Attention now turns to who will lead the problem-plagued Liberals in May.
Most pundits are focused on how indebted, divided and demoralized the Liberals are. Which is true. They’re in a horrible, horrible mess.
Why, they’re as totally and horribly messed up as the Reform/Alliance and Tories were in 2003, three years before Stephen Harper became Prime Minister of Canada.
Let’s not lose sight of something. The parties of the left – all of them, not just the Liberals – understand that they will win the government if they ever decide to reunite. With only 38% of the vote, Harper is prime minister for the sole reason that the so-called “progressive” vote splits four ways – Liberal, Bloc, NDP and Green.
Okay, forget the Bloc. Like Quebec itself, they’re out for themselves. They’re not really part of Parliament, they think and act more like a foreign delegation.
But suppose the other three leftish parties united. I know it seems impossible, but with the right Liberal leader it isn’t. Very often ambition trumps ego, even in politics.
Combined, the Liberals, NDP and Greens took 51% of the vote this time, 52% last time, and 57% in 2004. Even without the Bloc, progressive parties have won every election since the Mulroney landslide of 1984, and most of the elections before that all the way back to Mackenzie King.
But before going further, let’s define “progressivism.”
Quite simply, it’s the assumption that government should get bigger.
This is not how the progressive parties themselves think of it it. They’d say they just want government to become more compassionate, more green, more fair, more feminist, more helpful. But it’s how a very astute retired McMaster political scientist, Janet Azjenstat, defined it in her useful 2003 book “The Once and Future Canadian Democracy.”
Progressivists take it for granted, she explained, that whatever governments are already doing, it is not enough. They must move forward and take and spend more of our money – to register our guns, restrict our speech, protect our self-esteem, choose our television programs, schedule our surgeries, raise our children, plan industrial strategies, eradicate sexism, save the planet, nurture our culture, and address the root causes of crime. And it is never enough. There are always more problems to solve, and it is always government’s responsibility to do it.
Progressivists argue about which specific problems matter most, but they solidly agree on the underlying point – that the primary duty of the state is to solve a never-ending series of problems.
By contrast, the distinguishing feature of the Conservative Party under Harper is its rejection of the progressive doctrine and impulse.
I know, I know, the Harper government spends money as freely as its predecessors, but on what? More defence. More infrastructure. More cops. More French. The same old social programs as before.
Harper has so far honoured his pledge not to expand the scope of federal activities. And that’s what makes him different. That’s why the word “progressive” was removed at his insistence from the party name upon reunification. It didn’t fit. And that’s why so many Canadians still consider him “scary.” How can a prime minister have less faith in government than they do?
Now as long as the Liberals won most of the elections, the NDP was an asset to the progressive cause, if not to the Liberal Party. The NDP served as the vanguard, and the Liberals as the main army. Things the NDP proposed in one decade (medicare, foreign investment restrictions, gay marriage) the Liberals would enact in the next.
But this cleavage of what are really merely factions into autonomous parties has become a luxury the progressives can afford no longer, because there are now too many. Even though the Conservative vote has not expanded in twenty years – the combined centre-right vote has ranged between 35% and 40% for the last five elections – the Liberals now lose elections, and will continue to lose.
And for the most elementary reason. The Bloc permanently absconded with much of the Liberals’ Quebec wing in 1993, and now the Greens have run off into the woods with the romantic Nature vote, in the same way that the NDP long ago marched off with a large corps of the Liberals’ labour, agrarian and intellectual vote.
What these bickering party establishments are now reluctantly beginning to confront is that when the Liberals lose they all lose. That’s why Paul Martin talked in two campaigns about the need for the progressive vote – he used that very term – to unite behind the Liberals.
Like most things in politics, it’s not rocket science. In unity is victory.
What kept the Liberals in power for most of the last century was their ability to convince big business they would protect it from the citizenry, while persuading the citizens they would protect them from big business. To business, the Liberals were pragmatic, and to the citizens they were caring. Business paid the party bills, the people bought the progressive package.
