Jagmeet Singh, NDP Leader

Ken Burch wrote:

epaulo13 wrote:

..singh doesn't run the party no more than mulcair did. the problems that the ndp faces lies much deeper than the leader. people on this board having been talking about those problems for years with no resolution in sight.

..blaming the leader without dealing with those deeper issues is a dead end. not to mention that it provides the false notion that all you need is the "right leader". more was needed than just corbyn and as we see today corbyn is not enough. 

It's not JUST the leader.  There's an urgent need for the establishment of internal party democracy, and it is essential that the rank-and-file have control over what goes into the platform and the policy book.  Since 1961 as a certainty, and perhaps from the beginning(I don't know how policy decisions were made in the CCF era), the party has been run by a cynical, dismissive internal party bureaucracy whose guiding principle has always been that the rank-and-file are idiots who should never have any real say in what the party is about.  Since 1961, this approach has almost always kept the party in third place.  It did massive damage in the 1960s and 1970s, when the party refused to engage with the New Left, and has done more of the same in the post-WTO era, keeping the party at arms-length from the only people in left-of-centre politics with any new ideas and any real enthusiasm for working for change.    This notion that the NDP has to be kind of grumpily dismissive of idealism and transformative politics hasn't done the party any good-there simply is not any large group of people who WANT a break from the status quo, but sneer at most of the people working for such a break.  Why not just admit that activists are not the enemy, that open discussion is not the enemy, that passion and enthusiasm are not the enemies?

Fully agree with you about Corbyn-it IS a collaboration, and that's why Corbyn's enemies are so obsessed with driving Momentum, the incarnation of that collaboration, out of the party, by smearing it as antisemitic and conspiratorial and cultish when it is clearly neither of those things.

..yes about the attack on momentum but what i am talking about is broader than that. labour will sometimes do things that are politically expedient. ie: brexit. there are external forces that support labour and are engaged in trying to push labour to take a different position.

epaulo13 wrote:

..singh doesn't run the party no more than mulcair did. the problems that the ndp faces lies much deeper than the leader. people on this board having been talking about those problems for years with no resolution in sight.

..blaming the leader without dealing with those deeper issues is a dead end. not to mention that it provides the false notion that all you need is the "right leader". more was needed than just corbyn and as we see today corbyn is not enough. 

This, the leader doesn’t matter, is not only factually incorrect, it’s self-defeating.  

Ken Burch wrote:

epaulo13 wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

epaulo13 wrote:

..singh doesn't run the party no more than mulcair did. the problems that the ndp faces lies much deeper than the leader. people on this board having been talking about those problems for years with no resolution in sight.

..blaming the leader without dealing with those deeper issues is a dead end. not to mention that it provides the false notion that all you need is the "right leader". more was needed than just corbyn and as we see today corbyn is not enough. 

It's not JUST the leader.  There's an urgent need for the establishment of internal party democracy, and it is essential that the rank-and-file have control over what goes into the platform and the policy book.  Since 1961 as a certainty, and perhaps from the beginning(I don't know how policy decisions were made in the CCF era), the party has been run by a cynical, dismissive internal party bureaucracy whose guiding principle has always been that the rank-and-file are idiots who should never have any real say in what the party is about.  Since 1961, this approach has almost always kept the party in third place.  It did massive damage in the 1960s and 1970s, when the party refused to engage with the New Left, and has done more of the same in the post-WTO era, keeping the party at arms-length from the only people in left-of-centre politics with any new ideas and any real enthusiasm for working for change.    This notion that the NDP has to be kind of grumpily dismissive of idealism and transformative politics hasn't done the party any good-there simply is not any large group of people who WANT a break from the status quo, but sneer at most of the people working for such a break.  Why not just admit that activists are not the enemy, that open discussion is not the enemy, that passion and enthusiasm are not the enemies?

Fully agree with you about Corbyn-it IS a collaboration, and that's why Corbyn's enemies are so obsessed with driving Momentum, the incarnation of that collaboration, out of the party, by smearing it as antisemitic and conspiratorial and cultish when it is clearly neither of those things.

