Prime Minister Paul Martin accepts NDP budget demands. Belinda Stronach deserts the Conservatives for the Liberals. Christian evangelists pop up as Conservative candidates to promote their social values.
Are these just unrelated incidents, the by-product of superheated politics, or is there perhaps some deeper pattern of change working itself out, a process to which we are blind but which will be obvious to those in the future who look back on our turbulent times?
Thirty-eight years ago, Ernest Manning, then the almost-permanent premier of Alberta, published a slim book titled Political Realignment: A Challenge to Canadians, in which he argued that our democracy could work only if Canadians had a clear choice between two principled parties with clear and distinct programs, Social Conservatives on the right, Humanitarian Socialists on the left.
"Social conservative" is now a recognized term in politics. "Humanitarian socialist" is outdated, as is Mr. Manning's understanding of socialism. Almost nobody now calls himself or herself a socialist, and social democrat probably best describes what Mr. Manning intended.
He thought the Progressive Conservatives of the day could probably make the shift to the social conservatives he proposed. If they didn't (or wouldn't), it would be necessary to launch a new conservative party. His ideas attracted little support at the time; both Progressive Conservatives and Liberals thought that the way to win elections was to occupy the fuzzy centre where most of the voters were assumed to be. So a new party had to be invented, and Preston Manning, son of Ernest, launched the Reform Party.
Reform was just what the elder Manning had prescribed, a party emphasizing fiscal conservatism and social values derived from the teaching of Christian evangelists. Observers wrote it off as just another fringe party thrown up by western alienation. True, it did not win elections, but it did follow the Manning strategy, first by splitting the conservative vote so that the PC party collapsed at the polls, and then taking it over to become the new Conservative Party on the right, fiscally and socially conservative.
The takeover is still shaking down ideologically. Ms. Stronach is one among many former Progressive Conservatives who cannot accept the new conservatism and have made the reluctant decision to support the Liberals rather help elect the Conservative Party. Most are anonymous or lesser known. Ms. Stronach's case is dramatic because she was high-profile in the new party and crossed the floor at a moment of crisis. There is no reason not to believe her when she says that she had been uneasy about the direction the new party was taking and just went along until she was faced with the fact that her vote might force an election that the Conservatives would win.
As the old PCs leave, the new Conservative Party becomes more like the party the Mannings, father and son, planned. The fact that it is attracting evangelical Christian candidates underlines the point.
On the Liberal side of the Commons, life was easy as long as the conservative vote was split. They could win majority governments with around 40 per cent of the vote, and kid themselves they were the people's popular choice. But with the first election against the new Conservative Party they were reduced to a minority, and now they are scrambling to survive. Naturally, they turn to the New Democrats, and the outline of a new party on the left -- what the Mannings saw as the Humanitarian Socialist or social democratic party -- appears.
Both Liberals and New Democrats, of course, think of their alliance as temporary, but they're probably wrong. As long as the Bloc Québécois holds most of Quebec, it is unlikely that either the Liberals or Conservatives can win a majority. And it's inconceivable that the NDP would support a Conservative minority, or defeat a Liberal minority and open the way for the Conservatives. So the alliance will last, perhaps permanently, as New Democrats recognize that a coalition with the Liberals is their best chance of pushing through policies such as electoral reform, and of convincing the public they can be trusted with power.
Then there will be a major social democratic party facing a social conservative party, just as Ernest Manning hoped. It won't work out as neatly as he hoped; politics isn't governed by high principles. But Preston Manning in political retirement must be smiling.
Anthony Westell, a former Globe and Mail Ottawa bureau chief, is author of Reinventing Canada.