Bob Rae is calling on New Democrats and Liberals to unite to take on Stephen

Harper, but he would have more chance of reuniting Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor.

The former NDP premier said he worries what policies the Conservative prime minister will have if he wins a majority, but progressive-thinking voters will have an opportunity to combine and defeat him.

Calls for the NDP and Liberals to join have been raised in Ontario for half a century, mainly because the Conservatives have clung to power the vast part of that time while the two other parties split most of the votes between them..

Liberal leader John Wintermeyer met NDP MPPs in 1963 and urged them to join forces after he lost an election, but was turned down by the NDP hierarchy.

New Democrat MPP George Samis later urged his party almost annually to join with the Liberals as the only way to get rid of the durable Conservatives

A Liberal leader, Stuart Smith, said the idea had merit, but would be opposed particularly by his rural MPPs, who were notoriously right wing, and were called "the Social Credit party in disguise" by the NDP

Most New Democrats argued that the Liberals were more pro-business and less supportive of labour and the underprivileged and that co-operation between them would be an "unholy alliance."

The Liberals and New Democrats were unable even to work together to bring down Conservative governments when they were reduced twice to minorities in 1975 and 1977. Neither would do anything that could help install the other party.

The NDP under Rae and Liberals under David Peterson finally agreed to co-operate in 1985, when the Conservatives again fell to a minority. The NDP guaranteed to put the Liberals in government and support them for two years on condition they introduced specified programs.

But Liberal fresh faces after decades of Tory governments proved appealing and Peterson was quickly able to call an election and win a majority.

The New Democrats felt they got the worst out of this short spell of co-operation. They eventually were elected to government after the Liberals imploded in 1990, but mainly because voters were unwilling to bring back the Tories they had kicked out only five years earlier.

The Liberals under Dalton McGuinty later obtained co-operation and votes from some New Democrats by running an aggressive campaign in which they claimed that only their party had a chance of defeating far-right Conservative premier Mike Harris, who offended many by cutting government and services, and that votes for the NDP would be wasted.

This gave the NDP another reason to fear getting tangled up with Liberals.

New Democrats in Ontario, who automatically are members of both provincial and federal parties, still find little affinity with the Liberals, consider them closer to Conservatives and feel those two parties have more philosophical reasons to join.

New Democrats often say they prefer Conservatives, who feel they like the Liberals promote policies that favour the better-off but at least are frank about it, while Liberals pose as concerned about the weak in society but do not help them much when they have the opportunity.

New Democrats also recall ruefully that when they wound up with fewer seats than required to be classed as a party and allocated support services, the Liberal government had to be pushed by public opinion to approve services for them, while the Conservatives had offered them willingly.

Ontario NDP leader Howard Hampton a few days ago complained that the Liberals permit more children to live in poverty, while holding $8,000-a-table dinners for party funds.

Hampton says the Liberals "say the right things in their speeches, but don't mean any of them and hardly ever do them.

"The Conservatives tell you what they will do and do it, but the Liberals criticize everything the Conservatives do and do exactly the same when they have the chance."

Rae is optimistic if he believes these differences of philosophy can he bridged easily and the two parties will embrace each other with open arms.