May and Dion in Wonderland?

When I first heard the news last night that Stéphane Dion of the Liberals and Elizabeth May of the Green Party would not field candidates in each other's districts (Saint-Laurent - Cartierville and Central Nova, respectively) I had one immediate impression: Either this is the most brilliant move, or the most incredibly stupid. There's no question that May and Dion share common ground on the environment and by pulling a Liberal candidate both hope to topple Peter MacKay, the member in the Nova Scotia district that with one exception has been a Conservative fiefdom for as long as anyone can remember.

Of course there was bound to be a quid pro quo, namely the Greens won't run in Dion's Montréal district. This does seem odd at first glance, especially since in last month's Québec election the Greens without winning a seat still managed to finish in second place in the popular vote on the Island -- ahead of the ADQ and the PQ. And depriving people of a choice could backfire in both districts -- either undecided voters will flock to the target candidate in sympathy or they'll go to the alternate progressive party, the NDP.

Moreover, the Liberals and the Greens actually have big issues with each other, especially when it comes to the military and free trade.

Rather than selective pullouts, what I'd prefer to see is the two parties sit down together and try to form a common platform; and then mount some kind of Alliance. It's happened in peacetime in other countries and especially in Europe, where Red-Green coalitions are commonplace.

And progressive, middle-of-the-road parties have also attempted it. For example in the UK, during most of the 1980s, the Liberals and the Social Democrats ran under the "Alliance" banner with each party supporting the other in a more or less formal agreement; that is if one party fielded a candidate the other would stand down and not hold a nomination meeting. At one point, they got as high as 25% of the popular vote but were stymied by FPTP, never quite being able to come up the middle between the Conservatives and Labour in their traditional strongholds -- rural and urban areas, respectively.

(It's worth noting that eventually the two parties merged and became today's Liberal Democrats but that some who opposed the marriage broke off -- most notably Baron David Owen, who later unsuccessfully tried to broker a peace deal in Bosnia. The Lib Dems have gradually regained ground in the seat count but last time out, 2005, still won only 62 seats out of the 628 in which they fielded candidates -- damn FPTP again.)

Maybe there's something in the polling numbers that Dion and May see that the rest of us or the MSM don't. Right now, short of a formal alliance, an ad hoc arrangement of this sort is kind of like being Alice in Wonderland -- where everything is not what they should be, and even a sneeze is punished with beheading. That being said, I wish Elizabeth May the best. If there's one province I'd like to see painted Green, it's Canada's Ocean Playground.

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