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Trudeau, also on the campaign trail, took a similar tough stand, saying there would be no way he would allow Harper to continue to be prime minister.

The fixation on getting rid of Harper is so strong that little attention is being paid to the kind of awkward and perhaps clumsy dance partners Mulcair and Trudeau would make should Canadians elect anything short of a majority government.

Mulcair was quick to note Tuesday that New Democrats have a “tendency” to work with other parties in the House of Commons, but seemed genuinely put out that previous NDP overtures to the Liberals had been rebuffed.

“It’s Mr. Trudeau who takes it upon himself to slam that door shut,” said Mulcair, who noted that it was the Liberals who walked away from the 2008 coalition of opposition parties that had been formed to unseat the Conservatives.

And in a sign Mulcair doesn’t forget a slight, he harkened back to comments Trudeau made last spring where the Liberal leader said he might be open to a coalition with the NDP, just not one with Mulcair in charge of the party.

“There are no problems in terms of personality,” Trudeau told The Canadian Press in an interview on April 14. “Mr. Mulcair is a veteran politician who has proven himself. His style is anchored in the old way of practising politics. Politics needs to be about rallying. And we have very different perspectives on how politics should be practised.”

The dig clearly still smarts.

“It’s very personal when he says he could work with the NDP, but he could never work with me,” Mulcair said later Tuesday. “I’ll let him tell you what his priority is. I know what my priority is. My priority is to get rid of Stephen Harper, defeat him and replace him with a progressive NDP government.”