Angry in the Great White North

The Liberal Party issued a press release designed to end the Jamie Carroll story. As suspected by many, the only choice left was to fire Jamie Carroll -- no sideways shift, no equally valuable role, no attempt to use the skills he's built up over the years.

One of Stephane Dion's closest advisors is out the door:

Jamie Carroll has resigned as both the Liberal party's national director and deputy national campaign chairman, more than a week after reports emerged he would be shuffled to another post.

"On behalf of our National Executive, I would like to thank Jamie for his service to the Liberal Party," Senator Marie Poulin, the party's national president, said in a press release Wednesday.

"His loyalty to our leader and to our party reflects his deep commitment to the values of all Liberal Party of Canada members, and we trust that these values will serve him well in his future endeavours."

Of course, we know what "future endeavours" means: Whatever you hoped to be doing, it'll have nothing to do with us.

The real story, of course, is the end of the power struggle between Stephane Dion and his Ottawa team, and the Quebec wing of the Liberal Party.

It is clear that the Quebec wing won, and won big.

If you are really into conspiracy theories, you might believe that the plan started back with the Outremont by-election. The Quebec wing throws the election, allowing Stephane Dion's hand-picked candidate Jocelyn Coulon (seen by many to be a Dion look-a-like) to suffer a humiliating loss. Having succeeded at humiliating the much-loathed Stephane Dion and having suffered no reprecussions (no mass firings or even veiled criticism), they go for bigger prey. Jamie Carroll meets with these Liberals, and says something that might be construed as denigrating to the French language. Heck, Carroll might not have said anything at all -- all that mattered was that they had one of Stephane Dion's most important and trusted people alone in a room with the door locked.

Just over a week later, Jamie Carroll is out of a job, Stephane Dion's leadership has taken yet another blow, and all the people who publicly called for Jamie Carroll to resign over what he might or might not have said are still in firm control of what is left of the Liberal Party in Quebec.

So here's the score:

Quebec Liberals:1. Stephane Dion: 0.

Or to put it another way:

Federal Liberal Party: 0. Canada: 1.

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