[LINK] No, they aren't

[rfmcdonald]

My thanks to schillerium for satisfying my unworthy curiosity.

They started off as a political golden couple, but wound up a wincing example of why you shouldn't date someone from work. "Never dip your pen in the company ink," as one Conservative insider put it. With news reverberating around Parliament Hill of Belinda Stronach's blockbuster bolt from the Tories to the Liberals, the indelicate question was unavoidable: What about Peter MacKay?

Stronach's well-publicized romance with the Conservative deputy leader charmed many of the hard-hearted vote-counters who populate Parliament Hill. Both were photogenic. Both were ambitious. And their relationship could hardly have come to a more disastrous end.

Sources confirmed the pair are taking a "break" from the relationship first made public in January.

"Suffice it to say, I'm very happy and quite smitten," MacKay beamed at the time.

Tory insiders now say he was one of the last to know of Stronach's planned defection.

This has to be excruciatingly painful for the man. While his decision to violate his oath and bring the rump of the old Tories into union with the Canadian Alliance is something I resent, as a fan of the Red Tories, having one's relationship collapse so completely and publically must hurt excruciatingly.