The NDP - where to from here?

JKR wrote:

Maybe it's time for the NDP and Greens to merge especially now that May is stepping down as leader of the Greens?

It took three consecutive Liberal majorities to get the  federal PCs and Alliance(Reform) to merge. And they didn't have to deal with the complication of what to do with  provincial parties, which in the case of the NDP are organically bound to the federal party. I doubt that those at the top of the NDP will have much motivation to merge with the Greens until the latter get a lot closer to the former in seat count.

I think a better approach would be to look at the matter not as a merger, but as a refounding...as the creation of an entirely new entity, in which those who were in leadership positions in both the NDP and the GPC in the past would be kept outside of positions of influence in the new entity, in which the bad choices made by both of the old parties would simply not be repeated in what is created next, in which decision-making power will be held by the voices from below.

It's not about merger...it's about creating something entirely new and learning from all that failed in the past.

The Conservatives are the masters of controlling their message. 

Pondering wrote:

Misfit wrote:

Pondering,

1. Someone who supports Justin Trudeau and the Liberal party, and who says that it is a good thing that the NDP didn't win and that it is a good thing that Singh didn't win either should not be the one to take the initiative to lead a discussion on how to fix the NDP. It is inappropriate and offensive.

2. Someone who claims that it is a good thing that Singh did not win the election is being disingenuous by saying that they support Singh.

This is the only thing that one can take from my comments. Anything else is utter trash.

 There are posters on Babble who take the NDP very seriously and consider it the best shot at promoting a left wing voice in Ottawa.

And you are full of shit. I did not want Mulcair to win because it would have locked the NDP into the centrist approach.  I did want Singh to win because he focused on climate change and inequality. 

Stick to expressing your own views. Your primary concern is pipelines. Mine is the environment. 

It isn't up to you to decide who should and shouldn't participate in a conversation. You search my posts to find something to be offended by. Your repeated attacks are inappropriate. If you want to discuss politics fine. If you want drama go elsewhere. 

I never said that you cannot post here. I said that your posts in support of the NDP are disingenuous and tactless.

I am telling you that you cannot say that it is good that Singh didn't win the election in one breath and then say that you support Singh in the other breath and be expected to be taken seriously.

And don't make proclamations that my primary concern is pipelines. I never said that. So you are not welcome to tell me what my primary concerns are because you don't know. And yes, I do have a major problem with that. Stop it!

Pondering wrote:

Stick to expressing your own views. Your primary concern is pipelines. Mine is the environment. 

Maybe you should also stick to expressing your own views without telling others what they are "really" saying? I think your interpretation of what Misfit says is slanted. I think it's obvious that Misfit puts a higher priority on "the environment" over "pipelines" as concern over the pipelines is based on an overriding concern for the environment.

I used the term giggly goo to refer to Pondering's support for Justin Trudeau in 2015. That remark was inappropriate and I do apologize for what I wrote.

Pondering wrote:

I appreciate that Misfit but I am really tired of having my integrity repeatedly questioned. My logic may not always be the best, I may make mistakes, but I have always been honest. 

You have also acted as if you are entitled to talk down to everyone else here and dismiss everything any of the rest of us have to say, and as though all of us should simply take it on faith that you know what the people want and what the NDP should do in a way that no one else on this board has any right to question or challenge.  When you post like that and then you say things, as you did just above, which makes it look as though you might actually be glad that the party is now for all practical purposes dead in Quebec and reduced to so few seats overall that it is now doomed to be pathetically irrelevant in a parliament where it would have been able to make a huge positive difference if it at least had held its ground in the seat count, exactly how do you expect people to react?  How would you LIKE us all to take that? I truly didn't want to hurt your feelings there, but can you honestly not understand why you got that reaction?

My responses to you have nothing to do with gender.  The way I respond to you is exactly the way I would respond to a cis-man posting in the way you post.  And since nothing we're talking about in this thread has anything to do with gender, why are you bringing gender into this at all?  

All I expect from people here is for nobody to talk down to anyone else, for everyone to be addressed on a level of intellectual and personal.   You absolutely have the right to express your views, and I defend your right to express them-but they are simply one set of views among many, and nobody here has done anything remotely like oppressing you or trying to suppress your opinion.  It's no harder for you to post here than anybody else and as far as I can see you are at no disadvantage in posting here compared to anyone else.   It's just that sometimes, people will disagree with what other people will say and question where they are coming from when they say it.  I've been on the receiving end of that reaction probably as often as you have.

I accept that you didn't want the NDP to do badly, fine- It's just that it was only natural to read what you wrote and have questions come up about where you were coming from there.  That reaction had nothing to do with your gender.

Unless Ken Burch has stated publicly that he supported Mulcair or that he wanted the party to veer to the right, it is not anyone's place to redefine what his positions are. Personally, I don't believe that Ken Burch was ever  a strong supporter of Mulcair, nor would I ever even think that he would want the party to veer to the right. The issue isn't whether you are right or not, the issue that it is very dangerous to state what other people's positions on matters are. You are assuming that he holds these positions but you state your assumptions as direct fact. They are not statements of fact, they are merely assumptions on your part.

