One reason Liberals are worrying about their leader this week is his alarming tendency to ignore the box Conservatives are putting him in and insist instead, “We’ve got them right where we want them."

If there has been one Liberal pawing the ground and champing at the bit for an election sooner rather than later, despite the byelection debacles in Quebec recently, that one Liberal is the one whose decision counts most: Stéphane Dion.

No wonder there’s fretting in the ranks.

The advice Dion gets is almost all to the contrary. As one veteran Liberal says privately, “There is no advice to have an election now that is not either stupid or mischievous.”

And as Jean Chrétien's former right-hand man Eddie Goldenberg puts it, figuring out what to do in this situation is not rocket science. “Opposition parties should get ready to force elections when they think they can win. And not before that,” he says.

Those charged with managing the Liberals in Parliament seem to take it as a given the party will not use the coming speech from the throne (or SFT in the shorthand of the Hill) to defeat the government.

Last night on “Politics” House Leader Ralph Goodale told Don Newman the opposition’s right to oppose legislation in the House is not affected by how they vote on the throne speech later this month. To be thinking that far forward presumes the government will survive the throne speech test at least.

So, with strong indications Liberals want to keep the government in place for a while, the question becomes: can they get their leader to follow them? By all accounts he is a stubborn fellow.