..yes about the attack on momentum but what i am talking about is broader than that. labour will sometimes do things that are politically expedient. ie: brexit. there are external forces that support labour and are engaged in trying to push labour to take a different position.

That is true.  Corbyn is in a no-win situation on that.  The right-wing of the party are obsessed with getting him to take an all-out "stop Brexit" position.  If Corbyn does that though, support for the party instantly collapses in the North and Northeast of England, the areas that were left to rot economically in the EU era.  It could even bring UKIP back to life and cause a large increase in racist violence.  An all-out "stop Brexit" stance could never be broadly popular with the electorate and would likely reduce Labour, in the subsuquent election, to a 1983-style humiliation-and it's likely that that is WHY the anti-Corbynites are so obsessed with trying to force him into such a stance-they would rather see Labour lose badly and the assault on the social welfare state continue(and it's likely that more than a few anti-Corbynites actually want the welfare state further reduced and the NHS diluted down to nothing) than see Labour win the election under a leader who does not defer to City of London on economics and the Pentagon on foreign policy, and who does NOT keep rank-and-file activists totally out in the cold in Labour's decision-making process.

..again it's not about the issue but the processes at play. a far cry from what is going on in canada re the ndp.

OK.  If it wasn't Brexit it would be something else...like the antisemitism smears.

..what i'm talking about are the processes of pro corbyn labour both inside and outside the party not just blindly following the party. these movements have their own priorities and are engaged to include those priorities into the labour agenda. like participatory democracy. like in bernie's campaign he was good on some things and not on other things. movements forced him to take better positions.  

Singh is paralyzed by fear, afraid to say anything controversial at all. He is trying to appeal to people who would never vote for him, while he wears clothes which are more expensive than the cars of the people who would normally vote for him. Save the suits for Parliament!
 

..so what is the role played by the caucus, by the membership in today's ndp? do they not also contribute to the state of the ndp? 

..txs ken. i've experienced a similar bureaucracy in the labour movement.

..i'm still digesting what you've written and questions are coming slowly and this may continue or not for a day or 2. understand that i'm trying to understand.

here's one..so angus's anger, your anger is misdirected at singh and should rightly be pointed at the bureaucracy? 

Ken Burch wrote:

This party bureaucracy, essentially created by that famous Left-hating Cold Warrior David Lewis, is committed to preventing anything in the party from ever changing-unless that change is a further tack to the "center"(or what anyone else would call the Right).  They are the ones who have prevented the NDP from connecting with the social movements-even though the social movements are the ONLY place on the left, or even the "centre-left" where anyone is working with any energy or creativity for change.  They are the ones who would never allow the NDP to be a peace party, even though Canada has desperately needed a party that challenged the inevitability-of-war consensus.  They are the ones who refused to allow the party to connect with anti-WTO activism or the passionate energy of Occupy.  They are the ones who wouldn't tolerate NDP MPs supporting the Quebec students-even though nobody who OPPOSED what the students were fighting for would ever have voted NDP or even agreed with it the party on any significant number of issues.  They are the ones who still refuse the party to make any significant criticisms of what the Israeli government does to the IDF-even though there's essentially no such thing as a left-Zionist, let alone any significant left-Zionist organizations, in all of Canada.  They are the ones who insist on dumping parliamentary candidates because they speak out too fiercely against injustice.

This is a long-term institutional problem.  And at the moment, there's no clear solution.

In 2017, they essentially imposed their chosen candidate as leader, while shielding that candidate from any real need to debate or any expectation of having to say what he would stand for as leader.

The inner bureaucracy is the key to all of this.

And the only way to get the party out of this particular dilemma is to find some way of finally dislodging this bureaucracy.  But it's not clear how to do that.