From here on, you need to phrase your assumptions appropriately like saying such as, "I gather from your posts that you were a strong supporter of Mulcair", or "I assume from your remarks that you really wanted the NDP to veer to the right". You simply cannot impose political positions on others without them stating it clearly themselves. If you don't, then you could be seriously misrepresenting what their positions are.

Fair enough:  If you wish to argue that my support of the NDP is not to be trusted, I may have given you grounds to think that and I'm open to any personal critique you wish to offer.

It is true that I was deeply critical of Mulcair and especially of his still indefensible insistence in hanging on as leader for years after the election and for an additional year after being voted out of the leadership, a year in which Mulcair -he had to have known that losing more than half his party's seats in 2015 was a guarantee that the party could never make any sort of electoral comeback on his watch, and knowing that, Mulcair should have offered his immediate resignation as leader on election night so that a new leader could be elected with enough time to prepare the party for the next election, or, if nothing else, he should have stood down as leader immediately after losing the leadership vote at the party convention.

That said, I also saw no good that could come of the NDP losing seats and being knocked back, in the end, to the irrelevant third place position from which it might never recover.  And I was never under the delusion that the Liberals under Justin T. were actually more progressive than the NDP.  I didn't want Mulcair to stand down during the election campaign.

To relate this to the other party leadership dispute I've also discussed on Babble, while I have frequently defended Jeremy Corbyn from the unjust and vicious attacks he has constantly been subjected to as leader of the British Labour Party, had he led that party, in the 2017 elections, to a showing comparable to the showing Mulcair lead the NDP to in 2015-that is, had he driven the Labour vote down from 30% to 20% and the seat count down from, say, the 232 seats it had held before the election to 107, I'd have been among the first calling on him to stand down immediately-and in all liklihood, I would not have had to call on him to do that because he'd have already stood down on his own.  In real life, he led the party to a massive gain in the popular vote, increased the seat count by over 30, and knocked the Tories into a minority in an election where Theresa May expected to win in a landslide and even though that would have settled the leadership election once and for all, Corbyn was put under even more barbaric attacks, including the despicable slander in which it was repeatedly claimed that there'd been a massive increase in antisemitism within the party under his leadership.

It's true that, once Mulcair did finally let go of the leadership after hanging on to the job until there was almost no time left for a new leader to make any effective case with the voters, I did not want Singh to win the leadership.  He is a decent enough man, but I always distrusted the heavy-handed effort made by the party insiders to essentially coerce the party into choosing Singh-on this very message board, we saw the hard-sell effort made by the insiders, the repeated insistence that Singh simply HAD to be made leader, simply because the insiders wanted him to have the job-those who supported other candidates, including you, Pondering, were incessantly talked down to by the "it HAS to be Singh" claque, we were repeatedly told that it didn't matter what he stood for or what he proposed, because he supposedly had this magically transcendant personal charisma which outweighed any other possible consideration.  

When Singh won, I was, in fact, often critical.  It was criticism born out of great fear for what would happen to the party and out of concern for whether he himself would face the personal electoral humiliation of failing to lose a seat

It was out of that fear that I repeatedly argued that Singh should to something, ANYTHING, to get the attention of the voters and, having gained that attention, to start giving people some idea of what an NDP government would do if elected, what NDP MPs would do if elected in numbers large enough to once again be the Official Opposition OR even enough to hold the balance of power in a minority parliament.  It was out of that fear that I did, occasionally, raise questions about whether he was up to the job or really cared about doing the job.  It was out of that fear that I pleaded for the party to make at least some active connection with the social movements-which was not the same thing as saying that the NDP had to do every single thing each of those movements wanted-though few of the things they want are actually unpopular-it simply meant broadly telling those activists that they are welcome in the party and that it's a place where their ideas will get a real hearing.  

I recognize that my tone towards Singh has often been harsh.  I could see where things were headed and, like a lot of other people out there, I was trying to point out the dangers.  Those of us who warned that time was being wasted and opportunities to educate and persuade were being squandered did not do so out of malice-none of us WANTED the NDP to have the kind of showing it had.  It was just about trying to prevent that kind of a disaster.

I called for Singh to stand down on election night this year and I apologize for that.

I caused you, Pondering, to feel personally attacked.  That's on me and I apologize for that.  That was emotion talking and I should have been better than that. 

I do not apologize for speaking out about what I felt was needed to save the NDP from electoral disaster.  That's been my objective in those discussions and nothing else.

And I maintain that the NDP would have a much stronger base of support if it were running as an antiwar/antiimperialist party-not all out pacifist, since no governing party can do that, but clearly for a break in the perpetual war status quo and especially the perpetual war against the Arab/Muslim world and with the notion that Canada has to back everything the US does to the world, such as what it just did to Bolivia-and an antigreed party.  Those issues aren't random and they affect us all, and the NDP isn't ever going to get votes from people who support military coups or the idea that the economic decisions which affect us all should be made solely for the self-interest of the few.

None of what I called for is distant from the people, none of it is irrelevant to the many, all of it affects us all.

I don't post with the intent of personally attacking people.  I will speak bluntly at times.  This can read as pomposity and that is something I need to work on.  

