For a handle on the current state of federal politics, consider the leaders of the four parties as grubby boys in a schoolyard, each with fists clenched menacingly, each trying to scare the others with threats of electoral annihilation but scaring themselves more.

Buster Harper is the chubby one whose clothes always look one size too small, and he walks uncomfortably; Stéphane Dion, with his book bag on his back, always looks as though he has just emerged from choir practice; Little Jackie Layton is the smallest but sticks his chin out in the hope that he looks tough; Frenchie Duceppe, the slim one, always has a Montreal Canadiens cap that he wears at an angle and that he thinks is a bit dashing.

If you guys don't shut up, I'm going to call an election. You're looking for trouble and you're going to get it. Do it my way and we won't need an election. No, do it my way and we won't need an election. Yeah? Yeah! Who says? I say, so stuff it. Yeah? Yeah! You're chicken. Say that again. Yeah? Yeah! I dare ya. Yeah?

Most schoolboy encounters never get past the stage of yeah? yeah! because you'd really like to paste the other guy but you're always afraid the other guy might paste you first. But they are into it now, and when the speech from the throne is read on Tuesday evening, they'll be into it worse. Someone will actually have to fight or back down.

Libs in freefall

For Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the temptation of an election must be almost irresistible: Stéphane Dion and the Liberals are in freefall and seem to be tumbling faster with each day; likewise Gilles Duceppe and the Bloc Québécois; Jack Layton and the New Democrats have their boots nailed to the floor, going nowhere.

But of course Harper and his Conservatives must tread carefully. His opponents are floundering, but it is unclear whether Harper has gained substantial support beyond what he won in the election campaign nearly two years ago.

For months now, the Conservatives and Liberals have been locked in a virtual dead heat, although a new poll by the firm Ipsos Reid has the Harper Tories at 40 per cent — in striking distance of a majority — and the Liberals at just 28 per cent of decided voters.

Perhaps because he has similar numbers in hand, Harper has been almost daring the opposition to defeat his government, taunting them with the prospect of an unpalatable throne speech that would force them to vote it down.

He has also been clearing the decks for an election call by, among other things, making peace with Nova Scotia on offshore oil revenues. But in the process he has inspired a level of contempt from Newfoundland's Danny Williams that is astonishing. Conservative strength in Atlantic Canada is already sufficiently uncertain that a continuing brawl with the popular Williams may be more of a risk than Harper wants.

If Harper is to find a majority, it will probably be in Quebec, where the Bloc is in serious trouble. But the prime minister's main ally in Quebec is Premier Jean Charest, whose own political problems seem endless. The unknown is whether the return of Pauline Marois as head of the Parti Québécois will revive the Bloc to the detriment of the Conservatives.

Ontario's tired

The re-election of Dalton McGuinty as premier of Ontario this week cannot be regarded as good news for Harper. The provincial Conservatives lost votes on the battleground that the federal Conservatives must win if they are to have any hope of a majority.

That said, if Harper's course is less than clear, Stéphane Dion's future is profoundly murky. The Liberal leader has quite simply failed to register on the consciousness of English Canada, and he has fared even worse in his native Quebec. His chief ally in the Liberal party bureaucracy has been pushed out in circumstances that must be acutely painful for Dion.

Before that, of course, were the three Quebec byelections that were positively humiliating for the Liberals. The old days of Quebec as the stronghold of the federal Liberal party are long gone, but losing the Outremont riding should have been impossible.

Predictably, the New Democrats saw their victory in Outremont as the signal of a breakthrough for the party that had only once before won a seat in Quebec (a seat they also won in a byelection and that was lost in the next general election). Jack Layton should enjoy the NDP victory, but he should not delude himself that it will change the face of federal politics.

What Layton, Harper, Dion and Duceppe must all ponder is whether the immediate future of federal politics was not sketched out in the Ontario election. After all the sound and fury of a campaign that seemed to go on for months, not much changed. With the economy in good shape and peace in the land, voters did not seem inclined to get mad or get excited.

The exception to that placid picture, of course, is Newfoundland, where Premier Danny Williams got the province sufficiently agitated that he won himself a landslide re-election. However, there is no sign of any such agitation on the federal scene.

So as the four schoolboys gather to hear the speech from the throne, brandishing their fists and their taunts, it is still not clear whether any one of them will actually bring himself to throw a punch. The danger is when you throw and miss.

[an error occurred while processing this directive]