The recent talk of ‘talk’ of a merger in the works between the NDP and Federal Liberals is pure fantasy – even if it were true. Members of both parties would never stand for it.
This is nothing like the ‘unite the right’ movement in the 90’s after the PC Party was blown to smithereens in the 1993 election. The whole conservative movement was split between east and west.
Western conservatives were more socially conservative, tilted towards an anti-Quebec thinking (refer to the unabashed anti-Quebec political ads of the Reform Party), where eastern conservatives were more fiscally conservative. For generations, they were part of one party, the Progressive Conservatives. At times there were leadership contests, the two pillars would spar as one group would try to assert control over the party, but generally pulled together for the sake of trying to win elections.
This is not a valid issue with the NDP and Federal Liberal parties. They were never part of one party and got disgruntled and left, they both have a depth of history and have contributed to the Canadian story in their own way. For talk of a merger to happen now is simply opportunism likely by desperate Liberals seeking a new way to baffle voters into handing them a governing mandate.
I suspect that if that merger was to happen, that the Green Party would supplant the NDP as the third party in Canada and score some impressive seat hauls.
The fact is that there are few things within the NDP and Liberals that are common links. That might be the socially progressive agenda of both parties; despite their governing records. The Liberal governments of Trudeau and Chretien were probably the most socially progressive in Canadian history. That’s were we got same-sex marriage laws, abortion laws, and some environmental legislation that has at least the appearance of being progressive. The legacy of the Liberals also is one of cuts to social program spending and healthcare that the NDP is diametrically opposed to.
Federal Liberal governments of the 1990’s were responsible for some of the most dramatic cuts to healthcare and education funding that this country as ever seen. The cuts were deeper than even Conservatives dared to go. Why the NDP would dare to combine with that legacy is baffling to say the least.
The thinkers within the Liberals must have drummed this up, and its based on a flawed thinking that if you combine two parties that generally fall into one category, all their previous voters will follow. This was the mistake of the Conservatives too. They assumed that all voters of the PC party and the Alliance party would rally to the ‘new’ Conservative party and they’d win a majority. In the 2006 election, that united Conservative party scored only 37% of the vote…less than the mathematical combination of the Alliance + PC Party sum that they counted on.
Well, its the same mistake about to be repeated all over again. This time, by parties never being linked in the past. The thinking is that the Liberals with their 28-34% and the NDP with their 16-21% could form a electoral block that would win at least 40% of the popular vote (likely translating into a majority mandate). But the voters of the respective parties are not likely to follow.
They’re going the wrong way with this; its not a merger of parties that we need, its a change of system that we need. It might be that the NDP and Liberals have many things in common, but let the voters decide that. Let the voters choose in a mixed proportional representation system. If the voters decide that, then the two parties can form a parliamentary coalition to pass legislation that both parties agree on.
If we’re to have one party try and represent all of progressive Canada, then it cannot be the Liberals or the NDP…it needs to be a new one, built from the ground up…without the baggage of the other ones.
