals were grumbling that Mr. Carroll's distrust of former rivals was reminiscent of the paranoid, bunker mentality that characterized both camps in the leadership civil war between Jean Chrétien and Paul Martin.

    The ensuing internal strife ripped the Liberals apart.

    Several noted snarkily that Mr. Carroll is supposed to work with all Liberals, including the 83 per cent who didn't vote for Mr. Dion on the first leadership ballot.

    Mr. Carroll declined to comment, as did Mr. Rae. A spokesman for Mr. Dion similarly refused comment, other than to insist: “We're all working together as a team, as we've been doing since December.”

    By Blogger Unknown, at 8:47 p.m.  

  • I'll say this about Denis Coderre. At least he's got the courage to identify himself.

    Carroll shouldn't have said what he said, but it's hardly a fireable offence, like, say, filing nuisance lawsuits against NHL hockey players.

    By Blogger Raymaker, at 10:52 a.m.  

Post a Comment

<< Home