BC Business
Carole James resigns as leader
NDP leader Carole James was dumped because the party sniffed the possibility of power. So which of these faceless nobodies lining up to take her place is more electable? It’s been my belief for a while that we’d seen every crazy thing in this province’s political scene, but I guess I was wrong in that. In B.C., there’s always another surprise around the corner. I’m talking, of course, about how the NDP has joined the Liberals in self-immolation.
It’s been my belief for a while that we’d seen every crazy thing in this province’s political scene, but I guess I was wrong in that.
In B.C., there’s always another surprise around the corner.
I’m talking, of course, about how the NDP has joined the Liberals in self-immolation.
No need to go into the details, since everyone now knows them. The NDPers, confronted with one of the best opportunities to be elected in more than a decade, decided now was the time to dump their leader and rip the party apart.
Maybe they were jealous of the Liberals: All that press they were getting while party stalwarts knifed aging leader Gordon Campbell over the HST so they could have even a faint hope of being re-elected in 2013.
Perhaps they realized that their attempt to place all problems on the head of Campbell for the past seven years wasn’t going to work any more. The “Campbell government” slogan, which they intoned incessantly, usually as a slur, was going to sound pretty silly if he wasn’t there.
Or maybe it was just a return to Whacko Land’s usual political system – unholy alliances, and subsequent un-alliances, of various interest groups desperate for power. Maybe the NDP was just returning to form (i.e., attacking each other over purity of position instead of approach to governing).
The BCNDP has always been a unique stew of conflicting political views: Unionists who want everything in B.C. run by government so that they can hold the province to ransom in contract negotiations; book lefties and academics who hold endless discussions about the authenticity of the cause; left-leaning centrists who are likely federal Liberals; social activists who make their living from government programs that help the poor; and, of course, the disaffected and angry, whom B.C. seems to enthusiastically nurture here in our isolated land between the mountains and the sea.
It’s no surprise that a centrist believer in accommodation like Carol James was jettisoned the moment the party sniffed the possibility of power.
With this crowd, the fact that she brought the party back from the brink of annihilation in two elections, gave them a legitimate shot at power, and was a nice, hard-working leader didn’t seem to matter.
She didn’t fit the mold, a firebrand who would inspire all the various factions of the left behind a single cause. She wasn’t exciting. She wasn’t “electable.”
But then, the irony is that neither are any of the potential BDNDP leadership candidates, some of whom joined in (or quietly allowed) the destruction of Carol James. Mostly they’re a collection of ideologues, nobodies, or faceless plodders. The only one with some spark, Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson, says he doesn’t want the gig.
So the party dumps an unelectable leader and opens a divisive race for another unelectable leader.
Wow, brilliant strategy.