Then for purely tactical and partisan reasons, first Chretien and now Harper have shut big business out of party politics by reducing the political donation limit to a paltry $1,000 a year. This changes the game unless and until the Liberals can somehow get back into power and change the rules back – which by then they may not need to do.
Success for the Liberals lies in choosing a leader as shrewd and tough as Stephen Harper, and perhaps a bit friendlier. Such a leader would already see that business can now deliver neither money nor votes, so amidst a deepening recession the party must move left on a populist, “let government care for you in these uncertain times” platform.
At the same time, that leader would open secret merger talks (just as Harper did) with Jack Layton and Elizabeth May. Layton’s party is squatting on a permanent 18% of the national vote, and Layton himself is no more a doctrinaire socialist than my horse. He’s just a pragmatic progressive like everyone else. And nobody knows better than Elizabeth May that it was the 5% of the electorate – now 8% – that the Greens took straight from the Liberals that sealed the fate of the progressive cause in Canada.
Strategy and unity are not the task of party members in politics, but of party leaders. Layton and May know it.
The price of their compliance in a merger will be a populist party constitution, a leadership race and probably an entirely new party name. Why not the Progressive Party – since that’s what they all believe in, it sounds good, and it’s what most Canadians vote for. Remember those numbers – 51% progressive against 38% conservative. Instant majority.
Impossible? Not to leaders who have staked their personal ambitions on governing. And as we saw with the Conservative merger five years ago, once party leaders decide to merge, the grassroots members follow or get left behind. As for Liberal, NDP and Green voters, what’s their option – the Conservatives?
Neither will it matter that after 141 years the Liberal name will vanish from the ballot, at least for now. To progressives, history doesn’t count for much. It’s the future that matters – and making sure the government decides what the future will look like – and making sure they themselves are in charge.
Link Byfield is an Alberta senator-elect and chairman of the Alberta-based Citizens Centre for Freedom and Democracy. The Centre promotes the principles of personal freedom and responsible government. This column is a reprint of his weekly email bulletin issued today.
Public date: October 30th, 2008
October 31, 2008
Moderator, take Link’s article off this site immediately, before some Liberal sees it and figures out what they have to do to completely destroy Canada.
Link, stop being so damn clever, would you?
p.s. glad you’re on our side. You do have a strategy to deal with this, right?
October 31, 2008
I agree with Wally Moran, remove this article immediately.
Why are you allowing a socialist progressive to plant seeds of destruction for our nation when the ECP is suppose to be doing everything in their power to make Canada better?
October 31, 2008
Tristan, or whoever is is charge, is your hatred for Harper so strong that you will allow anyone who speaks negatively about him to voice their garbage?
October 31, 2008
Mr. Daniel.
Please relax. You obviously don’t know who Link Byfield is. He’s the former publisher – with his father Ted – of Alberta Report and Western Report magazine(s). Both men have impeccable “conservative” credentials, and for you to suggest otherwise simply tells me you don’t follow the social-conservative movement in this country very closely. Michael Wagner, in his book on the history of that movement, devoted pages and pages of narrative to the courage the Byfields had to stand for truth.
Link Byfield is no “socialist progressive”, sir.
And our decision to post his column was not motivated by “hatred for Harper” or to “speak negatively” about him.
This column is simply a set of observations on what could – and perhaps may even likely – happen. To not post it would be akin to burying our head in the sand. Better, I would think, to be prepared for the eventuality that this may happen. The column simply points out some (sad) political realities in Canada today.
I’m not sure if you noticed, but we also posted a link yesterday, under our “Recommended Links” heading, to a column from Rebecca Walberg in Winnipeg, who makes the point that vocal social conservative MP’s within Harper’s Party keep increasing their margin of victory in successive elections. The solution to the dilemma posed by Link Byfield’s column is not to shoot the messenger (especially since he’s a friend of ours) but rather to empower Canada’s social conservatives to grow some backbone and infuse that into Mr. Harper’s Party.
November 1, 2008
Don’t worry.
The NDP’s and Liberal’s hate each other. And, they’re still in denial that conservativism is even a ‘normal’ competitor for ideas. Elitism mentality is actually a handicapp
Jack Layton loves power too much to cede any of it.
