Divided Loyalties: The Liberal Party of Canada, 1984-2008

Editorial Reviews. Review. 'Divided Loyalties does an effective job of putting a quarter-century of Liberal history into a coherent whole, while adding some.
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Trudeau’s Arrogance And Dishonesty On Full Display!!!

In a longer and wider context, it is not so simple. Post, it was never going to be easy to combine a Quebec power base with a centralising philosophy. But even without Meech Lake, Quebec would have challenged Ottawa hegemony. As a national unity party, the Liberals needed an electoral base outside Quebec and this they failed to find.

A burgeoning welfare state not only fuelled provincial ambitions to deliver services, but widened the split between social and business Liberals.

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It was no longer a matter of paying taxes for the baby bonus, but rather of wrestling with a blossoming deficit. Then there was the 'democratic deficit'. If this meant wider participation, it opened up riding associations to special-interest subversion.

MPs found themselves fighting for their careers and, with convention delegates at stake, grass-roots battles stoked leadership rivalries. But if the imperative was to bring in women and ethnic minorities, then headquarters dictation was required. At a time when other campaigns were mobilising the Internet, Liberal recruiters were restricted to one paper membership form at a time to guard against packing. Once feared as Canada's most ruthless machine, headquarters lacked even a reliable national membership list.

Editorial Reviews

One disadvantage of Jeffrey's 'insider' account is over-reliance on jargonistic abbreviations. And that made us not nice to caucus members, not nice to a bunch of people. And we paid for it in , we paid for it in and God knows, we're still paying for it today. The unelected clique ran the Martin government and, as is evident by the results, many of its members didn't know what they were doing.

Ever loyal to his men, he excessively depended on their judgments. It became most costly in the handling of the sponsorship scandal. The Martinites played it up instead of down, and they got steamrollered by it. As the author of this book points out, citing the small Quebec players and the small amounts of money involved in the scandal, the sponsorship controversy was not what it was made out to be.

Turner tried to run against the Trudeau legacy. They each paid the price. Turner wanted to open the party to the West and, in supporting Meech Lake, to Quebec nationalists. Paul Martin had identical ambitions. It didn't work for either.

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Given her insider status in the party it is disappointing that Jeffrey didn't get interviews with any of the former prime ministers so that they could answer some pertinent questions. That said, Divided Loyalties does an effective job of putting a quarter-century of Liberal history into a coherent whole, while adding some illuminating detail along the way.

Brooke Jeffrey - Divided Loyalties: The Liberal Party of Canada, - Ged Martin

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Divided Loyalties: The Liberal Party of Canada, 1984-2008, by Brooke Jeffrey

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