Liberal leadership woes, will Dion stay or go?

The biggest irony behind what happened to the federal Liberal party Tuesday night is that their worst nightmare -- a Conservative majority -- would have been positively dreamy compared to the reality the party faces with another Conservative minority.

A Conservative majority government would have given the Liberal party at least four years in which to reorganize, rebuild and refinance. Instead, now the party -- which is facing a crushing debt -- must try to do all of that while remaining election-ready.

In his concession speech on election night, an ashen-faced Stephane Dion, who led the Liberals to their worst showing -- garnering just 26.3 per cent of the popular vote -- said he intends to stay on as the leader of the opposition.

It is a political science cliché that the Liberal party campaigns on the left but governs on the right. But unless the party can reclaim the centre ground of Canadian politics and no longer tolerate its categorization as a party of the left, it may not again soon have the opportunity to govern at all.

Tuesday's result was more than a setback for the party, or a disappointing result. For the Liberals, it was an unmitigated disaster. They lost 19 seats. They saw their share of the popular vote drop to 26.2 per cent. That's worse that John Turner fared in 1984, and worse than the Liberals did when John Diefenbaker nearly obliterated them in 1958. In fact, that's the party's worst share of the popular vote since Confederation. Nearly 850,000 fewer ballots were cast for the Liberals than in 2006, a drop of 19 per cent. That total, 3,629,990, is down from 5,252,031 ballots cast for the Liberals in 2000. Unless this decline is arrested soon, it may prove to be terminal for the party.

It is not only the weak leadership of Stéphane Dion that accounts for this abysmal result, although certainly Mr. Dion had a major hand in it.

Liberal officials are denying reports that federal Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion is planning to step down as early as Thursday.

The Toronto Star had cited Liberal party insiders who said Dion would make the announcement on Thursday and then stay on as leader until a successor is chosen.

But a spokeswoman for Dion said the Liberal leader will make no such announcement on Thursday and that her office will inform the media when Dion is ready to speak.

Ujjal Dosanjh’s French needs some work. But the former B.C. NDP premier and reelected Liberal MP for Vancouver South hopes Quebeckers won’t mind that too much, if he joins a potential race to replace Liberal party leader Stéphane Dion.

“Absolutely, I rule out nothing,” Dosanjh told reporters on election night (October 14) as dejected Liberal partisans who had gathered in the Sheraton Vancouver Wall Centre’s junior ballroom saw their numbers in Parliament whittled down while the other parties padded their ranks.

Dosanjh said that he previously nixed the idea of running for Liberal leader because he “didn’t speak French”.