And if people have questions about my intent, if what I post here makes others wonder where I'm coming from, it is only fair that I be open to being held accountable on that.

And I'm truly sorry, Pondering, if what I said about you somehow managed to come across, do to whatever phraseology I used, as an implication that your views were less worthy of respect due to your gender-something that has never actually crossed my mind in reading anything you have written-than I need to work on how I say things.

..layton came out of the npi. once elected he moved right..better known as the third way. not left as purported by the npi. 

The history of the New Politics Initiative: Movement and party, then and now

I. A short history of the NPI

The New Politics Initiative was formed in the spring of 2001. At that point in time, new forms of grassroots progressive organization were on the rise -- represented most energetically by the anti-globalization movement (which, in retrospect, reached its apex in Canada at the Quebec City protests that April). But that energy and hope was not reflected in the left's electoral fortunes, which at the time were depressed. For example, the NDP had endured three consecutive poor showings in federal elections. The movements and the party seemed headed in different directions.

Outgoing NDP Leader Alexa McDonough launched a party renewal exercise in 2001 (echoing a similar review that took place in 1994). It seemed to many of us that the left needed an electoral party with closer links to the new energy in the grassroots social movements, to better unify our efforts, push our demands, win converts, and fight for change -- both inside parliament, and outside. The NPI thus launched a proposal that the NDP reconstitute itself (in active cooperation with other organizations and progressive parties) as a broader, inclusive, more movement-connected party.

The NPI's work was organized around a resolution submitted to a special NDP convention on party renewal that was held in Winnipeg in Nov. 2001 (culminating McDonough's renewal exercise). In the lead-up to that convention, NPI supporters had argued -- both within the NDP, and outside of it -- for a "new politics," linked more organically to social movements, and reflective of a more participatory, dynamic democratic process. Our thinking was that social change does not come solely, or even primarily, from electoral campaigns. It comes, rather, from deeper shifts in popular consciousness, ideology, and organization. That's why progressives must be campaigning on progressive issues, and working to build progressive structures of engagement and democracy, all the time, not just during elections.

Indeed, we argued, the success of progressive political parties ultimately depends on whether we are winning that day-to-day battle of ideas in society, and on our success in building alternative structures and capacities among the whole spectrum of communities fighting for social change. Without social movements, trade unions, environmentalists, feminists, queer activists, anti-racist organizations, civil libertarians, and all the rest striving to raise issues and win converts, progressive politicians don't stand a chance come election day. And even if, by fluke, they did happen to win (perhaps because of how the votes for other parties broke down), their power to implement progressive promises is utterly compromised without an aware, mobilized, demanding population behind them. We've learned that painful lesson many times.

The NPI was endorsed by close to 2,000 individuals and organizations, many of whom were NDP members, but many of whom were not. In addition to progressive NDPers, NPI support came from a wide range of other grassroots organizations, other movements, and even other political parties -- including Greens, revolutionary groups, and the Canadian Action Party. The NPI organized meetings and consultations in cities across Canada. At the NDP convention, it organized an NPI caucus. It also sponsored an electrifying town-hall meeting and rally the night before the NPI resolution was debated -- which still ranks in my mind as one of the most hopeful and thrilling political events I have ever attended.

However, the NPI's resolution was defeated the next day by delegates to the NDP's special convention, by a margin of 63 per cent to 37 per cent. Coincidentally, that was exactly the same margin of defeat when Jim Laxer, on behalf of the Waffle movement, challenged for the leadership of the federal NDP 30 years earlier, in 1971. Indeed, the Waffle and the NPI reflected many similar themes and concerns (although the language, constituency, and style of work of the two movements differed considerably, given the changing times); several former leaders from the Waffle were among those who endorsed the NPI....

Aristotleded24 wrote:

The article also omits that Layton's finest hour as Opposition Leader was leading a defense of the postal workers union when they were under assault from the Harper government.

..the election was his finest hr..not this. the legislation was not withdrawn in spite of all the ndp rhetoric. nor was this rhetoric ever transformed into party policy or real positions. those remained timid. 

Change to what? I agree with all the criticisms, but new parties don't spring out of thin air. I was involved in the Québec solidaire process for many years. It took a long time to make a breakthrough. And now a cabal of reactionary carheads want to block and even roll back (à la Rob Ford) Projet Montréal's admirable moves towards a greener and more inclusive city.

Left Turn wrote:

epaulo13 wrote:

..the question has never been "does the ndp understand class struggle" but "where does it position itself within that struggle" 

..we can see from the alta and bc ndp it places itself on the side of big oil and gas vs the environment, working people and indigenous folk. we see the mb ndp with a law and order colonizer positions that filled jails with indigenous folk  and poor people. we saw the fed ndp vote for the bombing of libya. remove it's opposition to nato. support tarsands pipelines under mulcair and lng pipeline under singh. both colonizer positions. 

..and then act like people don't see this. 

In all fairness, many people who are clearly aware of all this nonetheless pretend come election time that they haven't seen it.

..i don't doubt there are some. i'm more familiar with the nose holders. my voting is always strategic. but never lib or con so far although that is possible.