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Howard, you've called Mulcair a bullshitter.
How do you square that with ranking him first?
That's an honest question.
IE, I assume there is an answer. [But hopefully not something as facile as 'they are all bullshitters anyway'.] And the emphasis is on that word 'how'.
And while we are in question mode... I cant figure out if your Pat Martin for Leader is a joke, or not. :)
Whoa! That's not how I remember it. Blair fell out with social democratic forces long before 2002-2003. And it was over economic issues. And it started when he gave up democratic control over monetary policy shortly after taking office.
Nice try though, Stockholm.
I think Stock goes a bit far, but he is more right than you.
It was only the left end of the Labour party that never liked Blair. They didnt like Kinnock either. But Kinnock had to appease them, and Blair didn't.
Other than that, New Labour and Tony Blair started with broad spectrum support in the Labour Party... which only came unwound with Blair's Iraq/Bush adventure.
New Labour may well have died of it's own weight given time. But we cannot know that since Blair killed it first.
Where did that come from? I've attended events with most of the candidates as many times as I can, and Mulcair's been the most consistent at saying the same thing to different audiences, including members & the media. What are you basing your conclusion on?
"We have to renew. We're one of the only social democratic parties to never have renewed itself."
Hmm. You mean like the British Labour Party? Israel's Labor Party? PASOK? The GDP? "Socialist" parties in France and Spain? What do they all have in common besides varying degrees of "renewal"? They're all out of power.
Blair did not just fail in Iraq.
His third way policies were a massive improvement from the Thatcher era! Employment went up! But the recession took all of that away, because he worshipped the market. Social democracy at the moment is in a transition period .
And the left in the labour party has always been incredibly stupid. A total lack of respectable leadership on so many fronts.... But let's not get into that.
@ Termagant:
Mulcair is making up his tax policy as he goes. That is both a findamental issue for the NDP in its own right. And an indicator.
He touts cap and trade as a better source of the new revenues we need. Even though the NDP has always been very clear that ALL those revenues go to green initiatives. And that isnt just some policy wonk preference, its like that for our political protection, and making sure we can sell the climate change package.
And Mulcair and others feature both his environmental and economic credentials.
He also went so far as to say not just that in his opinion rolling back some of capital gains taxation benefits is not politicaly wise- in fact he did not say that at all. He said that it does not disproportionatley favour the wealthy- which is flat out untrue, and implied it would mostly hurt 'little people'.
Now when challenged, he brings up liking a financial trascations tax. Which is a good idea, but you get the picture.
Its easy to sound consistent and to deal with these kind of questions in a meet and greet and in the debates. Because it takes a frew iterations of back and forth challenge and answers until a candiate is forced to say one thing or the other. Dewar and Nash might get themselves boxed in those environments; but thats never going to happen to Mulcair, Topp, Cullen, or I expect Ashton.
Err, the other thing they have in common is "forming governments".
The minimum negative consequence to making it up as you go is that we dont get where we want to go. We squander political opportunities.
And there is worse: leaving gems for the very capable Harper campaign machine.
Two notable ones so far:
Cap and trade is a tax grab to fund social programs.
Cap and trade is for taking away Westerners resource industry jobs to protect manufacturing jobs in Quebec.
Speaking of Israel's Labor party, now that they've lost the third way wing(They formed a new party), I gave into temptation and googled them and this news story popped up. Things are changing in social democratic parties, but the future seems blurry.
Shelly Yachimovich, whatever her other faults, is no Shimon Peres or Ehud Barak when it comes to economic policy. After the "renewers" got through with the party, it was on life support. PASOK in Greece, still headed by Topp's hero Papandreu, is now polling in the single digits and left parties are on the rise. People are looking more and more for an alternative to the neo-liberal economic orthodoxy. If not given that alternative, they'll vote for the real thing, not an echo.
Not lately.
I'm wondering if the Caucus should try to reign some of these candidates in. Some of their remarks sound as if they should be directed at the government as opposed to fellow NDPers.
@ KenS
I appreciate that you don't like cap and trade, but I still don't see how that equates with making things up on the fly. It just means you don't like cap and trade as his answer.
And it's actually rather difficult to stay consistent in meet & greets, when you're face-to-face with members with a wide rande of opinions & pet issues (see: the range of opinions on Babble alone!) The pressure to please people must be intense.
I appreciate straightforwardness and consistency, which is what I got from Mulcair, which is why your statements seemed so strange.
Okay - if we don't like the 'carbon tax' or 'cap and trade', what's left?
KenS, I agree with a lot of your analysis. It's easy for a candidate to prove that they won't imitate the Liberals -- just pick a policy from the platform and hammer it. And proving a they have a secret agenda IS futile. (unless people actually put the candidates on the spot, and even then for the diehard conspiracy theorists, there's always the old wisdom that "politicians can lie".)
I'm with you on your reservations on tax policy. (Much prefer Topp here, and think Mulcair is making a small/medium/big mistake treating carbon reduction as his main revenue scheme.) But I don't think that's him making up his tax policy as he goes along. I think he's made a concerned and decisive choice: don't get trapped into promising a tax increase until the 2015 election. I can appreciate the strategy in that, because taxes have been an achilles heel for the left. But I want to know if push comes to shove, he won't scrap the promises we "can't afford". I want to know he'll get the wealthy to chip in like they used to.
And even if I can appreciate the strategy of avoiding the tax issue... I might even prefer Topp strategically, not just policy-wise. The conventional wisdom is that the NDP has a lot of spending priorities and no way to pay for them. There's even some common sense truth to that: if we have a budget deficit under the Conservatives now, how is the NDP going to introduce new programs AND balance the budget? If you have one candidate saying we can make up the difference by closing the loopholes, it might not pass the smell test. Topp may have a lot more credibility here, which is important.
