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Kathleen Wynne does appear to have started it, with an op-ed in the Toronto Star Sunday saying that Andrea Horwath has lost her bearings as the leader of the Ontario NDP. Says the piece with the Liberal leader’s name on it:

Andrea Horwath has said she’s open to supporting a Hudak government — refusing to rule out joining the PCs in a coalition. That’s how much the NDP has lost its way. It’s not the party of Jack Layton or Ed Broadbent or Stephen Lewis. In an effort to win just a few more seats in the Legislature, Andrea Horwath has abandoned the people the NDP once professed to defend. In doing so, she’s created the very real possibility of a Tim Hudak-led government.

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St. Ed weighed in Monday. Do not do that, he said to Wynne in a short, sharp public statement:

Partisan debate is one thing, but by invoking my name in weekend speeches and articles to attack Andrea Horwath and the Ontario NDP, Kathleen Wynne has gone beyond the pale. Let no one doubt: I fully support Andrea Horwath and the Ontario NDP.

Coincidentally(?), the New Democrats themselves invoked Broadbent later Sunday, in an email to supporters from incumbent MPP and campaign co-chair Gilles Bisson, comparing Wynne’s Liberals to Paul Martin’s federal party:

A respected man once said these words: “No matter how unethical, undemocratic, and unprincipled the Liberal Party becomes, the team of insiders at the top can simply not imagine people choosing to take power away. “It should be taken away…its conduct in office has not been ethical. Its contempt for Parliament is rivaled only by its manipulation of voters.” The man who delivered those words was Ed Broadbent, a statesman that I’ve long admired. In his final statement as an MP in 2006, Ed said that the Liberals had lost the moral authority to govern. And so too have the Ontario Liberals.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, Broadbent has not disowned Bisson.