Jack Layton's pragmatism: A delicate problem
Jack Layton is trying to figure out how to make to make Parliament work. More importantly, he will have to figure out how to make making Parliament work work.
Confused? Just be glad you're not Jack Layton.
Actions speak louder than words.
First, the words from just before the election:
NDP Leader Jack Layton launched an aggressive attack on the Conservative platform, and asked people who have voted Liberal in the past to vote NDP to get real results for working women and working men. Layton was speaking to a large and boisterous rally in Toronto.
“Yesterday, the Conservatives put out their platform. It was full of ideas that are wrong for Canada,” Layton said. “The Conservatives are proposing lots of tax cuts, including corporate tax cuts for banks and oil companies. We’d all like lower taxes, but not if they mean cuts to health and education.”
Now, not even a week after the election, the actions:
Jack Layton meets with his 28 other New Democrat members this week to see whether they can work with the Conservatives, who were vilified by the NDP leader in the election campaign as completely out of step with basic Canadian values.
And despite Layton's initial skepticism, he's sounding more conciliatory and ready to deal on a half-dozen issues where left and right appear to intersect.
"I am going to make a legitimate, determined effort to find things where there can be common action," he said in an interview with The Canadian Press.
Remember in the leader's debate, when Jack Layton was asked about how he might work with the Conservatives? He snarled about how the Conservatives were wrong on the issues, and provided no answer. Stephen Harper's reaction? It's an election, and every leader has to play to win. After the election, we'll talk.
Guess Harper was right.
But is talking going to be all that easy?
Recall how I wondered if the angry reaction by the NDP crowd listening to Jack Layton's election night speech to Stephen Harper's name being mentioned might presage a rough time for Jack Layton? I'm not the only one who thinks those boos are more significant than just some tired and wired election workers letting off some steam:
Reaching out to the Tories will require a delicate tightrope act for the NDP leader, who faced a chorus of booing from his supporters election night with the mention of Harper's name.
The NDP is a complex coalition of pragmatic and dogmatic socialists, spanning the spectrum from organized labour to eco-activists, with a healthy sprinkling of all sorts of special interest groups -- public service unions, gay rights organizations, abortionists, anti-globalization activists, rural farm market supporters, urban anti-poverty groups -- the list goes on and on.
Each and every one of these will resist any accomodation with Stephen Harper's Conservatives, but to different degrees, and over different issues. Just as Stephen Harper will have to form coalitions in Parliament on an issue-by-issue basis to get legislation passed, Jack Layton will have find support from different elements of his own party on each different issue. But even as he disappoints a faction within the NDP by helping the Tories on one particular issue, Layton will have to remember that that faction might be a critical ally in another fight just around the corner. If he plays it wrong, critical factions might abandon Jack Layton, perhaps replacing him with a hardline leader willing, even eager, to topple the government. These factions might be willing to take their chances with another election, hoping the next configuration of parliament favours their agenda, or at least denies Stephen Harper the power to enact his.
These people might find it difficult to understand that helping Stephen Harper can help the NDP too. Jack Layton seems to get it. Now he has to convince the people who booed his speech on election night of that fact of life in politics.
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Comments
I saw Warren Kinsella kill a kitten once. He skinned it and ate it right in front of me. Raw. In Saskatoon. I'm not allowed to make this up due to the anti-slander laws.
Posted by: Chris from Victoria, BC at January 28, 2006 08:38 PM
Well Jack could make Parliment work by working on making the work Parliment works in making work for Parliment to work.
Then he could work on the work that Parliment worked on work on making Parliment work work.
So by working on making Parliment work make work working work, maybe he'll make work making work Parliment work work.
Right?
Posted by: tomax at January 28, 2006 09:09 PM
Angry - not sure if you are aware or not but your comment, "critical factions might abandon Jack Layton, perhaps replacing him with a hardline leader" could be very, very true. The NDP constitution requires every convention to be a leadership convention. The need not even bother with a leadership review; should someone be disgruntled with Layton then they can put their name(s) on the ballot along with Layton's at the next NDP convention.