Who, specifically, is the "inner bureaucracy"? If you're not comfortable naming names (besides the long dead David Lewis) can you at least identify job titles? Is it principally staffers, officers, donors, union leaders, or some other group? How do they exert power, specifically? I'm not necessarily disputing your characterization but I'm saying that ultimately there is a constitution and various processes through which decisions get made and executed. Singh, who you say was "imposed" on the party, got a lot of votes from actual people through what appeared at first glance at least to be a relatively open and democratic process. There are actual people who sit on the committees that "vet" potential candidates before they are allowed to run. Who are those people and who selects them? Etc. If you believe there is an  entrenched group of power brokers who are asserting undue influence on the Party, identifying who that group is and the means by which they assert there power would, presumably, be the first step to actually doing something about it.

epaulo13 wrote:

..txs ken. i've experienced a similar bureaucracy in the labour movement.

..i'm still digesting what you've written and questions are coming slowly and this may continue or not for a day or 2. understand that i'm trying to understand.

here's one..so angus's anger, your anger is misdirected at singh and should rightly be pointed at the bureaucracy? 

robbie_dee wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

This party bureaucracy, essentially created by that famous Left-hating Cold Warrior David Lewis, is committed to preventing anything in the party from ever changing-unless that change is a further tack to the "center"(or what anyone else would call the Right).  They are the ones who have prevented the NDP from connecting with the social movements-even though the social movements are the ONLY place on the left, or even the "centre-left" where anyone is working with any energy or creativity for change.  They are the ones who would never allow the NDP to be a peace party, even though Canada has desperately needed a party that challenged the inevitability-of-war consensus.  They are the ones who refused to allow the party to connect with anti-WTO activism or the passionate energy of Occupy.  They are the ones who wouldn't tolerate NDP MPs supporting the Quebec students-even though nobody who OPPOSED what the students were fighting for would ever have voted NDP or even agreed with it the party on any significant number of issues.  They are the ones who still refuse the party to make any significant criticisms of what the Israeli government does to the IDF-even though there's essentially no such thing as a left-Zionist, let alone any significant left-Zionist organizations, in all of Canada.  They are the ones who insist on dumping parliamentary candidates because they speak out too fiercely against injustice.

This is a long-term institutional problem.  And at the moment, there's no clear solution.

In 2017, they essentially imposed their chosen candidate as leader, while shielding that candidate from any real need to debate or any expectation of having to say what he would stand for as leader.

The inner bureaucracy is the key to all of this.

And the only way to get the party out of this particular dilemma is to find some way of finally dislodging this bureaucracy.  But it's not clear how to do that.

Who, specifically, is the "inner bureaucracy"? If you're not comfortable naming names (besides the long dead David Lewis) can you at least identify job titles? Is it principally staffers, officers, donors, union leaders, or some other group? How do they exert power, specifically? I'm not necessarily disputing your characterization but I'm saying that ultimately there is a constitution and various processes through which decisions get made and executed. Singh, who you say was "imposed" on the party, got a lot of votes from actual people through what appeared at first glance at least to be a relatively open and democratic process. There are actual people who sit on the committees that "vet" potential candidates before they are allowed to run. Who are those people and who selects them? Etc. If you believe there is an  entrenched group of power brokers who are asserting undue influence on the Party, identifying who that group is and the means by which they assert there power would, presumably, be the first step to actually doing something about it.

..i had another discussion in another thread a couple weeks ago were a party member suggested that what was needed was an intervention from outside the party. like what happened with the labour party under corbyn. like what happened with sanders.

..thing about those interventions is that they were spontaneous. it isn't like you can call that up on demand. triggers are needed to catch the imagination with the possibility of change at the end. i just don't see that happening here. not that it couldn't happen just don't see and triggers.

..without the triggers the prospect of spending years trying to change the system from within is not appealing imo though others may disagree. trying to overcome the divisions that you see within the party re extraction alone sounds insurmountable to me without a trigger.  

Ken Burch wrote:

robbie_dee wrote:

Got it. I wasn't trying to put you on the spot and I get that you're not the only one to raise this critique. I am just not sure if there is a specific cabal controlling things in the Party per se, or if what is really going on is more about the dominant ideology in our society - which has been formed and made hegemonic by broader institutions outside of the NDP- and the way that constrains fundamentally well-meaning but highly tactically oriented activists from imagining how to do things differently.

