Glasstry news

MP Alleslev crosses the floor: "getting a new boss"? So British Columbia last year produced a minority government in which a minor party gained a notable degree of power. Recently the New Brunswick election produced a situation where minor parties are negotiating for influence. And while Quebec did not by a long shot produce a minority parliament last night, it clearly does have a mature four-party system for the time being. Apart from the usual appalling responses from politicians eager to mislead voters about the nature of parliamentary democracy  ("I have a mandate!"), and too often from journalists who don't seem to know any better, there has been some interesting speculation on why Canada seeing an upsurge of minor parties in a system that seems to favour two-party dynamics. Andrew Coyne thinks it's all another argument for proportional representation -- it was nice to see and hear the scepticism from Chantal H�bert on the "At Issue" panel.  ...

I like politics this much (M. Turnbull) They are having a spill in Australian politics again, and I kind of admire it. "Spill" is what Australians call a leadership challenge. The right wing government of Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has (with coalition support) a narrow majority, but the even-more right wing anti-immigrant demagogue Peter Dutton has resigned from cabinet and challenged Turnbull's leadership of the Liberal Party. �This is a fight for the heart and the soul of the Liberal party,� says one moderate MP. �These people surrounding Dutton � these people are not Liberals, they are not conservatives, they are fucking reactionaries, and I have nothing but contempt for them.� In Auz constituencies elect (or defeat) MPs and MPs elect (and when  necessary remove) their party leaders; it would only take 43 Liberal MPs to bring on a leadership vote within the caucus. This whole notion of accountability makes most Canadian commentators flutter and go pale and talk a...

Patrick Brown had an undistinguished tenure as federal MP, but his success in raising funds and selling memberships allowed him to become Ontario leader of the Conservative Party in one of those vote-buying orgies called leadership conventions. Now that he has been brought down by allegations of sexual harassment, the buzz seems to be that nobody actually liked him much anyway and the party might do better with someone else leading it in the June 2018 election. But the extra-parliamentary party executive has decided to go ahead with another leadership convention, against the will of the caucus of MPPs -- you know, the elected and accountable representatives of the people. Who will buy the most votes this time?  A rare glimmer of wisdom  has come from one backroom Conservative, Thom Bennett of Ottawa:   �I am at a total loss as to what the thinking could be that our executive would tell our elected MPPs � those soldiers who are putting their name in front of the elect...