EDMONTON, ALTA: NOVEMBER 26, 2014 -- Rob Anderson, Wildrose finance critic speaks to the media during a press conference at the Alberta Legislature in Edmonton on Nov. 26, 2014. Photo: Ryan Jackson/Edmonton Journal In 1924, when Winston Churchill crossed the floor of the British House of Commons to serve as Conservative finance minister, he joked: “Anyone can rat, but it takes a certain amount of ingenuity to re-rat.”
Churchill, first elected as a Tory, crossed to sit with the Liberals 20 years earlier after falling out with the Tories over their opposition to free trade.
When he crossed back, he was ratting out his comrades and putting personal advantage ahead of the views of those who voted for him.
And it’s a good thing that voters tolerated it, since he went on to lead the worldwide fight against the Nazis.
Alberta MLA Rob Anderson didn’t show Churchillian wit on Wednesday when he explained why he was re-ratting, crossing to the Progressive Conservatives, the party he left in 2010 to join the Wildrose Alliance.
Anderson said that he didn’t have the belly to oppose Alberta Premier Jim Prentice.
“The fact of the matter is his policies are completely in line with ours and I don’t want to fight him. I want to work with him. I want to help him.”
When Anderson left the Tories for Wildrose, Ed Stelmach was struggling as premier, having taken over from the amazingly successful Ralph Klein, and Wildrose Leader Danielle Smith looked like she might end decades of one-party rule.
That almost happened in the election of 2012, after Alison Redford took over from Stelmach, but Smith flubbed the campaign, and Alberta voters stuck with the Tories.
After Redford’s ostentatious travel claims were revealed, and her premiership fizzled, Prentice came in from Bay Street on a white charger to rescue the Tories.
He looks like he could run the place for a long time. Once a serious contender for the job now held by Stephen Harper, Prentice is a driven, competent manager, the kind of person who can deliver on difficult files.
But leaders, not managers, are successful in politics, and they’re not always the same thing. Paul Martin, the most talented manager of his generation, struggled to set priorities, to show people where he was headed as prime minister and bend them to his will.
Prentice looks a bit like Martin this week, seeking to broaden his coalition past the point where it makes political sense.
Martin convinced politicians from other parties — Scott Brison, Ujall Dosanjh and Belinda Stronach — to cross the floor to him. It irked longtime Liberals to see outsiders enjoy the spoils of power.
Politics is always about ins and outs — who gets the car and driver and who doesn’t.
In Britain, mandarins advise new ministers: your opponents are across from you, but your enemies are behind you.
Prentice must now make room for Wildrose defectors, which may lead to knife sharpening behind him.
That question — whether this gambit will work — is a more legitimate worry than the histrionic shirt-rending about this being undemocratic.
Commentators have lined up to denounce this treachery, as if Smith and Prentice had betrayed Wildrose voters.
Perhaps there are subtle ideological gradations that I, as a Nova Scotian, am unable to discern, but the Wildrose’s rise looks to me to have been fuelled by Tory self-dealing and maladroit administration, not a fundamental difference in values.
If Smith and Anderson, looking across the aisle at Prentice, see somebody who they think should run the province, why should they not join him? If the talented Smith gets a car and a driver out of the deal, is that bad? She will likely be taking it from someone who is not as good at politics as she is, and that will be good for Alberta.
It’s the same with Glenn Thibeault’s defection to the Ontario Liberals from the federal NDP this week. Thibeault, who was NDP caucus chair until earlier this month, will run for Kathleen Wynne in a byelection in Sudbury.
His departure has, understandably, hurt his former colleagues in Ottawa, and NDPers at Queen’s Park denounced him as a turncoat, but what’s his crime? He’s moving from a centre left opposition party to a centre-left governing party. Is it bad for him to want to try his hand at running a department rather than delivering denunciations once in his career?
Even the most unseemly floor crossings can be good for the country.
I thought it was pretty bad for David Emerson to cross the floor directly after the 2006 election to serve in Stephen Harper’s cabinet, since he was betraying his left-leaning Vancouver constituency, but it was surely good for Harper’s new cabinet to have one former Martin minister at the table, and he delivered an important softwood lumber trade deal.
I think we should cut the scolding when politicians cross the floor and save it for when we catch them stealing, lying or deleting emails that shouldn’t be deleted.
The system is designed so that individuals, in pursuing their self-interest, end up serving our interests, for fear of being thrown out of office. Let them do so.
It is not perfect, but it works. As Churchill put it: democracy is the worst form of government, except for all the others.
smaher@postmedia.com
@stphnmaher
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