The NDP Is Dead, Long Live the Greens!

The CCF is long dead. And now NDP is dead. RIP. Well, undead, really, as the thing still calls itself NDP, and stumbles about, waving its arms, popping its eyes, gnashing its teeth, and alternating between incoherent mumbling and incoherent roaring. But a zombie is dead, by decent human standards. We shall now call it TOT in English, and LÉO in French, since that is its new self-conferred state, devoid of any substance that indicates a decent human political party: The Orange Team / L'Équipe orange.

It angered and saddened me at first, and I couldn't believe it. So I did an experiment to double-check, and it came back negative, no life signs. It's important to see the world as it is, and not as we wish it, and so though I had a lot of respect and admiration for the CCF-NDP, I can't let TOT's superficial similarity to its former self blind me to its inhuman decrepitude. This is the way of the world, birth and death, creative destruction, if you will, and the death of the NDP also signals the rise of the Greens, Canada's new principled 3rd party. Liberal that I am, I recognise the need for a principled 3rd party to help push the nation's ideological agenda, and progressives are coming to the dawning realisation that the TOT zombie, lacking a brain and a heart, can no longer play that role. The new 3rd party, in structural terms, is the Green Party, and like all decent progressives I am respectful enough to say: Long Live the Greens!

Of course, when I first became aware of the TOT zombie, it was a shock, and I was angry because I thought the NDP had become a sicko, perverting social-democratic principles. But then I conducted an experiment with a representative Totter, a prominent blogger, in Totter terms, who always faithfully repeats the party line. So using a piece he wrote on Church & State as a jumping off point, I asked him a couple of questions whose responses  confirmed my suspicion that the NDP had died, replaced by the TOT zombie. I first asked him to confirm if he was a Charter-respecting pluralist, and if so, his position on Mulcair-Layton's defense of PQ extremists. He claimed to be a pluralist, but also claimed to be unaware of Mulcair's statements, pronounced in front of a silently acquiescent Layton, which was funny. But, playing it straight, I referred him to Silver's & Spector's articles, suspecting he is a typical unilingual clueless Totter. This was when I learnt that the TOT zombie had definitively replaced the NDP. He evaded Silver's quotations from various independent sources, tried to downplay Spector's analysis of French media by pretending Mulcair had simply "stumbled about assymetrical (sic) federalism" and waded back in time to try to save Mulcair with his former Dec. 2007 position, pleading ignorance on Mulcair's devolution.

This representative Totter was clearly arguing in bad faith: anyone who refuses to recognise the reality of Silver's many sources, distorts Spector's analysis, and digs up an old position is clearly someone who knows what's going on but doesn't want to deal with it, honestly. Now that is not how the CCF-NDP behaved. But they were a living, breathing decent human political parties. TOT is not. They are zombies.

For the sake of outsiders and innocents, I will explain what is going on. Once upon a time, Mulcair was the parliamentarian most exercised over NO "rejected ballots" in 1995, mostly from minorities. But that, and 2007 position on reasonable accommodation, was then. This is now. Mulcair was able to win a by-election in Outremont with low voter turnout, but to win seat in general election, he needed implicit support from Bloc, Cons, & Greens, none of whom had a chance anyway, but whose split vote would have let Lib candidate win. They ran non-entities and didn't campaign, basically. If you go back and check press reports, esp. French, you'll find there was open recognition of this. That's fine, it happens all over country for this party or that, in this riding or that. Except that even with their support, Mulcair only barely won. For Mulcair to win again, he needs to keep implicit anti-Lib coalition behind him. This is difficult as Outremont has both high number of ethno-religious minorities from whom one must win some votes, as well as most fervent laïciste elites there are in QC. So he's treading a tricky line, he's got to keep laïciste Bloc voters onside, while not losing others. Hence the repeated motions he introduces, Bill 101 for Federal Govt in QC, French should override Official Languages Act & Constitution in immigration to QC (already provincial, but he proposed motion to bind federal as well - two streams), etc..; None of these have force of law, but all play symbolic politics, pleasing nationalists. Which brings us to Mulcair's statement, to which Layton didn't protest, or correct. The crux of Bouchard's attack on PQ was less re. separation and more about how they have become radicalised on "identity issue". His brother, Gérard, was co-author of report that said, basically, QCers should be more liberal, philosophically. Gérard has been attacked mercilessly. The PQ has done all it can to take over the ADQ's pro-bigotry position - not that the PQ wasn't before, but not as much, under Boisclair. The bigots and hardcore PQ supporters were not enamoured of the gay, bilingual, liberal leader, and the PQ and he paid the price. And Mulcair knows that the Cauchon steamtrain is coming.

