Angry in the Great White North

The political news of the day is not good for the Liberals.  They have nothing to offer but rhetoric, and that will lead to the party being devastated in an election, or so says a Liberal Party insider.

I don't buy it.  Not for a second.

Back in May, Michael Ignatieff said there would be a Liberal platform ready by June:

Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff will have a "coherent" Liberal platform ready by June. And-if Harper doesn't make immediate reforms to the country's Employment Insurance system-he'll consider revoking the lifeline the Liberals handed the prime minister in January.

The spring platform, however, "is not going to be an E.I. platform," but a "knowledge society platform," which includes investments to early childhood learning, post-secondary and Aboriginal education, as well as to science, technology and research. It won't be publicly released-"with fanfare, bells and whistles," he added-but will sit at ready in the Liberal vault.

But now we're supposed to believe the policy vault is empty?  Just what sort of fools do they take us for?

Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff is lagging behind Prime Minister Stephen Harper in recent public opinion polls because Canadians still don't know what the Grit leader stands for. To get their leader elected as the next Prime Minister, Liberals should be more proactive in communicating his positions on important public policy issues, political insiders and pollsters say.

"He's put absolutely nothing on the table. It's just empty rhetoric," a top Liberal who supported Mr. Ignatieff (Etobicoke-Lakeshore, Ont.) in both of his leadership campaigns told The Hill Times last week. "It's not enough to say, 'That in good times we're going to bring forward the progress...' If he goes into an election and doesn't really have anything substantive to put on the table, we're looking at a massacre."

But Michael Ignatieff does have something substantive.  It's just in the vault, and it's in "good shape" as of August, or so says Navdeep Bains, who was tasked to prepare the Liberal Party  platform:

The campaign platform, which Ignatieff ordered to be finished by June, is also "in good shape," according to platform chair Navdeep Bains.

So which is it?  A detailed platform, maybe even a costed one, ready to go at a moment's notice, or nothing substantive and nothing even in the offing?

I don't buy this story about nothing to put on the table.  It is inconsistent with what we've been hearing.  It also suggests a level of stupidity at the top levels of the Liberal Party -- to trigger an election without a real platform -- that I just can't imagine exists.

So why would "a top Liberal" worry that an election would be fought with empty rhetoric, to the point of blabbing to the media about it?

Two reasons, assuming you buy into my premise that the Liberals really do have a platform.

First, he's not much of an insider.  He thinks he is, but he's really quite removed from the centre, and so has no idea what the contents of the party platform is.  In fact, he's so far removed that he hasn't even been trusted with the knowledge of the existence of the party platform.  But being a loudmouth and an attention seeker, this "insider" talk to the media.

Second, this is some sort of trick, probably aimed at the NDP.  If Jack Layton can be convinced that the Liberal Party is as vulnerable now as it was under Stephane Dion, he might be willing to vote down the government and force an election, even though the NDP is in poor shape to wage an election campaign right now.  Jack Layton falls for it, the election writ is dropped, and the Liberals spring forth with a platform designed perhaps less to win an election but more to cannibalize the NDP for votes and seats, part of a two-election plan to get back to power.

It would also explain the Liberal Party rush to force an election.  A two-election plan could take a decade to execute, meaning Michael Ignatieff might never be prime minister.  But if the first election was held now, and the next in a year or eighteen months, quite possible in a minority situation, that plan would put Michael Ignatieff into 24 Sussex Drive in a reasonable time frame.  He might only be a one-term prime minister, but then Harvard is still waiting to take him back, once his Canadian vacation is done.

This plan works only if Jack Layton and the NDP get over their fear of an election right now.  A Liberal insider telling everyone that the Liberals are going to crater in the next election is exactly the sort of thing Jack Layton, or the people pressuring him, want to hear.

It's almost too good to be true.

Which means it's probably not true at all.

Update: Susan Delacourt isn't saying whether or not she's falling for it, but Warren Kinsella is doing his part to give this story the credibility it needs to flip Jack Layton into jumping into an election.