As for "centrist positioning", I find that's a strategy that I like to employ. The NDP might technically be a leftward party in Canada, but I often say that we represent the core of Canadian values, and the most popular and successful economic philosophy in the world: the mixed economy. We're the architects of medicare, the most popular program in Canadian history. The Saskatchewan Bill of Rights was passed a year before the UN's. We were the leading critics of Iraq and Afghanistan. We're moderate. It's the other parties that have strayed too far to the right, ignoring working people. That pisses off the Liberals to no end, because they know I'm right, but want to take credit for those things anyway. I know that it sometimes comes out in a way that makes New Democrats nervous (it's a thin line between "I'm a critic of NAFTA, but we can reform it for fair trade" versus "I support NAFTA, but we need to reform it for fair trade"). But it has the most potential to appeal beyond our base, without completely revamping the platform that got us this far.
Hear, hear.
Laws requiring emitters to reduce emissions, or else be shut down. Sounds like violent revolution, I know, but maybe worth a try?
Kinda like when your car's not safe and they make you park it. No "unsafety tax", no trading "hazard credits".
That sounds good, U - and let's start with the tar sands.
You read my mind!
Only I think, to be politically correct and polite, we're supposed to call them "petrol gardens" or something of that sort.
"petrol gardens" -
I like cap and trade fine. I think the NDPs climate change package is one of the best crafted things we have ever done- even if we did keep most of it out of view. But one thing we were always clear about is that ALL revenues from cap and trade are devoted to green initiatives. And the driving reason for insisting on that is political pragmatism- to insulate us from easy attacks.
Now Mulcair just ditches all that, with no explanation whatsoever, and hands the attack ads to Harper.
Then why doesnt he just SAY that? It would have been very simple.
He didn't because he wants to have it all ways. He does not want to concede Topp out-flanking him on the NDP's centre-left. He's used to having it both ways, and he's not above making stuff up to keep it that way. Damn the consequences. More like, 'what conswequences?'
And he manages to get the reputation that he wont pander to what the membership wants [that's Topp], and 'tells it like it is'.
There is a difference between saying what you like and being forthright. And its a real BIG difference for the person who is to be the Leader of the NDP.
Taxing the wealthy IS a centrist positioning.
It is a policy designed to both achieve subthing substantive that we sorely need [turn around the systematic gutting of government revenues begun by Paul Martin and applied now with ferocity], and make inroads into the centre.
Thats pushing the envelope of what the people in the centre CAN find desirable, rather than just straight up centrist positioning ['we'll stick within the limits of what the centre will not find challenging'].
You're yada-yadaing majority government terms. Causal link fail.
I agree that that there was more to object to about Blair beyond his Iraq War stance...I was just making the point that I think that to the vast majority of NDP members - if you asked them what it was that they disliked about Tony Blair - they would go on about the Iraq War and then have little or nothing else to say. I think that for the average NDP member - as long as you oppose the war in Iraq you are ipso-facto NOT a "Blairite"
No disagreement here. I think that if Mulcair found he was taking a hammering on the tax issue, that tax policy paper he promised would come out a lot faster, and it would at least mention the possibility of a tax increase on the wealthy. I also agree that a tax on the wealthy is a moderate and centrist position, and is completely saleable to the public if someone only had the courage to do it, and the clarity of communication to avoid being painted as a tax on everyone.
For all the flaws in the Topp campaign, he remains high on my list for those reasons. I think he's mindful of strategy AND policy. And I think he's married the two: honesty and candour are good strategy. Fighting on a central tenet of a social democratic economy -- that the wealthy chip in to pay for a more fair society for everyone -- is good strategy. Avoidance is bad strategy.
Side note: I'm also with you in my disappointment with the Nash campaign. I still have the highest respect for her as an MP.
He actually did say just that at the Québec City debate in response to Topp's questioning. Something about 2015 being far away, us not knowing what the budget situation will be like then, and it not being necessary or particularly useful to commit to a specific tax increase this far out.
"...why doesnt he just say that? It would have been very simple.
He didn't because he wants to have it all ways. He does not want to concede Topp out-flanking him on the NDP's centre-left...."
[which is not just some kind of character fault. It has major consequences in the political pragmatism department.]
Not to mention that in Halifax when he was directly challenged on this, the only answers he gave were attempts to keep Topp from outflanking him on the left. Including of the gift to the Conservatives and 180 degree contradiction of NDP policy of using cap and trade revenues as the better form of getting the new revenues we needed. And lest we think he was just caught off-guard, he repeated that quite unequivocally in a long interview a week or so later.
The ruckus over Dewar releasing the poll has actually made me reconsider him. I hadn't really taken much notice of him before this. It seems he does know how to connect with people beyond the traditional base, and has an easy-going manner about him but also simultaneously has a very strategic mind. Plus, Angus (his named deputy) is almost single-handedly keeping the NDP in the media as a fighting force against the Tories. Might be a good choice. He seems committed to continuing on the social democratic path of Layton. Also he seems committed to improving his subpar French, but admittedly he'll never be as good as someone who grew up with it (IE, Mulcair or Topp). Still, I am giving him serious consideration. Topp remains my first choice, and Nash my second (though her healthcare comments at the last debate worry me). However Dewar, whom I previously had not even considered, has now entered my consciousness. He may become my third choice.
Email from Youth For Ashton just received.