Some Liberals aren’t laughing at Jean Chrétien’s barbed joke about a return from the political grave. With another federal election fast approaching and Michael Ignatieff leading the party nowhere, panicking Liberals are looking everywhere except within themselves for a quick fix.
This week’s caucus implosion over support for Conservative immigration change is one of many symptoms of a once dominant party in steep decline and startling disarray. Ignatieff has lost his personal compass and seems physically exhausted. Alf Apps, one of the supplicants who lured Ignatieff back from Harvard, is expected to step down soon from the presidency of a party failing to fill its campaign coffers. Liberals in and out of Parliament are again searching for a messiah, or even an NDP coalition, to lead them from the wasteland back to power.
A measure of the madness here is the seriousness some backroom Liberals are lending to Chrétien’s mischievous remark that he, like Britain’s iconic William Gladstone, might return in old age for a fourth term. Astonishingly, Chrétien’s resurrection as interim leader continues to circulate here along with speculation about the NDP coalition the former Prime Minister is exploring.
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