Monday, September 18, 2006

Liberal Majority in New Brunswick has National Implications

It has just been announced on CBC TV that Liberal leader Shawn Graham has won a Liberal Majority government in New Brunswick, with (about) 31 seats vs. (about) 25 for the Tories and zip for the NDP. They are just barely ahead in the popular vote.

This is very big news nationally, for the "bench" of potential Tory leaders, after PM Stephen Harper and now ex-N.B. Premier Bernard Lord, is zero. Bernard Lord's great selling point is that he is a "softer", less doctrinaire, more old fashioned form of Conservative, more in the line of Stanfield and Davis, less in the line of Manning and Day. Plus he's bilingual. He might win in Ontario and Quebec.

His great drawback is that his "base" (New Brunswick) contributes all of 10 seats federally. And now he doesn't even have that. We can therefore assume that Bernard Lord's political career is now over. Should Harper lose his majority, who can the Federal Tories turn too?

Also, can the New Brunswick result be attributed to a protest vote against the Harper government? That's just one of the fun questions we can all ask tomorrow.

1 comment:

Hishighness said...

I doubt it, believe me no one would like to never have to see Bernie again but he's young and could come back if the situation were right.

As for the protest vote I think that's far fetched, but then again who knows?