It's less than a week until the Ides of March and signs are now plentiful an attempt to topple Alberta Premier Alison Redford is under way.

By all accounts the coup plotters come from within the premier's own Progressive Conservative Party. They are said to be MLAs desperately worried about the impact of the premier's recent stumbling performance, lousy polls and flagging fund-raising efforts, and backroom men with strong ties to the PC Party of old and to past candidates for leader associated with it.

It's fair to say that Alberta’s Opposition politicians -- be they Wildrose, New Democrat or Liberal -- would do almost anything short of murder to keep the apparently unredeemably inept Redford in power until the next election, scheduled for 2016.

Another million dollars for the Premier's Office?

Now that's interesting!

As in Pravda back in the day in that other one-party state, the name of which escapes me at the moment but which you'd think was still around judging from the chest-thumping 1960s-style rhetoric flowing from our national capital, the big news is never under the darkest headline on the front page. It's buried in the details on the back page.

OTTAWA

What goes up must come down, we used to say, and that adage appears to include both Alberta Premier Alison Redford's in-flight fancies aboard the government's aircraft and the first-class compartments of commercial airliners, as well as her entire political career.

Who would have thought it would be airplane rides that brought this arrogant and erratic premier to earth?

But then, it's always the little things that catch the eye and offend the principles of ordinary voters -- arguments over the constitutionality of a bad law, not so much perhaps, but a too-expensive glass of orange juice or an airplane fare that seems over the top can be just the ticket.

With tip of the ushanka to Andrei Amalrik, we have to ask: Can the Redford Government survive until 2016?

A week is a long time in politics, of course, and a lot can happen between now and the next election to save Alberta Premier Alison Redford's political bacon once again, but, gee whiz, the signs sure don't look promising right now! Some days it doesn't even sound like a sure thing the government can hang in till then.

The spring of 2016, of course, is the time Redford chose for her silly "fixed election period" law, which must have seemed like a good idea in 2011 when the Legislature passed it. Now, maybe not so much.