Book Review: How We Almost Gave the Tories the Boot: The Inside Story Behind the Coalition
By Brian Topp
Lorimer, 2010, 192 pages
Reviewed by Walker Morrow
Brian Topp is an NDP man, through and through. He worked in the Roy Romanow government in Saskatchewan, ran the federal NDP's war-room during the 1997 and 2004 elections, and was their national campaign director for the 2006 and 2008 elections. He is currently the executive director of the performers' union, ACTRA Toronto.
Not that there's anything wrong with that.
The only reason it's worth bringing up is that when reading Brian Topp's book, How We Almost Gave the Tories the Boot: The Inside Story Behind the Coalition , a behind-the-scenes account of the 2008 coalition 'crisis' (when the Liberal Party and NDP almost united, with the support of the Bloc Quebecois, to topple the government) his view is often filtered through an orange lens.
Not that there's anything wrong with that either.
Brian Topp's book is almost 200 pages long, but it's fast paced. This is not to say that it's light reading: there's a lot of information to take in, as one wades through accounts of phone calls, BlackBerry and email exchanges, meetings, and negotiations—the inner workings of a coalition government that almost was.
This book has a tendency to become somewhat complicated: you find yourself having to remember a lot of names as person A talks to person B, who then BlackBerries person C, who then calls person A again, all the while in negotiations with person F. The text also has a tendency to get tied up in knots: narrative A is interrupted by a brief account of narrative B, which gets dropped for a quick story involving narrative C. One finds oneself going down the occasional rabbit hole.
The good news is, these are very interesting rabbit holes. After all, isn't that what an insider's account—of anything—is about? Rabbit holes? Naming names? Without such features, Topp’s book wouldn't be half as much fun.
And this book is most definitely a political nerd's idea of fun. It's fascinating to see just how close Canada came to having a Liberal-NDP coalition (with the Bloc as supporting partners by necessity). Accounts of Liberal Party infighting between the Stephane Dion and Michael Ignatieff camps only add flavor. The read will also get a revealing glimpse of the inner workings of both the New Democratic and Liberal parties—there are a lot of familiar names in the background.
At any rate, this is one insider account that you might want to pick up in the near future.
It combines the best of both worlds (gossip and punditry) in one relatively short, nostalgic package.
Definitely worth a read.
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