Conservative MPs returning to Parliament Hill later this month may not realize it yet, but their new majority government has a lot in common with the regime of Jean Chrétien that began in 1993.

The Chrétien government was able to cruise through three straight majority governments because of a weakened and divided Opposition on the right. In the end, the two conservative parties took a hard look at the Liberals’ apparent invincibility and decided to put their differences aside and merge into one party on the right.

Now, it’s the Liberals who have sunk to the lowest point in their history — and that may be the least of their problems. The party is badly divided, particularly because an internal hardline group has determined that Bob Rae will never be the party’s permanent leader.

But, most important, the Liberals are going to thrash out what they stand for. Are they the centre-right party of Paul Martin? Or will they go back to the leftist leaning Trudeau years?

Regardless of what configuration the party winds up taking, the most optimistic of Liberals know a revived Liberal brand will be a work-in-progress for most of the coming decade.

As Sheila Copps recently noted, the Liberals have been in this place before. They were reduced to a similar number of seats in 1984, and the party was in a state of civil war. Had it not been for Iona Campanolo as party president, the Liberals probably would not have been ready to take back power in 1993.

Copps is running for the Liberal party’s presidency now, hoping to do the same thing. As a former deputy prime minister and high-energy organizer, Copps would probably be exactly the type of president the Liberals need right now.

The only real difference between now and 1984 was that the Liberals were able to hang on to their Official Opposition status back then. With third party status, the Liberals are going to have to fight hard for the media attention they need to stay in voters’ minds.

As for the New Democratic Party, the illness and recent death of leader Jack Layton is probably the cruellest turn of fate ever dealt to a Canadian political party.

The NDP was able to vault into second place through a well-organized ground force, a disciplined and smart caucus and a now-visceral dislike among many Canadians for Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper. But there is no doubt Layton’s personality was what pulled together that synergy and gave it the momentum the NDP was hoping would take the party into a starring role in the Commons this autumn.

In yet another similarity with the Chrétien years, the NDP is already finding itself under intense scrutiny as the original Reform party did. For some reason, the parliamentary press gallery is usually preoccupied with the Opposition’s challenges instead of the government’s. The coverage given to temporary NDP leader Nicole Turmel’s former membership in the Bloc Québécois is a prime example. The media’s reaction has been overblown, just as the stink in the 1990s over former Reform leader Preston Manning’s clothing allowance was overblown.

When Martin had put a founding member of the Bloc in his cabinet, Jean Lapierre, nobody cared.

As it turns out, Harper himself has a minister who also is a former Bloc member, Transport Minister Dénis Lebel. And one of Brian Mulroney’s strongest ministers, Benoît Bouchard, had campaigned for separatism in the 1980 referendum.

Switching allegiances is an integral part of Canadian politics. And that brings us to what will be a wild card in the decade ahead, just as it was in the Chrétien years — merger. Both the Liberals and the New Democrats say today they are not interested in merger — just as the Alliance Party of Stephen Harper and Peter Mackay’s Progressive Conservatives said they were not interested just months ahead of their amalgamation in 2003.

There remains a strong possibility Liberals and New Democrats will get tired of waiting for Harper’s government to defeat itself, just as the Alliance and original Tories got impatient with the Chrétien and Martin regimes. Shifting allegiances is what Canadian politics is all about. IE