Rather than end his political career with honour, Mulcair has decided to go all in with the bigots, to keep the Outremont laïcistes onside. He's screwed either way, but he's calculating that the laïcistes are a better bet than the Jews, Arabs, Muslims, Catholic Italians, Orthodox Greeks, Asians and Anglos. He knows that Cauchon has deep links with everyone in the riding, including these minorities, and it's almost certain that under Cauchon the Liberal vote will come home. But Mulcair calculates that maybe, just maybe, if he can get UdM student laïcistes out, he might be able to hold on, by the skin of his teeth, since the kids are the only group he can grow, potentially, given their low voting record. Mulcair is wrong, he's screwed, royally, and he would have done better to go down with honour, but he's never had any, so why would he start now? At least decent folk can look forward to his prospective defeat. Charest & Dion will probably both have an extra glass of bubbly on the night, along with decent folk everywhere, as they observe his political death.

TOT sold out every principle the NDP once had in their desperate quest for a QC beachhead. But despite taking on Dion, despite the Stalinist "Strong Leader" campaign, they barely hung on to Outremont. And if they were ever going to win Gatineau, it was last time, but as always, the vote split did them in: if people want to vote for a nationalist party, they are going to vote for the real thing. So Mulcair in Outremont is TOT's last hope for the predictably failed Layton strategy of all-out suck-up to nationalists. When they lose that, as they will, then the question will be asked, what was the point? It was counterproductive elsewhere, if anything. So as Mulcair goes, so goes Layton, whence Layton's silent endorsement of Mulcair's pro-bigotry position. And Totters know this, which is why they are assiduously ignoring the issue, and evading and distorting the record when put on the spot.

I was angry when I thought a supposed social-democratic party had sold out its most fundamental principles for a couple of bigots' votes in one riding it is destined to lose. But I was operating on a faulty premise. TOT is not a social-democratic party. Indeed, I'm quite sure none of its MPs would be willing to identify themselves as socialists, nowadays, taking their lead from Layton (Salutin had a nice column on that, long ago). Well, what does it stand for, you ask? Good question. Nothing, unless you consider Layton & Co's careers a cause. Here's a game I play with uncertain progressives & onetime CCFers-Dippers. I ask them: what did TOT stand for in the last campaign? Fairness, etc., OK, but what, exactly? What policies? The Dion Liberals were, even in worst interpretation, for taxing you to save environment. Bloc is for separation. Greens for environment. Conservatives for conservatism, supposedly, strong army, low taxes, law & order, etc.. But TOT? Nothing. OK then, think back to 2006 election - what were their big ideas then? Nothing, again. OK, so name me the urgent reason that prompted Layton to kill off Martin Govt? No-one ever gets it. Yet for all the criticism, the Martin Liberals had big ideas, national child care, aboriginal welfare (Kelowna), first half-decent environmental plan (only half-decent, nothing more, but better than before or since). And the other three parties had big ideas: Accountability, Separation, Environment. So then I ask them, what is the last big policy idea TOT has had? Nothing. And they're right, it's not because it's under-reported or anything, TOT has simply had no big ideas for years. And why is that? Because TOT has no principles from which such ideas could be derived. Because TOT is not a decent, living, breathing political party: it is a zombie.