Posted by: fjm at January 28, 2006 09:38 PM
Also - I should give you all a sneak peak at what Layton will have to work with. May I present, the Harper Cabinet: http://www.unsolicitedadvice.ca/index.php?action=fullnews&id=110
Posted by: fjm at January 28, 2006 09:39 PM
Jack is pretty much screwed here. The voters (wisely) didn't give him enough seats to blackmail the government with. He'll be in the 'me too' corus in this parliament - a back up singer dancing in the background - no longer consulted on the arrangement, he'll have to content himself to sing along...
Posted by: Curtis at January 28, 2006 10:50 PM
Speaking of getting screwed, gentlemen, and while you're discussing the deeper aspects of Jack Layton's mind, click here... it's a new movie remake staring Tom Cruise, which promises to be every bit as controversial as Brokeback Mountain.
Posted by: Chris from Victoria, BC at January 28, 2006 11:27 PM
Layton is a hypocrital prick. He, and the looney left are all in favor of abortions and also don't want ANYBODY to make a dime off healthcare. But its OK for the Ontario Butcher to run private abortion clinics.
Go figure
Horny Toad
Posted by: Horny Toad at January 29, 2006 12:48 AM
He's a hero to them, Horny Toad, all 11-million dollars a year's worth - in flesh, blood, and spirit.
Posted by: Chris from Victoria, BC at January 29, 2006 01:31 AM
tomorrow belongs to me......
Posted by: george at January 29, 2006 04:09 AM
For a quick definition of EVIL, click the link below.
Click here.
The astounding thing is that such nobility and goodness can be produced in that awful 'container'.
Posted by: Chris from Victoria, BC at January 29, 2006 05:12 AM
Jack and Olivia went up to the Hill
To fetch a pail of money
Jack fell down and broke his crown
And Olivia hustled him off to a private clinic
with apologies to poets everywhere
Humpty Dithers sat on a wall.....
Posted by: john at January 29, 2006 05:24 AM
The NDP still hold alot of power because if they unite with the CPC and only the CPC the Liberals will be forced to unite with the Bloc to make any non confidence votes work and in doing so shoot themselves in the foot.
Unless of course they plan on winning the next election with only Quebec and Ontario support assuming Ontario were opposed enough to the issue which was used to bring down the government and be damned with the rest of the country.
The reality is that this parliament is a
308 - 51 =257
1/2 of which is 128 seats to make a majority government
CPC 124 + NDP 29 = 153
Lib 103 + BLOC 51 = 154
1 independant also from Quebec Hmmm?
The Liberals will need to align themselves with a party (BLOC) who is bent on destroying this country as we know it to make this government fall.
Posted by: NL Expatriate at January 29, 2006 09:02 AM
Jack and his NDP friends better know that the next time around Canadians are likely to vote for a majority government and that can only be bad news for the NDP. If Jack is enjoying the power he has now he better make this Parliment work cause he probably won't have any power after the next election.
Posted by: Larry at January 29, 2006 09:49 AM
I used to believe the Canadian people would wake up and smell the coffee regarding the socialist agenda of the Liberals and the Communism Lite agenda of the NDP but history has shown such is not the case. Will Harper manage to break through the self-imposed deaf, dumb & blindness? Hard to say...
At a recent social event, a vocal liberal was crowing about the election, the evil being known as Harper, the dark and dismal future. Now, I'm of the opinion that one should never argue with a fool but I'm not above baiting one. I asked him a few questions and let him pontificate on how society is doomed because everyone is corrupt, seeking only to advantage themselves and their friends and this would eventually lead to the collapse of civilization as we know it.
I then asked him how society came into being, what lead the founders of Canada to build up a nation and how they’d managed to do so despite his assertion that all men were evil. What was different back then? The next step was to have him identify what political movement had become prevalent in the past century.
