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Monday, December 15, 2008
Did Stephane Dion and the now crumbling anti-Harper coalition resurrect the NDP?
This was the title of an October 2006 Western Standard column by John Robson. Pretty clever, eh?
Robson asked the following question: "With their pro-Taliban rhetoric, drying-up donations and a challenge on their left in the Green Party, are the Dippers doomed politically?"
Robson writes:
Is the venerable New Democratic Party going out of style like bell-bottoms and orange shag rugs? Plainly, left-wing politics is not entirely on the way out in Canada. But does the NDP risk replacement as the locus of left-wing thought and political action?
This was a reasonable question to ask at the time.
But since then, of course, Stephane Dion became the Liberal Party’s ineffective, unilingual leader who campaigned on a confusing new green tax scheme in an already crowded market for environmental policies, and with the economy on the brink of recession. It was bad timing for a bad policy.
After a disastrous election, Dion, and a Liberal caucus impatient for political power, gave Layton and the NDP the kind of credibility they haven't been able to achieve on their own in an opportunity to play a major leadership role in a national governing coalition. Jack Layton and the New Democrats had arrived.
Today, the New Democratic Party has never looked stronger. The party’s fundraising is going well, second only the Conservatives, and Layton is a national leader who may hold the balance of power in a left-of-centre coalition government.
The resurrection of the NDP as a national party will be the legacy of Stephane Dion, along with the responsibility for reigniting the flames of western separatism.
Posted by Matthew Johnston
Posted by westernstandard on December 15, 2008 in Canadian Politics | Permalink
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Comments
Hey, if the rise of Layton means the rise of separatism, I say Go Layton!!
Posted by: Duder | 2008-12-15 6:50:41 PM
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