Meanwhile, on the other side of the pond...

...the Conservatives kick Bill Casey out of caucus for voting against the budget. Liberals and NDP have a field day in parliament about it, especially considering Peter Mackey promised not three weeks before that "We will not throw a member out of caucus for voting his conscience. There will be no whipping, flipping, hiring or firing on budget votes as we saw with the Liberal government.” Predictably, the blogsphere is losing their collective minds about it. How amusing!

Don't get me wrong. I get why the Conservatives did this. That's the story in a parliamentary system-- you vote against your own party in a confidence vote and you should expect nothing less. Casey has been around long enough to know this. I mention it more because of a quote in the Star article I linked to-- ""They don't stand a chance in the world," Liberal Senator George Baker from Newfoundland told reporters, speaking about the Conservatives' prospective fortunes in Atlantic Canada."

Again, I pray for the day. You have to think the Cons weren't too smart about this, for all that it fits perfectly with parliamentary procedure. If they'd just swallowed it (The budget passed that particular vote by 158-108) its a dead issue. But now, everyone is talking about the broken resource promise again, the Tories look like scoundrels, and Casey looks like a hero. Now I don't think he's much of a hero-- I mean, he was in the party for 18 years, back to the Mulroney days. Plus, he's probably figured that Cons are, indeed going to get creamed in Nova Scotia (NDP/Liberal split, with perhaps Elizabeth May sneaking past-- I mean, look how chipper she is "the Conservatives will see first hand in the next election the public backlash against the government's decision to renege on the accord.")), and is positioning himself to run as a Liberal in the next election-- something, I note, Dion has already said will be just fine by him. Nor do I forget the results in Newfoundland (100% Liberal) and Saskatchewan (NDP are the big winners here). So yeah, not looking so good for Harper these days. Yay!

As an aside, I listened to part of CBC's The Current this morning before I crawled out of bed, and they had Val Meredith (ex-Alliance type), Copps and a prof named Keith Brownsey. Copps was her usual inarticulate self, but Brownsey just made mincemeat out of Meredith. It was an utter joy to listen to him eviscerate her (note: requires Realplayer) when she told the audience that the American Congressional system was superior to the Canadian system. Not that I don't get frustrated with party discipline myself on occasion, but the Alliance always tends to be knee-jerk about this worship-America stuff, as if the Yanks don't have problems of their own with every Congressman appending riders to bills to support their pet causes. If Meredith loves them so much, she can bloody well move to Montana.