By the time it was done, the vocal liberal correctly identified that conservative men of principles built the country and the subsequent rise of liberalism/socialism had decayed the morals of the nation to the point we’re at now. He blamed this on the invention of movies and television (I didn’t lead him to that!) which glamorized immoral behaviour. He said the mainstream media were sensationalist rather than left leaning but close enough.
I wasn’t able to convince him to say the Conservatives might reverse the tread. Instead, he declared he was going to vote NDP to punish the Liberals. Oh well.
Posted by: Mac at January 29, 2006 02:50 PM
Its about what's good for the people of Canada, and the opposite is that of the factions ruling the one party state's Liberal Party. Rare indeed, given the purposely skewed quasi-democratic electoral system, are the people of Canada granted an opportunity to change this skewed system so that their future will be more mostly same-party governments.
This is such a rare opportunity, and neither the NDP nor the Conservatives, can afford to miss this little window allowing genuine and far-reaching democratic reform so that canada can for the first time in its history, join the ranks of modern democracies where the judiciary and upper house is not appointed by the dominant leader elected by 20-25% of the possible electorate.
It is the political rarity of this window of opportunity to reform the skewed post-colonial electoral system that was handed down 'before the telephone', that makes it essential for the NDP and the Conservatives to drop the petty posturings and do what is good for the future of Canada and ordinary (not Liberal elite) Canadians.
Posted by: brock at January 29, 2006 04:26 PM
sorry for the length...Canada has been a one party state for most of its history because its skewed, quasi-democratic system makes it that way. So long as the skewed representative electoral system remains in place, any ‘election’ bears the likely outcome of a Liberal PM-dominated Government once again. Pundits predicting a new era of similarly autocratic quasi-democratically elected Conservative PM-power centered governments can be excused for dipping a bit after so long a Liberal regime, but in the final analysis, so long as Canada’s electoral system is not modernized, “the king is dead, long live the king” is all any of this will finally amount to unless Canada becomes a modern democracy.
Under the “winner takes all” system (devoid in Canada of the checks and balances found in the US), political marginalization, polarization, ennui and cynicism, cronyism and corruption, regional alienation, and finally the hopeless cries for separation, are all inevitable. Canada is too vast a geography to be governed by a Soviet-style Ottawa (Moscow) central and ever centralizing, power and revenue-grabbing government. Moscow centralization did not work in Russia, and Ontario-Ottawa centralization cannot work, over the long term, in Canada. Only the vast resource wealth gifted to a relatively small population, combined with a 19th C version of quasi-democracy, has allowed one party governance from ‘Central Canada’ to dominate the federation for so long.
The national pundits, mostly pontificating from Ontario, try to make much of ‘Liberal Party’ inclusion where this means a given Minister will be picked from a given Region, as if this means anything. Call this the Anne McClellan syndrome, as if this Alberta-anomaly has ever represented Alberta regional values. The bottom line of power is not where a given ‘pickee’ comes from, but who gets to do the picking.
In this rare respite from one party rule, the non-Liberal parties have an opportunity to unite under the common purpose of changing Canada into a modern democratic Federation. This opportunity is about what's good over the long term, for the people of Canada. The opposite of what’s good for ordinary Canadians, is what’s good for the vying factions ruling this one party state's Liberal Party. Rare indeed, (given the purposely skewed and quasi-democratic fpp electoral system), is a minority government’s opportunity to change this skewed colonial-era system where a PM selected by a party elected into ‘majority’ by 20-25% of potential voters gets to appoint and control everything.
If the conservatives and the NDP miss this opportunity, this rare window for genuine and far-reaching democratic reform, Canada will continue to flounder as a country which has lost faith in itself because it does not operate under a real democracy.
Posted by: brock at January 29, 2006 05:46 PM
Brock, so right.
Why can't Eastern Canada get it through their heads that the centralized Moscow type government doesn't work in this modern era.
Maybe that is the problem, we are still 19th century. If it wasn't for the US next door, I wonder how Canada would fare...
Canuckistan...
Posted by: tomax at January 29, 2006 10:29 PM
 
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