NDP Can Still Succeed in 2015 Federal Election
But only if party veers left, then makes some alliance with Liberals.
Murray Dobbin 9 Feb 2015TheTyee.ca
Murray Dobbin contributes his State of the Nation column to The Tyee and Rabble. Find his previous Tyee columns here.
Cartoon by Greg Perry.
Anyone who really wants to get the country back from the grim reaper now in charge of Canada would look to the NDP as their best hope. Anyone who knows this nation's political history is aware the NDP is the only party that is not completely in the pocket of big business and the political elite and that also has a chance of making a difference in Parliament. A lot of people want to believe the NDP can actually make a difference.
Why Pundits Are Already Wrong about 2015
Regrettably the party and its leader Tom Mulcair aren't making it easy -- which is why fewer people support the NDP now than they did three years ago or even last year. A fundraising letter that arrived last week shows why. The envelope declares "Are you ready to elect Canada's first NDP government?" No one outside the confines of the NDP's castle-under-siege actually believes this is remotely possible and that can't help but have an impact on the party's credibility. If the party and its leader are so disconnected from political reality that they think they are going to double their current 20 per cent support in the polls by October, then how can we trust them to be connected with us regarding a vision for the future?
The party and its brain trust drank the "we are going to win" Kool-Aid under Jack Layton and they're still drinking it.
Don't misunderstand me here. Of course parties run to win. They run to persuade people that they are the best bet for making the country a better place.
But you can run to win without appearing delusional. That means running on a platform that connects intimately with your constituents' deeply held values. A platform which also addresses their fears -- manufactured fears generated by Stephen Harper (terrorism and crime) and real fears about what he will do with the country if he gets four more years.
Must have: NDP-Liberal coalition/accord
Success for the NDP must also mean dealing intelligently with the reality of the first-past-the-post system. That means grasping that the best way -- perhaps the only way -- for the NDP to "govern" is to be part of a coalition/accord with the Liberals.
At this point at least such co-operation seems like a very faint hope.
The Liberals and NDP hate each other even more, it seems, than they hate the Harper Conservatives. That puts them off side with all those Canadians whose singular political desire is to rid the country of Harper and his wrecking crew.
As a friend commented to me the other day, the closer the NDP comes to the Liberals in its policies (now offering tax cuts to small business without a shred of evidence that this would create jobs) the more determined it becomes to have nothing to do with some kind of agreement that could get rid of Harper.
Unless something changes, come election time there will be two battles: the Harper Conservatives will be running to win, and the NDP and Liberals will be fighting their own private war. It is a recipe for disaster for the country.
The conversations that lead the NDP to this apparent abandonment of the country's best interests clearly take place strictly within the confines of the party bureaucracy. Because if the party's brainiacs actually talked to its supporters, members and progressive Canadians in general, it would know just how terrified people are of the prospect of another Harper majority.
The divide between the NDP leadership's thinking and the political sentiment of its potential supporters has never been greater. This disturbing disconnect suggests that unlike the majority of Canadians who are almost paralyzed by fear and loathing regarding the future of their country, those who run the NDP simply aren't driven by the same fear. Effectively, they care more about their party than they do about their country. It begs the question of whether a progressive party can even make a legitimate claim to the title if the people who run it actually care less about their country than the average citizen does.
Status quo Trudeau
Of course the same and worse can be said of the Liberals but nothing more can be expected of them. They are a party of big business, committed to the (ever-worsening) status quo with a long history of appealing to Canadians progressive instincts during elections while dutifully serving the interests of the economic elite. The classic example, of course, was the Liberal Red Book of promises waved ceremoniously at every rally by Jean Chr&eacutetien in the 1993 election. It was beyond cynical that not a single one of the promises was ever kept. Instead Paul Martin distinguished the Chr&eacutetien government with two record-breaking accomplishments: the largest cuts to social spending (40 per cent) in Canadian history and the largest tax cuts ($100 billion over five years) in history. Yes, larger tax cuts than Jim Flaherty's.
But this doesn't mean that these two parties, despite their different histories, cultures and loyalties, could not form some kind of alliance to stop the bleeding. It is done all the time in Europe where nominally strange governing coalitions are formed all the time. Perhaps the best example is the recent victory of the left-wing Syriza party in Greece. It rejected any governing alliance with the fatally compromised old-left parties and teamed up with a right-wing party which agreed with its position opposing the "austerity waterboarding" imposed by the European Union and IMF.
Greece faces a historic crisis that called for an extraordinary political response. It can be argued that Canada faces a historic crisis as well: the threat of providing Stephen Harper with four more years. These are decidedly not normal times. For the first time in our history we actually have a government that is committed to dismantling the best aspects of our country.
That cries out for an extraordinary response. And if the NDP can't propose an accord of some kind based on principle (let's see if the Liberals have the jam to refuse) then why not do it based on opportunism? It would hardly be a departure given its myriad compromises over the years (and its opportunistic defeat of the Liberals in 2006, handing Harper power). Oddly, the NDP claims to want power yet demonstrates with its intransigence on co-operation with the Liberals that it is not actually serious.
It is obvious to all progressive Canadians that if either the Liberals or the Conservatives win a majority the country is in deep trouble. The Liberals will not commit themselves to reversing all the damage done by Harper. They are interested in power for the sake of it and would happily administer the status quo inherited from the Conservatives.
Aim for a minority government
Our only hope is a minority government. If the Conservatives win the Liberals and the NDP must be prepared -- and say so -- to force a vote of non-confidence in the government and form a new government based on a limited number of initiatives. If the Liberals win a plurality the same holds true: co-operation has to be on the table as part of the election.
But if the NDP, in its preoccupation with competing with the Liberals to "win" the election, gets closer and closer to their policies, its risks giving the Liberals a majority.
So far, the NDP are a mixed bag on the policy front. They propose good stuff like the $15 minimum wage, child care, proportional representation and protecting medicare funding. But they are extremely weak on the economy, as evidenced by the party's pandering to small business, refusing to tax wealth and lack of a clear industrial development strategy.
The economy will be the defining issue in October and the NDP has the opportunity, given the rapidly deteriorating economic situation, to dramatically distinguish itself from the other parties. But so far it has been unable to escape the economic policy straitjacket it placed on itself decades ago. Time is running out.
It's running out, too, for getting Canadians accustomed to the idea that a coalition is the best way to save the country.
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