And part of the problem is the degree to which this is indefinite-you know there is SOME sort of institutional hindrance to change and transformation, but nobody ever just openly says "I'm part of the means of obstruction".  People who are closer to the party than I am would be the ones who could provide the answers on that.

Institutions like the NDP promote those that share the dominant ideology of the institution. Since Jack Layton the dominant ideology of the NDP has been that electablity is the end and be all of politics. Under his mantle the party backed away from its historic oppostion to NAFTA and to NATO.  It reminds me of the '90's when the NDP who had been preaching reform of our institutions for a generation decided it was passe and stopped talking about it. Preston Manning took up the talk and won a shitload of seats while the NDP was sitting on its hands.  Singh is just the latest in a string of leaders elected because they promised to seek power as their primary goal. The majority of Canadians like the status quo and are not willing to vote for change until it is necesary. Unfortunately the NDP in the last election ceased embracing change at the moment that Canadians were willing to try a new direction. It then offered them Mulcair's "we will maintain the status quo" campaign. 

So until the head office fires most of the people who believe that winning power is the main objective the NDP will be irrelevant. Tommy Douglas, the saint of all Canadian lefties, toured the province for a decade teaching before he was elected. He didn't try to figure out what the peple wanted so he could promise it too them he educated them as to what they needed and when they understood they elected him repeatedly.

..i'm not totally convinced that the bureaucracy has a death grip on the party. i'm not totally convinced that the membership or caucus is made up of mostly lefties trying to find it's way out from under the heavy hand of the cabal. mulcair not only had support for the positions taken but were jointly conceived with the caucus. yes the bureaucacy is powerful. yes more membership input could lead to better decisions but the level of  struggle within the party has to change as well. this is an essential part.

..how can the party be radicalized is a better question because then no one has to be waiting around for the party to decide. positions can be somewhat shaped from outside the party by becoming engaged with the issues at hand. doug ford just got elected, the cons are wrecking havoc in manitoba. the ecology suffers more each day. it's not like there is nothing to be done. and this could support a change in the level of struggle within the ndp. imho.

..this event happened in wpg and has lessons for activists. it's a way to deal with the issues at hand, organize for now and into the future. we can also look closer at the que student strike and the pipeline/tarsands resistance.  

 This is How to Fight!

Women in West Virginia Teach Powerful Lessons

The recent wildcat strike by teachers and support staff in West Virginia is being called one of the most important events in the labour movement since the 1970s. We would like to take a closer look and examine its success and discuss its relevance to the situation here in Canada.

Presenters:

• Kate Doyle Griffiths (via Skype) is active with International Women’s Strike-U.S. and the Red Bloom collective in New York City. Kate spent time in West Virginia during the strike.
• David Camfield is active with Winnipeg Labour Council and Solidarity Winnipeg.

Here are some articles circulated before the discussion:

• Kate Doyle Griffiths, “When Women Organize, We Win,” 7 March 2018.
• Kate Doyle Griffiths, “Crossroads and Country Roads,” 13 March 2018.
• Eric Blanc, “West Virginia’s Militant Minority,” 3 March 2018.

Recorded on 29 March 2018 in Winnipeg, Canada.

Pondering wrote:

JKR wrote:

Pondering wrote:

... If a political party's base is on the left then social justice issues will be part of the philosophy of the party but only in so much as it contributes to electibility because that remains the primary goal. That is achieved by convincing voters the party will do the best job of governing. Hence the rush to the centre by all parties. The natural tendency is for people to not want radical change. For a political party to convince people radical change is required is extremely difficult in a wealthy successful country like Canada. 

Why should Canada radically change if it is a wealthy and successful country? Why should a political party like the NDP try to radically change Canada if Canada is a wealthy and successful country? If all parties should rush to the centre, what is the purpose of having a leftist party like the NDP? Why have the NDP be another centrist party when the Liberals already have that role covered and having another centrist party just splits the centre-left vote and helps the centre-right win? Why do you oppose PR that would give the left a fair shake?

