OTTAWA

For the second consecutive year, a politician from the west coast, far from the central Canadian political establishment, has proposed fundamental change in the way politics is practiced in this country.

For their efforts, Nathan Cullen and Joyce Murray have faced charges from their own party elite of disloyalty, of abandoning a great institution, of capitulating to the enemy.

But for the second consecutive year, a federal leadership candidate pitching a platform of electoral co-operation among progressives is overperforming in the race.

Cullen came from the second tier of NDP candidates to finish a surprising third behind ultimate victor Tom Mulcair and the early frontrunner Brian Topp. Mulcair has rejected co-operation with the Liberals.

Murray, a former British Columbia cabinet minister, was similarly below the radar in the Liberal race, but has an odds-on chance of placing second to the presumed winner, Justin Trudeau. Just like Mulcair, Trudeau, who once flirted with the idea of co-operation, has slammed the door on the prospect.

But Murray and Cullen have shown there is an appetite for real change among those who feel Stephen Harper and the Conservatives must be dislodged in 2015.

Last weekend at the Liberal debate in Halifax, Trudeau used Murray’s plan to work with the NDP as a platform to attack Mulcair for “pandering’’ to Quebec separatists and Montreal MP Marc Garneau accused her of giving up on her party. Cullen had to duck similar brickbats a year ago.

Murray says her opponents are deliberately misrepresenting her one-time co-operation plan, calling it a merger — it is not — and spreading myths about proportional representation, another pillar of her plan for electoral reform.

But the Vancouver Quadra MP has become the vessel for party members and new recruits who believe vote-splitting among Liberals, New Democrats and Greens will give the Conservatives another majority government built on a minority of votes in 2015.

Her party has been fixated on personalities and the politics of power, Murray says.

“That’s not something I’m talking about,’’ she says. “I’m talking about change. Sometimes it’s easier to see the need for change when you are on the west side of the Rockies.’’

They may both hail from the west, but Murray is very much the anti-Cullen.

She is softspoken and thoughtful, but does not appear, on the surface, to personify radical change or a revolutionary sweeping aside hidebound traditions. She’s not going to fill your notepad with fiery quotes.

Cullen, 18 years younger, is all energy and staccato bursts and did come to personify a new way of doing politics, including his stripped down, high wire act of a speech at last year’s party convention.

The duo is joined by the Green leader Elizabeth May, who backs co-operation and has formally written to NDP and Liberal MPs seeking support for electoral co-operation in 2015.

Mulcair forbade his MPs from responding to her letter.

But one can see Murray, Cullen and May sitting down and co-operating, not only in 2015, but in making proportional representation work further down the line.

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Co-operation is in short supply these days in Canadian politics.

Under the Murray plan, seats held by the Conservatives in which the governing party received less than 50 per cent of the vote would be targeted for co-operation.

She would blend the 2008 and 2011 results, to eliminate any onetime anomalies. One such anomaly, she said, was the Jack Layton-led 2011 NDP conquest of Quebec.

Each of the three parties would nominate their own candidates and, assuming all three parties backed co-operation, the single candidate would be chosen in a run-off.

If the NDP didn’t want to play, she would have the Liberal and Green parties co-operate and try to beat the Conservatives and the NDP.

She says majorities in all three parties back her plan, so there will be pressure by 2015 on all progressive leaders to listen to the membership.

Proportional representation, of course, regularly founders because changing the system is never in the interest of the party in power.

But Murray can boast of being part of a majority British Columbia government that put the question of electoral reform to the people. A citizen’s assembly plan to move toward proportional representation failed narrowly in 2005, then by a wider margin in 2009.

She knows change takes time, but if there is a lesson to take from these successive springtime exercises in leadership renewal is that it has pulled back the curtain on a real thirst for fundamental electoral change.

Tim Harper is a national affairs writer. His column usually appears Monday, Wednesday and Friday. tharper@thestar.ca

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