At least one lingering question has been answered by last week’s Nova Scotia election: Which partner would benefit most from the stable John Hamm-Darrell Dexter minority — the Tories or the NDP? It’s the NDP. So here’s the new question: Who will benefit most from the professed continuing spirit of co-operation between the two parties?

The answer to that one is that, for Premier Rodney MacDonald, having Darrell Dexter at the door with a bouquet of what looks like flowers is going to be one of the scariest experiences of his young life.

Although one can never foresee all the vagaries of politics, the advantages are heavily with the NDP for next time. The election result — Tories 23, NDP 20, Liberals 9 — is another step in a slow walk in a certain direction, which is towards the NDP in government down the road and the Liberals getting smaller and smaller, maybe to the vanishing point.

It’s true that the Tories also gained: Their popular vote went up a few percentage points. It’s just that the NDP gained more, and the deeper trend is towards them doing it again.

Although they have a fresh face, the Tories are getting to be an old government. And the guy with that fresh face, in his very first political move, turned out to be dreadfully wrong. His mistake was to not pass the budget and to presume that a majority could be had with the flimsy calculations of old politics. Having to humbly proclaim his fealty to the minority government principle he tried to throw away, Rodney MacDonald is starting out on slippery ground.

The key to the next round, however, is the state of the Liberals. The Grits held their ground better than expected, after a poll suggested they were in meltdown. But they still retreated. And although it’s tempting to think that a rebound is possible with a new and more inspiring leader, it’s not that simple.

The Liberal machine, that well-oiled engine that was controlled out of the law and business offices of Halifax for a century and a half, simply no longer exists. The nine who won did so mainly on personal popularity. Francis MacKenzie’s knotty leadership exacerbated the problems, but did not cause them. Danny Graham was emerging as a leader, but when he left to take care of his wife a couple of years ago during her illness (she is recently deceased), insiders were saying that he was also disheartened by the poor prospects of his disjointed party moving forward.

The Liberal nine are basically independents wearing the fading colours of a once-dominant party, but now without a theme and without any real principle of cohesion. Of the 12 elected last time, two didn’t reoffer and their ridings were lost. The likelihood is that this will keep happening — every time a popular Liberal incumbent doesn’t reoffer, it’s all over for the party in that riding.

Normally, a party in the Liberals’ position would at least draw attention for its role as keeper of the balance of power. But Dexter, who continues in his role as shadow premier, has damped that down by promising continued co-operation himself.

MacKenzie’s suggestion of a coalition — one last act of political awkwardness — simply underlines the party’s predicament. But even in the highly unlikely event that the Liberals were to join the Tories to form a working majority, that’s not where the real action would be.

That would be on the ground, where Liberals will be seen drifting away, mainly to the NDP, which is actually in the process of replacing the Liberals as a governing party. The events in Shelburne, where former Liberal Sterling Belliveau ran for the NDP and won, ring a loud bell. Talented Liberals in no-hope ridings will likely be floating that way too, giving the NDP an organized presence everywhere (significantly, Shelburne was Liberal for decades, but the Liberal candidate came out third).

The only real hope for a Liberal revival is if the Tories, for some season, self-destruct like the John Savage and Russell MacLellan Liberals did in the 1990s. A bad economic downturn — one could be starting now — in which the government was blamed for rising misery, might do it, although it might just strengthen the NDP too.

And here’s an odd thing about Liberal fortunes: Before the election, I heard from high-ranking sources in both Tory and NDP camps, saying they were worried about the Liberal decline — obviously worried it would impact negatively on them. So, by way of encouragement to the former grand old party of Nova Scotia politics, your enemies wish you well, which may be small comfort.

Apart from that, the best encouragement I can offer is to say that politics is strange, and you never know.