Luckily there was not too much blood spilt when the conservatives divested themselves of the embarrassment of Chuckles Scheer. Surely the leader of the new democrats can now consider what is the honourable thing for him to do.
The point has been made that Chuckles did his best. He won the popular vote across Canada. (Basically because of the overkill of liberalism across the barren Prairies.) He reduced the liberals to a minority. No matter. His job was to win and he failed, Scheer is toast.
Where does that leave Jagmeet? After what that party did to Tom Mulcair, Jagmeet should be lucky to get out of the next party meeting with his pants. He lost a third of his parliamentary caucus and the two thirds he has left do not like him.
Maybe Singh will lobby the party to move its 2020 gathering from Charlottetown to Brampton, Ontario. It might give him a better chance to hang on to his job.
But even if he could win, what future can Singh offer the new democrats? Do they even have a role to play? Does the party have any plans for the future?
The caucus has seen no such plan from Singh but they are not the rank and file. The Leap Manifesto is still being carried as some sort of cross by the party but so far it is only words. The most active aspect is dental and prescription medicine care to be championed by Ottawa but that also requires provincial support. Without a strong and coordinated campaign at both the federal and provincial levels of the party, the NDP initiative is a waste of time.
The NDP would be far better to deregister as a political party and sign up as liberals both federally and in their respective provinces. They would hardly swamp the individual parties but another 10,000 or so left-leaning liberals could pull the liberal party much further to the left than it has been in the past. It would be a party with a sharper edge and more of a ‘let’s do it’ attitude.
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Copyright 2019 © Peter Lowry
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