How not to play Opposition Leader

Lisa Raitt will keep her job.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper will have little trouble sustaining his refusal to accept her resignation.

The media may go on about it for a day or two. But even the most ethically creative journalists will have trouble sustaining much umbrage about the release of material they would gladly have had leaked. Or that would eventually have been made public under access to information legislation - unlike some of the documents that were in Maxime Bernier's briefing book.

By the time the next election rolls around, this matter will all have been forgotten. With one exception: Michael Ignatieff will have drawn a line in the sand on the question of ministerial resignations. With the very real prospect that he could be moving into 24 Sussex, the position he took is not one that any first minister I've known would have wanted to be bound by.