Has the NDP become redundant?

[Oscar]

Has the NDP become redundant?: Gwyn

[ http://www.thestar.com/opinion/commenta ... -gwyn.html ]

By: Richard Gwyn Columnist, Published on Tue Apr 12 2016

The most critical problem facing the New Democrats has little to do with what happened in Edmonton over the weekend, disastrous although this was to the party.

Instead, the fundamental issue that now threatens the NDP is whether the only role left for it may be as a sort of equivalent to Britain’s Liberal party.

Once, these trans-Atlantic Liberals were the governing alternative to Britain’s Conservatives.

That party is now ancient history. It survives — just — whenever either Britain’s Conservatives or Labour win an election by a minority and need being propped up so that the country can have a government

The NDP may not be able to achieve even that. One substantial handicap is that few New Democrats seem to like or trust each other.

At their gathering in Edmonton over last weekend, party members set a post-Confederation record in the way they rejected their leader, Thomas Mulcair.

Just 48 per cent of them voted for Mulcair. Even Joe Clark, after having handed back his 1979-80 government to the Trudeau of that time (the Pierre one), held onto 60 per cent of the votes of his Conservative members, even if still losing his leadership.

As self-destructive, many of the New Democrats in Edmonton infuriated the party’s single national figure, namely Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, by opposing, loudly, Notely’s call for more pipelines to be built to carry Canadian oil and gas to market.

These issues do matter. The only issue that really matters, though, is one that is out of the reach of even the most level-headed of New Democrats. This, effectively, is that a second NDP now exists.

It’s the Liberal party. Its leader, Justin Trudeau, may well be the most popular that Canadians have ever had — Wilfrid Laurier as his nearest equivalent.

Its policies — from a gender-equal cabinet to bringing in thousands of refugees in contrast to the stinginess of the preceding government — have caused Canadians in huge numbers to accept the proposition that, “Canada is back.”

As goes without saying, mistakes will be made. This year’s deficit will be $30 billion not the $10 billion promised in the election. Trudeau’s charm sometimes hardens into self-serving conceit.

The fact remains that this government after six months of intense activity during which no serious blunders have been made, has achieved this record even though its prime minister is new and young and its cabinet filled by ministers of whom only a handful have had any experience of so responsible a task.

For the NDP to carve out a niche for itself in such an environment will be exceedingly difficult.

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Richard Gwyn’s column usually appears every other Tuesday. [ mailto:gwynr@sympatico.ca ]

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