Michael Byers floats a familiar idea in Monday's Toronto Star -- how about an electoral pact between the New Democratic Party and the Liberal Party next election, with no other conditions, in order to ensure the defeat of the Harper Conservatives?
There is some precedent in Parliamentary history for arrangements like this, notably a series of off-and-on Lib-Lab pacts negotiated in Britain to attempt to defeat U.K. Conservatives.
There is a fundamental and immovable obstacle to ideas like this, however -- and that is that there is no dance partner.
To be specific, there is not the slightest evidence of any interest in the team currently running the Liberal Party to explore any ideas like this. The closest this latest red-team leadership group -- the Toronto blue Liberal establishment -- has ever come were the campaign slogans from their last runner (Paul Martin), to the effect that it was the duty of every New Democrat to stand down and let the Liberals win. There is obviously no basis for any kind of concerted action there.
Fellow Globe blogger Norman Spector might have put it best in a brief comment he appended to a similar discussion here last spring (between myself and Les Campbell). At the end of the day, the red team probably needs to suffer another crushing defeat at the polls before being ripe to accept that the good old days are over, possibly for good.
That being so, the task before New Democrats now is to do the best job they possibly can to construct a viable alternative to Mr. Harper and his government, and to focus on the Conservative opponent to the extent the Liberals permit the NDP to do so (leaving no shot from them unanswered). Somebody has to, since (barring some fundamental change in federal politics) the red team will head back into the repair shop and will focus on talking to itself for many months to come after the next election. We'll see what (and who) emerges then.