You might think that after the NDP’s implosion in the recent election, the high-level operatives that have been running the party for the last two decades would take a beat. Maybe do some soul-searching. Perhaps even canvass the opinions of the party’s disappointed members—not to mention the nearly two million NDP voters whose e-day pencils drifted over to other parties in last month’s vote.
But the party’s class of professional consultants with whom power is concentrated do not recognize a fundamental problem with their approach. These are operatives who cycle between senior staff positions in the federal and provincial parties and financially-lucrative, post-partisan corporate firms, and who have shaped the NDP in their image: more moderate, suspicious of the party’s members as well as social movements, and out of touch with working class realities.
Far from seeing this as a moment for a much-needed reset, they are trying to ensure the leadership race will be hostile to any candidate who might want to lead the NDP in a new direction.
Why is the entire political class terrified of the left in so many liberal democracies? Why do even the “left” parties end up fleeing the left for the centre and right? It seems to have happened in several countries in recent decades, leaving their political systems adrift and directionless, and the appetite among voters for real left-wing politics counts for nothing with party leadership.
Because the left tries to take wealth and power from the people with wealth and power and give it to the people without wealth and power. You can probably see how people who already have wealth and power wouldn’t like that.
It’s a mix of leftwing politics losing popularity (this happened in the 70s and 80s all over the world and has since reversed, but see above) and opportunists joining parties that were once full of true believers once they become successful.
Unless youre talking about their support of mass immigration, to depress salaries and raise stock and asset values.
Look at the TSX performance since Covid, that’s all their engineering.
I’ll assure you that leftists want immigrants to have the same protections as citizens so they’re not exploited in the way you’re talking about.
Sorry how do they do that when they actively import ever greater numbers into an existing housing shortage, while stating it is to protect “small business” that ends up being Tim Horton’s and Loblaws?
The UN called it modern slavery, with 30 people to a basement.
Liberals aren’t leftists; they’re somewhere between center and center-left depending on the time of day. The leftist response to this would be “then fix the housing shortage,” which would require reducing house prices almost by definition. Neither liberals nor conservatives want to do that, so you end up with the half-assed response you’re talking about. Lack of housing is a solved problem and there’s frankly no excuse for a first world country to not be able to provide its people with affordable housing, immigration or not. In other words your politicians are actively, intentionally screwing you over by doing nothing to make housing more affordable.
Well sure, I place the blame on the NDP for propping up the Liberals, and not using their power to affect peoples greatest expense. Conservatives at least had a plan to tie immigration to housing completions and force municipals to rezone, but now we have a housing minister saying prices need to rise.
I don’t think the NDP had enough leverage in the government to override the NIMBY vote, but maybe you’re right I don’t know.
I want to note that, as slimy as liberals are, there’s a reason they don’t just stop or drastically slow down immigration and satisfy everyone. Countries like Canada need immigrants to bolster their declining birth rates, so there’s a limit to how much the government can realistically reduce immigration before economic stagnation hits or social services “have to” be cut due to reduced tax revenue. Japan and Korea are probably the best examples of this, so you can look up how stubbornly rejecting migration has damaged their standards of living. The difference between liberals and conservatives on migration is the same as their difference on everything else: Conservatives do things that sound good to their base and make everything worse and liberals take symbolic action because they’re too far down the pockets of the rich to actually solve the problem.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5i0IDn3rzY
It seems they are lying to us none the less. I dont know why we should support a party that lies to the voters.