First-Past-the-Post Did It's Job

 

First, read Ian Welsh:

Five months ago I would have said, and did say, that the Conservatives would form the next government, with Poilievre (a Trump figure) as Prime Minister.

Fortunately, Trump truly is a Christ-like figure, and raised the Liberal party from the dead. Poilievre mishandled Trump’s threats, saying that Trump had a point and so on. Living in an right wing echo chamber he thought that Canadians aren’t patriotic, and most are. This was an unforced error. Ontario Premier Ford did the opposite: he ran against Trump, called a surprise election and won handily. I despise Ford, but he’s a smart politician. Poilievre, on the other hand, is just an attack dog, and a true believer in Trumpist style right wing politics.

This isn’t to say I like the Liberals or Carney. Carney has the dubious honor of haveing beeen in charge of Canada and Britain’s central bank, and is the only central banker to blow housing bubbles in two countries. As for the Liberals, they were a terrible government and the only good things they did were forced on them by the NDP, whose support they needed to stay in government.

And then there's this gem about Pierre Poilievre that I hadn't considered:

Looking like Poilievre may lose his own riding. For context, Poilievre is an MP in Ottawa, Canada’s capital, where the largest employer is the Federal government. Poilievre said he would gut the civil service and even threatened to DOGE it. Truly in the running for stupidest politician in the world.

For my part I was never impressed by Jagmeet Singh.  I remember though how when a bunch of NDP supporters (me included) complained about the party's stance on Venezuela and the horrible statements of the NDP's foreign affairs critic that Singh listened to us and replaced her and modified their message on the subject.

More recently, I liked that little clip where Singh went up to some right-wing doofus calling him a traitor and sell-out and asking what he meant and the guy was reduced to stammering, cowardly blubbering.

One of the problems of the whole "deal" with the Liberals was that it didn't seem that the NDP had any game-plan at all if it all unravelled.  This wasn't a "lost decade" (as lying shit-head Poilievre puts it) but there IS a lot wrong with this country and the root of it is the same neo-liberalism that both the Conservatives and the Liberals embrace.

To rebuild, the NDP HAS to take a more left-populist approach, aggressively messaging the fault of the two pro-oligarch parties in the hollowing out of our economy, the sky-rocketing cost of living, the deterioration of public services, and the brazen corruption of our cosseted, arrogant elites.

I have said it before and I'll say it again:  I do NOT think a merging of the NDP and the Greens is either desirable or feasible.  But they MUST form an electoral agreement wherein ridings where the NDP is the most viable aren't contested by the Greens and vice-versa.  They MUST run on a campaign for proportional representation plus two other popular goals.  I would suggest that the NDP's campaign plank being the COMPLETE, TOTAL, UTTER ENDING OF HOMELESSNESS in this country and the Greens could push for renewable energy investments or whatever else they fancy.  Maybe they could also offer a massive publicly-managed investment in public transit or in family medicine or money to end hallway medicine.

Tell the electorate they'll do these things in three years and then they'll call an election under proportional representation saying all the while that this is the way to avoid the garbage "democracy" of voting for the Liberal assholes to avoid the scary Conservative troglodytes.