One of the first principles of democracy is that all sides commit to accept the results of an election in advance. Democratic government is impossible if the participants in any election make their acceptance contingent on an outcome to their liking. Donald Trump is rightly condemned for refusing to accept the 2020 presidential election result, claiming, falsely, that the election had been rigged.

But now suppose someone were to warn he would refuse to accept the result of an election, not because he had any doubt about the integrity of the process, but purely and simply because he disagreed with the electorate’s verdict. And suppose this warning were accompanied by a threat: that if voters were to make such a choice, he and others of like mind would seek to break up the country.

That, in a nutshell, is what the former leader of the Reform Party of Canada, Preston Manning, has just done. It had the form of an opinion piece in The Globe and Mail. It had the substance of a ransom note. If the country were to return the Liberals to power under Mark Carney, Mr. Manning wrote, it would lead directly to the secession of Western Canada.

“A vote for the Carney Liberals,” he warned, “is a vote for Western secession – a vote for the breakup of Canada as we know it.” Lest you think he was merely predicting, and not advocating, Mr. Manning was careful to make his meaning plain.

He called for the convening of a “Canada West Constitutional Conference” immediately after the election: if the Conservatives are elected, to consider how “to redress the damage done to Western Canada by a decade of Liberal neglect and misrule”; if the Liberals, to “consider ways and means of peacefully seceding.”

Nice: do what we say, or we blow up the country. As attempts at blackmail go, it is cruder even than the note issued by his political ally, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith, with its list of “nine demands” the next prime minister must meet – within six months! – or face “an unprecedented national unity crisis.”

This is not, to say the least, the way a civilized democracy, or a functioning federation, goes about its business. It is the style of the adolescent, of people who are either so immersed in online fan-fiction or so consumed with their own internal dramas – or both – that they have lost all contact with reality.

Mr. Manning does not offer much evidence for his thesis that “support for Western secession is growing,” other than a wave of the hand at a recent survey by the Pollara organization that in fact shows Westerners rejecting the idea by wide margins: by 39 points in Saskatchewan and Manitoba, by 26 points in British Columbia, by 11 points even in Alberta.

Another recent poll, by Angus Reid, offers more detail. It found 25 per cent of Albertans, and 20 per cent of Saskatchewanians, claiming they would be willing to vote to secede; the numbers rose to 30 and 33 per cent, respectively, in the event the Liberals were to form the next federal government.

That even a minority of voters are this unhappy is obviously not ideal. But it hardly substantiates the claim of a burgeoning secession movement. These are, after all, people responding to questions in the abstract, on an online panel. Whether the numbers are remotely reflective of how they would actually vote in a referendum may be fairly doubted; whether any such vote would actually result in secession, even more so.

The numbers of supposed militant separatists in B.C. and Manitoba, moreover, are even lower: 9 per cent and 8 per cent, respectively, 17 per cent and 12 per cent if the Liberals are elected – about the same as in Ontario (13 per cent). The idea that there is a broader Western secessionist movement of any importance is pure fantasy.

And all these numbers are substantially lower than they were six years ago. In January, 2019, Angus Reid found 60 per cent of Albertans were either strongly (31 per cent) or moderately (29 per cent) in favour of separating. In Saskatchewan it was 53 per cent (26 strongly, 27 moderately).

As for the hated Liberals under the nation-rending Mr. Carney, they are currently polling at levels of support they have not seen in the West in decades: in the low-to-mid 30s, on average, in Alberta; in the 40s in British Columbia; in the mid-to-high 30s across Saskatchewan and Manitoba. You have to go back to 1968, or earlier, to find so many Liberal voters in the West.

The knife at the throat is always a discreditable strategy for getting what you want. It is especially so when the knife is made of rubber.