I usually don't like to use this blog for speculation and political punditry -- my desk is next to two of the Hill's top pundits and I like to leave that to them -- but one of the fascinating political battles on the Hill in the last several weeks has been Liberals versus NDP and, if there is a confidence motion to be voted on next week, it' may be more of a staredown between two opposition party rivals than a staredown between the government and the opposition.

The Liberals have long chafed at the fact that, under former leader Stephane Dion as well as under current leader Michael Ignatieff, they have voted with the minority Conservative government on matters of confidence. Under Dion, I got the sense voting with the governnment was partly the responsible thing to do but it was also a matter of realpolitik -- the Dion Liberals never were ready to fight an election and got pummeled when Harper, frustrated he couldn't goad Dion into a fight, pulled the plug himself, despite his own fixed election date law.

Ignatieff has also stood up, as Leader of the Official Opposition, to vote to sustain the government on confidence matters but he has more success, in my view, in successfully convincing his colleagues and, perhaps, the country that there was a good, responsible reason for doing so, i.e. we're in the midst of a nasty recession and some stimulus spending has to happen.

Whatever the reason, the NDP has used each occasion of Liberal support for the government -- and, as Jack Layton notes below, there have been 71 -- to deride that party for being nothing but driftless government wannabees. In the last parliament and in the last general election, the NDP painted itself as Canada's Effective Opposition, in contrast to the Liberal Official Opposition.

From an electoral standpoint, the NDP vs Liberal battle on this front seems to have paid some dividends for the NDP. The NDP won several Liberal-held ridings in northern Ontario, kept a seat in Quebec, won for the first time in Newfoundland and Labrador and holds the only seat in Alberta that is not held by a Conservative.

The Liberals know that, in the next electoral battle, they need to take back some of those seats to win the government and one of the ways I sense they hope to do that is to turn the tables on the NDP and get Layton to support the government by either voting with it on a confidence matter or failing to show up for the vote.

If the Liberals end up forcing an election next week, many Liberal MPs and staffers I've spoken to, are saying so be it. If they can force the NDP to blink and get the NDP to prevent a general election this summer, even better.

Layton, seems to be aware of that Liberal endgame and, yesterday after Question Period, he was asked about the prospects of a summer election:

The Hon. Jack Layton: Well I don't think Canadians are all that keen on a fourth election in five years, but I'll tell you, it's clear that the government's direction is the wrong direction. Looking at the statistics that are available -- the unemployment rate being so high[and] the government's claiming that money's going out the door. It clearly isn't, if you talk to the mayors, which I've done. And I think we'll just have to see what the Liberals do. We have not brought a confidence motion forward. We brought a motion forward on pensions. It'll be voted on next week. But if the Liberals are counting on the NDP in some way, I think they should just look at our record over the last 71 confidence motions and they'll get an idea of where we're coming from.

Let the staredown begin.