Angry in the Great White North

It is said that the secret of the success of the Liberal Party in times past was its propensity to campaign from the left, but govern from the right.

I wonder if the NDP plans to turn that on its head.  Nycole Turmel, the NDP's interim leader, made a plea for party unity as the the rules for the leadership campaign to replace the late Jack Layton were announced:

Turmel reminded the party that it needs to remain united as it heads into a previously unexpected leadership race following the Aug. 22 death of Layton.

"Every step we take, we will be watched closely," Turmel told members of the NDP federal council. "We must remain focused on the job of building our party. Jack showed us how we can do politics differently, how we can listen and respect other opinions and at the end of the day, remain united.

"And that is what we need to do today," Turmel continued. "We will make difficult decisions, but at the end of the day, we need to walk out of here and be united."

Turmel got one potentially divisive debate out of the way early when she revealed on Thursday that the party executive had decided not to recommend giving greater weight to union votes.

The 2003 convention that elected Layton leader was the first time the federal New Democrats used a one-member, one-vote system, but as with previous races it also gave affiliated unions 25 per cent of the vote.

Who is upset about this change to the privileges once awarded to labour unions?  Well, the unions of course, and anyone on the hard left of the NDP (yes, the NDP has a right wing too, though to most people it is far left as well, but not as far left as the left part of the leftist NDP).  Indeed, this leftist hard core is not above undermining the NDP leadership when they see it drifting to the right (which is still far to the left for most people, but relatively speaking, it is not as far left as the NDP's far left...you get it).

They've done it before, in 2001.

Back then, these troublemakers were led by the likes of Libby Davies, and they formed the New Politics Initiative in 2001, only folding in 2004 on the face saving excuse that the newly elected party Jack Layton was sympathetic to their views (though the reality that in three years there was no rush of people eager to declare themselves to be communists likely played a part as well).

So what was the NPI all about?  The NPI had hoped to gain enough support within the NDP to push forward a plan to disband the NDP completely, and to build a new party of committed socialists and communists.  The NPI plan went something like this:

1. Disband the NDP
2. Something magical happens
3. Win an election and create a worker's paradise in Canada, becoming the vanguard for a global revolution

The second step is clearly a bit vague, and yet many delegates to the NDP convention in 2001 felt that they needed more detail about the "how" of that second step, so the NPI resolution was defeated.

Fast forward 10 years, and the NDP is not only alive and well and the Official Opposition, but in order to avoid accusations that the party was the tool of organized labour, the special voting provisions for the labour unions have been excised.

The drift to the right has continued, and might be accelerating.

Time for a new NPI?  Maybe, and I'm certain many of the old NPI warhorses are thinking exactly that.  They thought the NDP was drifting too far to the right in 2001.  Now in 2011, labour unions don't have special voting rights?  The horror!

And that is what I think Nycole Turmel and the rest of the NDP leadership is worried about -- a new NPI sprouting up and causing trouble during the leadership campaign.

But as the NDP has realized, electoral success comes from moderating your views and quelling the concerns of potential voters who worry that the party is just a bit too extreme.  Having a high profile NPI Redux in the news and demanding that leadership candidates declare their commitment to the ideas of every radical from Karl Marx to L Susan Brown would be a disaster.

So how do you keep the lid on Libby Davies and her ilk?

Well, if the NPI crowd does keep quiet during the leadership campaign, then I think the NDP is quietly planning to campaign from the right, and govern from the left, and has convinced the NPI types to play ball.  Removing the special privileges for organized labour is part of campaigning from the right, that is, presenting a moderate face to Canadian voters.  But once in power, the promise to Davies and the others is to govern from the left.  High taxes, expanded and intrusive government, the erosion and elimination of individual rights and privileges, the creation and expansion of rights and privileges for special interest groups and victimization fetishists, punitive environmental measures and regulations selectively applied to successful free market corporations, the continued destruction of the traditional family in favour of State indoctrination of children, health care management by death cultists hiding behind phrases like "reproductive rights" and "dying with dignity", the replacement of party politics and bottom-up democratic mandates with identity politics justified by unaccountable top-down bureaucracies, ceding of Canadian sovereignty to trans-national unelected bodies like the UN, and all that other stuff leftist dreams are made of.

Shhhhhh!  Keep all that under the covers until after an election win.  Until then, act reasonable and centrist. 

Campaign from the right, and govern from the left.

If Libby Davies and the other NPI alumni give the NDP a free ride, as Nycole Turmel is pleading they will, then I wonder if it is because Turmel and the NDP leadership have successfully sold this plan to Davies and the others.

That would worry me.  A lot.

If, on the other hand, Davies and Murray Dobbins and the rest get back up their high horse and condemn Turmel and the others as class traitors, then at least I know that the NDP is truly drifting away the leftist crazies.  There might be hope for the NDP after all.

I guess we'll see in the next few months as the NDP leadership campaign gets underway.