I don't see PR delivering better governments than FPTP. It's a false "solution", a distraction. It doesn't give people any more power over political parties or representatives. A recall option would give people more power. PR gives political parties more power. 

I didn't say parties should rush to the centre I said that is what they do because that is where the votes are.  Give the base some candies and aim for the middle. The only way to achieve radical change in Canada is to convince the population that it is needed. That cannot be  achieved through a political party. It can only be achieved through activism even though that too is a faint hope. 

How would PR give the Liberals and Conservatives more power than they have now? I think they prefer the complete power they currently have with phoney FPTP majority governments over what they would have with PR governments where they would have to compromise with other parties.

Doesn't FPTP drive the few big-tent parties we have to the centre? If the NDP and Liberals merged it would force the Conservatives to move to the centre and it would increase the chances of a slightly left of centre government winning under FPTP but wouldn't that reduce our political pluralism? Wouldn't a party with more radical leftist policies have a better chance of gaining representation in Parliament under PR?

We have recall here in BC and it seems to have made little to no difference.

JKR wrote:

Pondering wrote:

JKR wrote:

Pondering wrote:

... If a political party's base is on the left then social justice issues will be part of the philosophy of the party but only in so much as it contributes to electibility because that remains the primary goal. That is achieved by convincing voters the party will do the best job of governing. Hence the rush to the centre by all parties. The natural tendency is for people to not want radical change. For a political party to convince people radical change is required is extremely difficult in a wealthy successful country like Canada. 

Why should Canada radically change if it is a wealthy and successful country? Why should a political party like the NDP try to radically change Canada if Canada is a wealthy and successful country? If all parties should rush to the centre, what is the purpose of having a leftist party like the NDP? Why have the NDP be another centrist party when the Liberals already have that role covered and having another centrist party just splits the centre-left vote and helps the centre-right win? Why do you oppose PR that would give the left a fair shake?

I don't see PR delivering better governments than FPTP. It's a false "solution", a distraction. It doesn't give people any more power over political parties or representatives. A recall option would give people more power. PR gives political parties more power. 

I didn't say parties should rush to the centre I said that is what they do because that is where the votes are.  Give the base some candies and aim for the middle. The only way to achieve radical change in Canada is to convince the population that it is needed. That cannot be  achieved through a political party. It can only be achieved through activism even though that too is a faint hope. 

How would PR give the Liberals and Conservatives more power than they have now? I think they prefer the complete power they currently have with phoney FPTP majority governments over what they would have with PR governments where they would have to compromise with other parties.

Doesn't FPTP drive the few big-tent parties we have to the centre? If the NDP and Liberals merged it would force the Conservatives to move to the centre but wouldn't that reduce our political pluralism? Wouldn't a party with more radical leftist policies have a better chance of gaining representation in Parliament under PR?

We have recall here in BC and it seems to have made little to no difference.

..ken just so you know your courage to take on my question in #766 allowed me to firm up my position on the ndp as a party. it led me to futher understand from my own point of view. to clarify where i was a bit shakey in my understanding. this was helpful and i thank you. 

Pondering wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

Did you support Singh because you WANTED him to run the party into the ground? 

I didn't support Singh I supported Caron. Part of my support for Singh is that he appears to listen to Caron. 

Ken Burch wrote:

Also, when the NDP promotes "what it wants", it's probably at least in part because the party sees "what it wants" as actually being beneficial to the electorate. 

Apparently the electorate doesn't agree and they get to decide.

 

Ken Burch wrote:

The situation is heading towards disaster here, Pondering.  It won't be possible for the NDP to gain seats and votes during the next general election campaign if it loses every byelection running up to it.  It won't be possible for the NDP to hold ANY Quebec seats at all if Outremont goes Liberal in the by-election.  Doesn't that concern you in the least?  

Getting  rid of Singh is not a solution to those problems. If anything they would make them worse. Outremont is a Liberal seat that Mulcair won based on his reputation not the reputation of the NDP.  You don't support him so you are holding Singh responsible for those losses rather than recognizing the specifics of various ridings. In my opinion the political landscape dictates the the NDP probably won't do very well in 2019 regardless of the leader. Trudeau will most likely get another majority. 