Harper has gained much wisdom over the years without the benefit of a free ride from the media.
The future looks fun! Canada is ‘conservatizing’ rapidly as these soclialists live in their alternate universe and continue their journey into irrelevance.
November 1, 2008
Whoops….remind me that not everyone ‘gets’ irony the next time I feel compelled to be cute on this forum….although I kinda thought my last line made it obvious…
November 2, 2008
Geez you guys…
All this talk about strategic voting and uniting the left is just garbage the lazy media digs up because they can’t find the energy to get off their butts and find real stories.
This is no different than each and every election when some restaurant runs a Harper Burger or a Dion Burger and the local papers rush down to cover it as if it has actual bearing on anything.
Let’s get a couple things straight here:
- Strategic voting (a story so loved by the press) just doesn’t exist. The media dredges it up every time based on anecdotal ramblings by a few locals here and there. It has NEVER had a sway on any election. Even in ridings such a Saanich/Gulf Islands where a Lib could have easily knocked off Gary Lunn (when the NDP candidate dropped out) they still couldn’t. Strategic voting exists only in the media’s mind…oh, and probably Maude Barlow’s. That’s it.
- Unite the Left: Guys: the only left is the NDP.
Again – this ‘unite the left’ stuff is only brought up by…wait for it…the media! Has anyone from the NDP or Libs brought it up? Of course not, because it does not exist as a possibility.
- The Liberals are a party of the center. The Tories are a party of the center with a tiny right slant. Paul Martin’s Libs were arguably more right than the Harper Tories.
- The NDP would never fold their tents and go with the Libs for the same reason they don’t fold their tents now when they know they have no chance of winning: without their party they would not have jobs or their gold plated pensions.
- And the Liberals know it is only a matter of time before they get a decent leader and have a good chance of getting back in. It has only been 2 1/2 years out of power after all. They’re called the “Natural Governing Party” for a reason. Let’s again repeat: they’ve only been out of power for 2 1/2 years and are out of power only for just two reasons:
Reason 1: Paul Martin was kinda’ inept and handcuffed by Chretien’s corrupt legacy (if he confronted the Adscam affair merely by saying “I cannot comment as the RCMP is looking into it,”) he would be PM right now with a massive majority.
Reason 2: Stephane Dion was, to be fair, not a good leader. (If it was Frank McKenna, we’d be complaining about a Liberal PM right now).
No different than when we, the Tories, had Joe Clark as leader. It had nothing to do with our policies – it was the leader.
Oh, and all this talk about proportional voting? Where were all these whiners when Chretien took those majorities with just 38 percent of the vote? The only reason we were cursed with that twit for so long was because of the split between the Tories and the Reform/Alliance.
There are no parallels to be drawn between the Reform splitting off votes from the center of the road Mulroney Tories and what is happening the the Libs and NDP now.
Get a grip you guys.
Link: I love you. Talk all you want about a “unite the left”. The more we can keep those idiots confused and focused with such stuff, the better.
November 3, 2008
Dear Site Editor,
You may or may not post this comment, it is your choice.
You’re right, I don’t know Link Byfield that well; yes, I’ve heard of the name, but I don’t know him or his writings that well; it is for that reason that I re-acted to what I read, not to what I know of him or his writings, and I thank you for bringing it to my attention.
However, I would have preferred that since you know him so well, you would have been wiser and more gracious to me by not posting my comments, and by responding to my comments directly, since you have my email address. I will try to be less rash in the future, however, if I fail, please to me a favor and do what I ask, thank you.
Have a good day.
November 28, 2008
So, in light of the Liberals, NDP and Bloc threatening to form a coalition to bring down the Conservative government and seize power, like the socialist pigs that they all are, do you still think I was wrong to be upset over this article?
And so much for the Liberals and NDP hating each other too much to unite, or that talking about uniting is garbage. No matter how much they might hate each other, if it gives them the chance to seize power, then they will put aside their differences.
My only hope is that Harper knows what he is doing and that he will win this battle, because the Conservatives seem to be pretty calm and sure of themselves concerning this- I hope their right.