Once one accepts that, it is much easier to accept that the NDP is dead, replaced by the TOT zombie. A party without principles, without ideas, withers away, exactly like zombies when they can't cannibalise others (and their ideas). And so one doesn't feel any more sadness or anger: who can be upset about the death of a zombie? TOT is in terminal condition. Of course, TOT will have its good days, as all terminal patients do, but the bad will outnumber the good, and one day, surprisingly soon, it will let out one last inhuman groan and subside, its putrifying body serving as fertiliser for the growth of the Greens, appropriately enough.

The Greens have a clear ideology, the transformation of society to deal with the greatest problem of our time. As this problem will only grow and the Greens will grow with it, their seemingly avant-garde solutions adopted by one and all, exactly as was the case with the CCF-NDP in the last century. Luckily for Liberals, the Dion-Kennedy revolt of the membership at the 2006 convention started a process of complete renewal that has given the Liberals the inside track among mainstream parties on this conciliation of economy, society & environment. Poll after poll shows the Liberals are leading as the most trusted party on environmental issues, an outcome that would have been unimaginable before Dion's leadership. In structural terms, the Liberals are perfectly placed, and as we have recently seen, have no lack of transformative ideas, about both policy and process. This is much as John Duffy proposed, as I recall. Whatever the short-term cost, and probably even more because of it, Dion reinvigorated the LPC, ideologically and structurally, something his critics failed to appreciate. It's funny, people thought TOT was Labour & the LPC was the British Liberal Party, but because of Dion, the roles were reversed, and TOT is undead, like the BLP was at the beginning of the last century, and the LPC is on to modernity, as Labour was. What an enjoyable quirk of history.

Looking back on the deceased it is hard to believe, in retrospect, that the NDP, as it then was, could not understand or foresee that it was eliminating itself. Anyone who understands ecology, particularly political ecology, as the Greens do, obviously, could see that even had the NDP succeeded in its aim of replacing the LPC, it would simply have been the LPC by a different name: what was the difference between the McGuinty & Doer governments, for example? And again, riffing on Davey père, given the choice, people will choose real Liberals over wannabes. Had the LPC essentially changed its name to NDP, as far as the electorate was concerned, the Greens would have become the NDP, so to speak, and another small party would have replaced the Greens. The only way the NDP could have survived as a viable living party would have been to maintain firm principles and produce policies that reflected socialist ideals. But they chose to try to consume the Liberals, and lacking the antibodies of Liberals, contracted the fatal LPC disease, poweritis, which turns parties into zombies. Liberals, hardened through long contact with this disease, experience it only as a more or less severe cold or flu, from time to time. But it's fatal for those without antibodies, as we see with TOT. Perhaps in a generation or two the Greens will succumb to the same disease, we shall see. But for now they are in full healthy bloom of early adolescence.

Totters, as zombies, are having and will continue to have trouble coming to terms with their political death. Remember, zombies' hearts stop, their blood freezes, and their brains turn to mush. A human can say "I think and believe, therefore I am". A zombie cannot. It is beyond it. It does not even know it is a zombie. Typically, a zombie will try to affirm itself by awful incoherent screeches, groans and moans. Remember, as pitiful a sight as it is, that doesn't make it human. Well, perhaps somewhere deep in its mushy zombie brain there remains a flicker of memory of what it once was, but not enough to make it human, and if anything, these hideous sounds are pleas to be put out of its misery. The Greens should make sure to pay heed, as is humane (killing zombies is not euthanasia, morally, in human terms).

So it is that I do not mourn the departed, that is simply inexorable nature. I rejoice in the vitality of the Greens, and the helpful, healthy contributions they have to make to Canadian politics. This Liberal is happy to welcome you, and encourages you to play your role with all the vim and conviction that you are already known for. RIP, NDP. Allelujah, Greens.