Advantage: Harper

With all this talk about elections and whatnot, the Prime Minister would like you to know that he, for one, is not interested in playing “a lot of political games.” His Health minister, Ujjal Dosanjh, adds that he is personally “disappointed that Jack Layton is playing politics with some very important issues.… I believe that his interest is not about health care, it's about politicking. It's a political game.”

For his part, Stephen Harper is clear and unequivocal: "I have no intention of allowing a Conservative motion to be a bargaining chip in a parliamentary poker game." Neither has Gilles Duceppe, though the game the Bloc Quebecois leader has no interest in playing is chess. Asked whether he would join in a motion to defeat the government, Mr. Duceppe declared: "Mr. Layton has to make a move. It's up to him."

Got that? None of the party leaders has the slightest interest in playing political games. Why, the very idea.

None? Well, except maybe for Mr. Layton. At any rate, everyone seems to agree it’s his move. Though the party he leads has just 18 seats out of 308 in the House, and though it does not in fact hold the balance of power -- the Liberals and NDP have 150 seats between them (not counting the Speaker), to the Tories’ and Bloc’s 152, meaning it’s up to the four independents, as before -- somehow the key player in this game that no one is playing has become Mr. Layton.

You’d think that would be a position the ebullient Mr. Layton would relish. Indeed, the NDP leader parlayed his willingness to support the Liberals in last spring’s confidence vote into $4.6-billion in additional spending. It was predictable that he would come back for a second helping.

But things are different this time, in three crucial respects. One, the Gomery report has aroused public anger over Liberal corruption again -- and the Grits can no longer plead with the opposition to “let Judge Gomery do his work.” In the wake of the report, Mr. Layton could not afford to be seen to be too cozy with his poxy political bedfellows. His post-Gomery rhetoric was accordingly harsh.

But that only left him in a more exposed position. If you’re that upset about Liberal corruption, many voters wondered, what on earth are you doing propping them up in power? The very thing that Mr. Layton hoped to exploit to his advantage -- voter disgust with the Liberals -- instead began to stick to him.

Well, it had help. This is the second thing that has changed. Last time out the issue was Mr. Harper, and his alleged overweening ambition to topple the Grits from power. The way was then clear for Mr. Layton to make what would otherwise look like a shabby bit of dealmaking pass as statesmanship. This time Mr. Harper, perhaps sensing that it was the NDP leader who was now overreaching, stepped back, and adroitly shifted the spotlight onto Mr. Layton. Under pressure from his Western MPs, Mr. Layton felt obliged to harden his position.

One other change in circumstances was needed to bring us to the present pass. It was always to be expected that one day the NDP would present the Liberals with a fresh round of demands, that each side would then have to decide how far to press its position -- and that the deciding factor in these calculations would be the polls.

If the polls were clearly moving in one direction or another, one side would have to yield -- as the Liberals did in the spring. Alternatively, if the polls were stuck in neutral, both sides would have an incentive to do a deal. But if the polls suddenly grew volatile and unpredictable -- if they sent confusing and contradictory signals, as in the last two Globe and Mail polls? That is when miscalculations occur. That is when bluffs get called.

There is still a chance, despite the seeming absolutism of their positions -- Mr. Layton demanding a “complete about-face” in Liberal health policy, Mr. Martin rejecting any such possibility -- that a last-minute deal can be struck. But the likelihood of an election looks a lot greater than it did 48 hours ago. Mr. Layton will look weak and foolish if he backs down now, while Mr. Martin can ill afford to confirm a reputation for being a pushover. And if we do go to the polls, there will be one clear winner: Mr. Harper.

Not only will he have manoeuvred the NDP into triggering the election on his behalf, but he will have done so on the most favourable timing he could have wanted: in the immediate aftermath of Judge Gomery’s indictment of the Liberals’ “culture of entitlement.” Moreover, the NDP will provide cover on the issue that has been the Conservatives’ traditional weakness: health care.

Mr. Martin bet the last election on the promise of a health care deal with the premiers: the “fix for a generation” that would end waiting lists in our time. Indeed, so apparent was his need for a deal that the premiers rolled him like the town drunk, taking $41-billion in federal transfers and offering precisely nothing in return. Now he has been called out on it by the NDP, whose credibility on medicare is unassailable, and there can be no more dramatic way of making your point than by bringing down the government over it.

Corrupt, the Liberals might be able to survive. But corrupt and weak on health care?