{An edited version of the following post has also been submitted as a guest op-ed in the 100 Mile Free Press, Anahim-Nimpo Messenger, and the Omineca Free Press--MC}
Shortly after the NDP’s stunning defeat in last
May’s provincial election, former NDP
MLA and political pundit David Schreck argued that “the
party would be wise to change leaders in 2015 or 2016 to get a boost before the
next election.” UBC professor and former federal NDP co-campaign chair Michael
Byers added this thought on July 15: “Instead of a cosmetic paint job, the
party needs to be knocked down to its foundations before rebuilding begins
again. A leadership race is needed to turn the public memory away from the
recent loss, to revitalize and grow the membership, and to get donations
flowing again. .. [Dix] should step down in favour of an interim leader, who
would serve until a new person is chosen to head the BC NDP.” At the
end of July, long-time NDP MP Ian Waddell offered similar advice:
“If Adrian Dix decides to step down as leader at its convention in November,
the party should choose a respected interim leader who does not intend to run
for the leadership. … Then, in 2015, the BC NDP should run a wide-open
leadership race looking to a new generation of candidates.”
Yet Dix
announced on September 23 that he was going to hold the reins of the party
leadership until a leadership vote could be taken “by mid-2014 at the
latest.” So why did he deliberately
ignore the calls of so many prominent senior New Democrats and other
commentators to allow for a longer lead-in under an interim leader and a more
wide-open process? Dix is nothing if not
a consummate political insider. He knows
that candidates who are currently MLAs—in
particular his good friend (and best man at his wedding) John Horgan, will be
most advantaged by the process he prefers.
He knows that Vancouver Mayor Gregor Robertson has more than a year left in his mandate and
will have difficulty making a decision and pulling together a winning campaign
in this time; as will other potential “outside” candidates such as Victoria mayor Dean Fortin and federal MPs Nathan
Cullen and Peter Julian. Dix’s concerns
about these outsiders no doubt motivated
his subsequent remark that “B.C. doesn’t need two Liberal parties”.
Not that I find Dix’s attitude to be extraordinarily selfish or evil.
Rather, I find it to be all-too-typical.
When there is a range of reasonable-sounding arguments available to a
politician, they usually choose the ones most congenial to their world view and
their interests. The difficulty in this
case is that, in presuming that the existing caucus and party do not need to
undergo an extensive renovation, the NDP may fail to assuage the concerns that many
marginal voters and taxpayers have about an aging, insular, and hidebound party
representing an overly-entitled and self-serving
public sector . If the NDP fails to grab
the centre from the left, as Vision
Vancouver has successfully done in civic politics, it may concede too much of
the middle ground to the Liberals. And if as a result the Liberals win in 2017,
they may once again be able to thank Adrian Dix.