Ken Burch wrote:

 Do you even WANT the NDP to hold its current ground?  It can't recover in future elections if the party goes down to 20 seats again, and the party will have no reason to exist if it goes back to ONLY electing MPs in Ontario, the Prairies, and B.C., as the NDP is currently on track to do.   

So who do you think would do a better job than Singh? 

It's not about anything as simple as Singh doing "a bad job".  Singh, in many respects, reflects and embodies the views of the party bureaucracy, with its absurd paranoia about offering policies that create actual enthusiasm and its ridiculous adamance in refusing to connect with the social movements-the ONLY parts of the left-of-centre side of the political spectrum in which there is any energy and any real awareness of how to organize the public and build support for change-which matters because the NDP can't do well at all UNLESS it connects to those who build such support.  

There are two possible ways out of the current situation;

1)Singh goes.  A very short-duration leadership contest is held-the shorter the better, so that there's no advantage given to candidates with a lot of cash on hand.  The party bureaucracy or whoever it is within the party that act as the means of obstruction agree to get out of the way and let the rank-and-file elect whoever they WANT to elect, while passing whatever resolutions the rank-and-file sees fit to pass.  A new leader who connects the party to all or most of those seeking structural change is chosen, the communications system within the party is revamped so that the means of obstruction don't GET to prevent rank-and-file party members from communicating with party HQ and getting their messages through to the leader.  Any and all ties between anyone in the party bureaucracy and Hill & Knowlton are immediately cut, out of the realization that there is no valid reason to have the party's ads done by the same agency that does ads for the OTHER big parties;

2)Singh stays on, and makes all or even most of the changes listed above-I have nothing personal against Singh, agree that he deserved a chance, and think that it's bullshit for anyone to keep bringing up the turban or slandering the guy by calling him "a religious nationalist"; Singh is no more a religious nationalist than the Irish rebels of the 19th and early 20th Century were.  He also begins to truly speak to the issues of the day-if he doesn't put out a platform, he at least gives the public some idea of what he would do with power-because that's what the voters want to know more than anything else and because there's no way to win by HIDING what he'd do if elected.  Also, because it's ridiculous to act as if this party's general ideas can never win the argument with the voters-if a party's ideas can't be popular, that party isn't going to be electable no matter what.  Singh is against economic inequality-fine, so are most people who aren't Donald Trump.  If he doesn't want to offer a platform, why not at least have public forums where progressives can offer their own for consideration?   Why not re-orient the NDP as a peace party(wouldn't have to mean outright pacifist-obviously, an NDP government would need to defend Canadian territory from outside military attack), but it can't do any harm to make a clear break with the Liberal-Con position in favor of the Anti-Muslim Wars in Iraq, Afghanistan, Syria, Libya, Yemen and wherever the hell else they're going on.  In speaking about that, Singh could talk about how the money being used to build implements of death for use against the Middle East and other parts of the world could be used to make life better for Canadians at home.

What I'm saying, in general, is that enthusiasm is a weapon for a party like the NDP-it isn't a threat, it isn't the enemy.  Neither is passion.  Neither is something like specificity.  If the NDP is even going to manage a respectable showing at the next election(which has to mean continuing to elect MPs from Quebec, since the party can only go into collapse across the country if it has a wipeout in Quebec), it needs to start firing people up.  It needs to start making its presence known and being about real issues and real needs.  Personal charisma and nice suits, combined with buzzwords, can't do a damn thing by themselves.

YOU want the NDP to win.  Contrary to everything you've convinced yourself of on the matter, the Left of the party wants the exact same thing.  Why not listen to them, when the pools and the by-election disaster which just occurred proves that keeping them out in the cold and treating social democratic values as an embarassment aren't doing a damn thing to assist the cause of an NDP win?  Why can you not see that the approach you've insisted on-say nothing and somehow try to slipstream through by default-doesn't work?  

It didn't even work in Ontario-the sole reason the ONDP made large gains there was that Horwath listened to the Left.  

