Wednesday, June 09, 2010

In other news, my friend and I negotiated a Middle East peace accord over beers last night

Liberal, NDP insiders talk merger

Senior insiders with the federal Liberals and New Democrats have been holding secret talks about the possibility of merging their parties to form a new entity to take on the Conservatives, CBC News has learned.

Many Liberal insiders confirmed that discussions between the two parties are not just focused on forming a coalition after an election or co-operation before one, but the creation of a new party.

The new party would possibly be named the Liberal Democrats and there has been tentative talk about what a shared platform would look like and an understanding that a race would be required to choose a new leader.


They have a name. They've agreed the new party will need a leader and a platform. Not a bad day's work by these mysterious Liberal and NDP insiders who have taken it upon themselves to negotiate a merger.

The only stumbling block left to a deal is the overwhelming opposition to the idea by the Liberal Party and the NDP.


UPDATE: This silly story gets sillier...

Labels:

posted by calgarygrit at 12:47 p.m.

17 Comments:

  • Not that I'm a supporter of this idea, but "overwhelming opposition" is a bit hypothetical at this point, don't you think?

    I mean, the only way you know for sure is if hypothetical merger agreement gets presented.. with a then hypothetical up or down ratification vote by both party members. The hypothetical results would then tell you if your hypothesis of "overwhelming opposition" is correct or not :)

    By Blogger Oxford County Liberals, at 1:11 p.m.  

  • I can count, maybe, at most a dozen Liberals that have gone on record supporting a merger (and that's including blog comments, facebook posts). I don't have any raw data or anything, but I'd guess 90% of the party would be against the idea (this comes just from conversations I've had with Liberals). I haven't seen many dippers sold on the idea either but, then again, I don't know as many dippers so they may like the idea.

    Ignatieff, Layton, and their entire caucuses are against it. To the best of my knowledge, no one in any real position of power in either party has voiced support for a merger.

    So, maybe I'm wrong, but I'm fairly confident the idea of a Liberal-NDP merger would be overwhelmingly rejected, in any form.

    By Blogger calgarygrit, at 1:26 p.m.  

  • I don't know why anyone hasn't pointed this out yet, but by God I will!

    That was some horrible reporting work by Wendy Mesley!

    By Anonymous Dan, at 2:02 p.m.  

  • Ah yes, that huge populous known as "Liberal grassroots supporters" who cried so loudly when they didn't have a true leadership race. Yeah, they're sure to stop any merger talks.

    By Blogger Mike B., at 2:41 p.m.  

  • hatrock - I'm not even talking about the grassroots (2/3 of whom would have to approve a merger). There's no indication whatsoever that the party leader or anyone in a position of power in the LPC actually thinks this is a good idea.

    By Blogger calgarygrit, at 2:48 p.m.  

  • It seems abundantly obvious that this is just people who don't like Ignatieff stirring up shit.

    Bob Rae supporters are getting antsy. Kinsella's peeved because he got fired. A lot of others never liked Ignatieff in the first place.

    By Anonymous Sean, at 3:25 p.m.  

  • From what I've seen I don't think "overwhelming opposition" is an overstatement.

    By Anonymous Jacques Beau Verte, at 3:35 p.m.  

  • The goal for these "Liberal insiders" is to move left and out of the way for the Conservatives to become Canada's only centrist party then?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 4:13 p.m.  

  • Serves Ignatieff right for dismantling WK's war room.

    The devil finds mischief for idle hands!

    By Blogger MississaugaPeter, at 4:57 p.m.  

  • Um, yeah. Overwhelming might actually be replaceable by "near universal".

    There are some who seem to want that, but for every one person I've come across there are at least nine who are against it. "True" dippers would never support it. And as someone threw out the 'grass roots' comment, though the we (libs) may not have a grass roots movement (IMO that's a big part of our current malaise), the NDP certainly does. So if by some miracle we did approve a merger, the dippers never will.

    By Blogger Disgruntled Liberal, at 6:13 p.m.  

  • My wild speculation on merger-affadavit-gate:

    Desmarais/Chretien are fed up, want the Liberals and NDP to merge, with Chretien leading the party into the next election, which Desmarais/Chretien expect to win.

    Broadbent, Romanov, and Clark probably all run as candidates for the new party under Chretien.

    Chretien will step down in 3 years and let Layton and all the Liberal turks fight it out for the top job.

    By Blogger whyshouldIsellyourwheat, at 6:58 p.m.  

  • I'd be surprised if the Liberals would try party mergers before trying electoral reform, especially with 1) a coalition government serving as a possible role model in the United Kingdom and 2) as you've noted elsewhere, CG, the potential of the Greens to be the "new NDP".

    By Blogger Unknown, at 6:59 p.m.  

  • Get real folks. Any merged party would be run by the NDP not by Liberals. The NDP grassroots supporters would smother Liberal grassroots supporters.

    Think about it. The leaders of the Conservatives (Reform and PC) came from the Reform base not the Tory base.

    If I was Layton I would be salivating like Pavlov's dog.

    While masthead space and airtime should be solely focused on the $1B G8/G20 boondoggle, we are considering rubbish. I said it above and I will say it again: "The devil finds mischief for idle hands!"

    By Blogger MississaugaPeter, at 7:50 p.m.  

  • "I haven't seen many dippers sold on the idea either but, then again, I don't know as many dippers so they may like the idea."

    "We" might, I suppose - I'm not exactly in constant contact. But I'm as far on the right of the NDP as you're likely to find, and you said it best a few days ago: if I wanted to vote Liberal, I'd already be doing it. I think there are some people in your party stirring things up for their own reasons (comedy, sport). I don't even think the Dippers who have found their way into your party (Rae, Dosanjh) are particularly interested. So, if you could use your connections in the Liberal party to tell them to maybe not distract the country from the fact that Parliament still hasn't seen the detainee documents, long after the Speaker's deadline, with this nonsensical horses--t, you'd be doing me a solid.

    By Blogger Don, at 7:55 p.m.  

  • According to the National, Kinsella's "merger" would require that the NDP "renounce" socialism and accept Iggy as leader.

    I can't imagine a more ridiculous scenario.

    By Blogger JG, at 9:15 p.m.  

  • Shouldn't the headline be, "pissant Kinsella throws tantrum after 'quitting' liberal war room"

    In my opinion, Kinsella and Ignattief just didn't get along. Iggy must have mistreated some friends of Kinsella's, then Kinsella quit as head of the war room, and subsequently started rumor mongering as payback to iggy.

    Just shows that the Liberals are full of petty individuals, and Ignattief is not a leader.

    Could the real Liberal leader please stand up already?

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 12:55 p.m.  

  • All this talk has been out for about a week now: have there been no polls released?

    By Blogger Paul, at 11:39 a.m.  

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