![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jsburbidgeThe effective threat of the Conservatives to prorogue Parliament to avoid facing a vote of non confidence effectively moves the crisis from a parliamentary one to a constitutional one -- because it amounts to trying to govern not only without the consent of Parliament but against the will of Parliament. This is admittedly for a relatively short period (a month and a half) but it still raises echoes of the Civil War, and and Charles' project of governing without Parliamentary support. At least Charles had an alternative (Filmerian) model of his own for legitimacy, but for good or ill that model has been decisively dropped from the repertoire, if not by the Restoration, then certainly by the Revolution of 1688.
It is arguable that the lack of legitimacy of such an attempt is so fundamental that it would justify the leaders of the opposition going to the Governor General and asking for the reins of government to be passed from the Harper Conservatives to the colaition without the formal prelude of a non-confidence vote on the floor of the House. The Crown, through its representative here, is the final bulwark against fundamentally tyrannical modes of government.
This is especially true as the populist arguments being used by the Conservatives are entirely specious. In a parliamentary democracy, we do not elect a government, or a Prime Minister. We elect M.P.s who, collectively, decide to support a government/ministry and thus a Prime Minister. To put it in another way, the Conservatives were not elected as the government of Canada; they were elected with a Parliamentary plurality only. There is nothing illegitimate in other parties deciding to form an alternative and more viable government.
The fact that the Conservative base in the relatively sparsely populated rural ridings as opposed to the Liberal/NDP base in heavily populated urban ridings means that more voters actually support the parties making up the coalition than the current government itself -- 42.4% as opposed to the Conservatives' 37.6% -- is very nice from an abstract "democratic legitimacy" point of view; butit has little to say about the real legitimacy of the proposed government in our system. If this succeeds -- and I see neither any likelihood nor any reason that it will not -- then there will be a substantial irony in the fact that this election will have brought the most concentratedly urban government to power in the history of the country (the Bloc has a rural base, but it has merely pledged to support the government, and would not be part of it).
I have a fair degree of sympathy for Charles, because my judgement of him is that he was both sincere and well-meaning, if ill-judged. I have none for Harper, and doubt that he will ever generate a posthumous Eikon Basilike, or a tribute like that in the Horatian Ode.
