How long will it last?

Not the honeymoon for Kathleen Wynne, which will surely be time-limited.

No, I’m talking about “the conversation” between Ontario’s new premier and her NDP rival, Andrea Horwath. The two leaders meet again Thursday afternoon in Wynne’s office to talk politics, power and public policy.

Despite their partisan differences, they share a common lexicon: Both talk up “conversations” as a conflict-resolution device.

In their previous lives, Wynne was a mediator and Horwath a community development worker. They speak the same language and listen the same way.

Can they also communicate and negotiate?

Without NDP support, the minority Liberal government is doomed to defeat. The question is when.

No one is watching more nervously than the province’s labour leaders, who worry about the missed opportunity of a progressive political alliance. They fear unions will pay the price if NDP hardliners try to profit from the party’s recent rise in the polls.

New Democrats dream of disembowelling the Liberals on their march to power. But the nightmare scenario for labour leaders is that Tim Hudak’s Tories would sweep up the middle to impose an anti-union agenda. Hence the house of labour is counselling some form of political cohabitation.

The New Democrats, however, aren’t in the mood.

Behind closed doors, party activists thrashed out their disagreements at a weekend meeting of the NDP’s provincial council. A bitter debate erupted when delegates ruled out a formal coalition with the Liberals (or even a quiet “non-compete” arrangement).

The province’s labour leaders are frustrated, given their special relationship with the NDP, both ideological and financial. Unions have coughed up big money for the NDP’s coffers.

But there’s lots of baggage, past breakups and recurring reconciliations. Now big labour fears the NDP will tune them out — and turn on the Liberals.

“This is a golden opportunity to work something out with Kathleen Wynne over a two-year period,” an influential unionist told me, complaining that overzealous New Democrats want to “throw labour under the bus.”

He may not have noticed, but Horwath long ago threw unions under the bus, ran them over and backed up over them again. Under Horwath’s leadership the NDP has been deeply conflicted about labour’s suffocating embrace.

With unionization in decline, Horwath has tried to expand the NDP’s support base by shedding its image as just a workers’ party. New Democrats are actively reaching out to the vote-rich middle-class suburbs, while infusing ethnic diversity into a party long dominated by the white bread labour establishment.

Those tensions played out at the party’s convention last year, when labour organizer Andrew Mackenzie, backed by the union movement, lost the race for party president to Neethan Shan, a former Scarborough candidate with deep roots in the Tamil community who was backed by the leader’s office.

It is a delicate dance between unionists and New Democrats. And a difficult conversation between Horwath and Wynne.

NDP strategists insist they are in no hurry to defeat the Liberals, not least because the party is still weighed down by a debt of more than $2.5 million from the last election, a mere 16 months ago.

Horwath’s advisers are also skeptical that the party’s recent rise in the polls would translate into an election triumph. It’s possible the NDP’s popularity emanates from her public promise to “make minority government work.”

For the moment, Horwath is still talking — or more precisely, conversing — with Wynne.

Thursday’s conversation will be their third in three weeks. They will discuss the Feb. 19 throne speech, which sets out the government’s legislative agenda, and the NDP’s demands for progress on auto insurance rates, job creation, health care and social services.

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“If we don’t see that, then we’ll make that judgment when the time comes,” Horwath said.

What she didn’t say, but surely knows, is that she’ll also be judged on that judgment.

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