Brown out, but what now?

By Michael J.W. Stickings

It had to happen.

British PM Gordon Brown has announced that he will step down as Labour leader by September, once a new leader (and PM?) is chosen. All to facilitate a desired Labour-LibDem coalition (with the backing of the smaller progressive parties), all to keep David Cameron and the Tories out of power -- given that LibDem leader Nick Clegg doesn't much care for Brown and is much more likely to strike a deal knowing that Brown will be gone.

As Chris Bowers notes at Open Left, this broad coalition would have a narrow majority of 328 seats. Would it last? Surely not, and I wonder if it wouldn't be best for Labour to let it go, to let Cameron either govern with a minority or to force another election (if no government is formed by later this month), and to regroup under a new leader while Cameron imposes tough spending cuts, pushes the Tories hidden right-wing agenda, and proves to be a failure. That's a risk, but it may be a risk worth taking for the long-term well-being both of the party and of the country.

I realize that it's hard to give up power, and I understand why Brown and Labour want to hold onto it. But at what cost? The LibDems, who are demanding a great deal in return for their votes, want electoral reform, and specifically a proportional representation system that would benefit themselves most of all. Now, whether you support PR or not (and I generally don't), what's clear is that PR wouldn't benefit Labour (unless it received a majority of the popular vote, which would be rather difficult to achieve under PR, it would forever be required to form coalition governments with the LibDems and/or other left-of-center parties, hampering its ability to govern effectively) and would, in my view, be bad for the country generally. And for what? For a few more months of power, or for another year or two, at most, of unstable government?

Anyway, coalition talks are underway. I just can't see a Tory-LibDem union, and non-Labour Brown seems to have the upper hand. Stay tuned.

ONTARIO VOTE 2007

By Michael J.W. Stickings

I'm busy watching the election returns this evening. Ontario voters went to the polls today to elect 107 provincial legislators, or MPPs, as well as to vote in a referendum on electoral reform, the first provincial referendum since 1924. The Liberal Party won a comfortable majority in 2003 and have, according to projections, won another one, the first back-to-back Liberal majorities in 70 years.

Which means that Dalton McGuinty will remain premier. John Tory, the leader of the Progressive Conservative Party, is doing poorly in his own riding and may not win a seat. The New Democratic Party is doing better than in '03 but will remain a distant third. The Green Party, the largest of the smaller parties (but one that has never won a seat in the Legislature), is doing well in central Ontario, where the NDP is weak.

I'm sure that readers of this blog, even infrequent ones, even new ones, can guess accurately my political leanings in Ontario. I am, indeed, partial to the Liberals, and was once even a dues-paying member. Owing to the nature of my work, however, which I recently mentioned here, I do not blog about Ontario politics and will not comment on the election other than to say this:

Good for the Liberals. Good for Ontarians.

This is the right choice for Ontario.

If you want to find out more about the election, with up-to-date returns, see the CBC or CTV -- or, for a more Toronto-centric perspective, CityNews.

For those of you who don't know much, or anything, about Ontario -- and I realize this blog has an international, if still mostly American, readership -- we are the financial and industrial center of the country, the most populous of Canada's ten provinces with a population of over 12 million. (See Wikipedia for more. Speaking of which see also the Wikipedia entries for the election and the referendum.)

As for the referendum, I have been intimately involved with the government's electoral reform initiative -- as well as with its democratic renewal agenda generally -- over the past three years, and so will defer to one of the world's leading experts on elections, electoral systems, and electoral reform, co-blogger MSS, who recently posted on the referendum here. (He will no doubt have more to say in response to the vote in the coming days.)

Enjoy your evening, everyone.