Notley may have a majority but if she dared oppose pipelines her resignation would be forced.

..forced by whom?

brookmere wrote:

Ken Burch wrote:

Singh is no more a religious nationalist than the Irish rebels of the 19th and early 20th Century were.

 

Singh has said openly that the Sikhs are a people with the right of self-determination. That is nationalism by definition. I don't claim to know the motives of every Irish nationalist, but I can quote from the Proclamation of the Irish Republic, 1916:

The Irish Republic is entitled to, and hereby claims, the allegiance of every Irishman and Irishwoman. The Republic guarantees religious and civil liberty, equal rights and equal opportunities to all its citizens, and declares its resolve to pursue the happiness and prosperity of the whole nation and of all its parts, cherishing all the children of the nation equally, and oblivious of the differences carefully fostered by an alien Government, which have divided a minority from the majority in the past.

A PEOPLE, not a religion.  Singh supports an independent state for Indian Sikhs because he has come to the conclusion that there will never be an Indian government that does not oppress the Sikh people.  He doesn't want to create a situation in which non-Sikhs would live in a position of submission and subservience to Sikhs in such a place.   And he is not prejudiced against Hindus or Muslims.

His position is no different than that of those who supported Irish self-determination in the 19th Century or Palestinian self-determination today.  And unfortunately, in all three cases, there was no "Left" alternative to self-determination for each of the three communities we've reference in that exchange-there was no possbility of a any meaningful positive change happening within the existing polities each of those three communities are currently living under-India is going to have a right-wing Hindu nationalist government for decades to come, if not forever, just as Great Britain was never going to treat the Irish Catholic community with equality and justice and just as Israel is going to be Likud, if not a government to the RIGHT of Likud, for the rest of eternity.  Calls for self-determination are always an unavoidable by-product of a situation in which the entity a community is ruled by is unchangeable.  What else would you have Singh do?  It's impossible to ever end the persecution of Indian Sikhs without Sikh independence.

"Helen Laverdiere, the NDP's foreign affairs critic, said that the party currently has no intention of withdrawing from the interparliamentary group." - CJN

https://canadatalksisraelpalestine.ca/2017/05/28/canadian-human-rights-a...

https://twitter.com/HLaverdiereNPD/status/1008820556173643777

' Run with the rabbits - hunt with the hounds'

'A party of the working class, led by the middle class, in the interest of the ruling class' = NDP

epaulo13 wrote:

Notley may have a majority but if she dared oppose pipelines her resignation would be forced.

..forced by whom?

Well, her pollsters might sit her down and say "Look, opposing pipelines is electoral suicide in Alberta", and if she continued with her opposition, there would probably be a revolt of one form or another within the party. Whether it's someone challenging her for the leadership, or MLAs bolting from the party(I'd wager on the former being more plausible), she likely wouldn't make it to the next election.

Pondering wrote:

SeekingAPoliticalHome wrote:

 This idea was based on monumtem, that Singh beat Trudea at every clash.  Success leads to more success kind of thinking.   The major problem there was no monumtem no victores agaisnt, Trudeua can fail a dozen times and in the end he will win if the monumtem is broken.  Truduea rans the show and with that comes, the PM, the well funded party.  He can lose many fightings but Singh loses one fight its over.  And Singh and NDP lost fights one after the other.  By election to by election, Singh was branded the person run over Trudeau.  Once it became  common news that he was a potitical dud it was to late.  Now we have crippled leader and no policy messaging what the NDP stands for.  Everything was built on personality of the leader, rather than policy.  

On what basis did you make that determination. I don't recall any of his supporters presenting those arguments. Singh does have some of Trudeau's qualities but that doesn't mean that is why he was elected. Do you really think that when the election rolls around the NDP won't have  any policy or platform to introduce? 

Who, out of the candidates presented for leadership would have better numbers than Singh right now? Do you think Angus, who was in second place, would have done better in the byelections?

Singh was vocal about he dominate trudeua, and he entourarged the idea of fight of leaders.  And the media was only to to happy push the idea of a clash of the leaders.  I will find some articles to point to this out.