Leadership candidate Rakhi Pancholi has proposed disaffiliating the Alberta NDP from the federal party to deprive the province’s Conservatives of a talking point they’ll use anyway.
“Membership in one political party should not require membership in another,” she said in a news release Thursday. “Albertans who want to join the Alberta NDP … should get to decide if they also want to become a member of the federal NDP.”
Well, OK, but you have to wonder if pushing this has the potential to open a Pandora’s Box of troubles for the Alberta NDP far worse for it than the oft-repeated United Conservative Party (UCP) claim that federal NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh (or Prime Minister Justin Trudeau) is the provincial party leader’s “boss.”
After all, Panchoili’s proposed solution to what may not actually be that much of a problem is unlikely to stop the UCP from carrying on repeating the same fib over and over.
Nevertheless, the day after Pancholi’s announcement, candidate Kathleen Ganley said she too might allow that Pandora’s Box to be cracked open.
“This is a decision of the membership,” Ganley, who appears to be the choice of the party establishment if you go by endorsements, said in a “members’ charter” released by her campaign on Friday.
“I have heard from many Alberta New Democrats who feel the relationship with the federal party is detrimental, does not reflect their values and they wish to sever ties,” her news release said. “The concerns of these members are valid, they deserve to be heard and I will provide members with the full information they need to make this decision. I am committed to making sure the members have a choice on whether to sever ties.”
Unlike Pancholi, Ganley didn’t really let us know what she thinks. And as for her implicit suggestion that, once opened, the debate could be closed down again – that may be more easily said than done.
Candidate Sarah Hoffman, meanwhile, clearly favours leaving the lid shut.
Hoffman vowed in an interview just before she announced her candidacy that she would remain true to her NDP values. “I’m unapologetic about my values,” she told me. “And I think that they’re the ones that we need to help solve these really difficult times.”
We don’t know yet what any other high-profile candidates might think, because for the moment, anyway, there are no additional high-profile candidates, former Calgary mayor Naheed Nenshi having made no announcement about his intentions, pro or con.
Now, this may have seemed like a great idea when Pancholi’s strategic team was looking for a way to set her campaign apart from the others and maybe attract some Liberal and Alberta Party members uncomfortable with voting NDP but unable to tolerate Premier Danielle Smith or the UCP either.
But surely making this a key issue in the NDP campaign tends to lend credibility to the UCP accusation the federal NDP, or the federal Liberals, somehow call the NDP’s shots in Edmonton – which they manifestly do not.
Moreover, it smacks of the perennial belief by opponents of Alberta governments that all their troubles would be over if only if everyone vaguely on their side of the political spectrum would get together and sing from the same hymnbook.
As we have seen on the right, this can work – but not necessarily the way its proponents hope. If you don’t believe me about that, just ask Jason Kenney, the fellow who deserves more credit than anyone else for “uniting the right” in 2017. And where Kenney now?
Consider the traditional distrust of New Democrat and Liberal voters have for the other party in that uncomfortable pairing. Historically, it’s often been easier for Western Canadian New Democrats and Conservatives to switch parties at election time than to vote Liberal.
And does anyone remember the Democratic Renewal Project? If the naïve effort after the 2008 election to forge an electoral common front between the Alberta Liberals and the NDP had succeeded, there would never have been an NDP Government in this province.
Yet the Alberta NDP’s traditional connections with the federal party and the labour movement have been huge advantages for the provincial party in bad times and good – keeping it on life support in 2008 when it was reduced to two seats and providing manpower and strategic depth that contributed to the Orange Wave of 2015.
Much of that would be lost forever if the Alberta NDP deliberately severs its ties with the federal party.
If you’ve got a problem with Singh and the federal party’s confidence and supply agreement with the Trudeau Government, the federal NDP leader may not be around much longer. There is growing evidence New Democrats in other provinces are ready to push him if he won’t jump.
As for Charlie Angus and his performative gas-station-advertising private member’s bill, the MP for Timmins is heading for retirement, one way or another, soon enough.
So Pancholi’s big idea sounds like a solution in search of a problem that won’t even exist by the time the party starts a divisive debate about it.
And divisive it will be.
If that door opens, there will be many traditional New Democrats whose ardour for the provincial party will quickly cool. If nothing else, that would threaten the Alberta NDP’s remarkable recent fund-raising success.
One of those folks blew a raspberry at Pancholi on social media last week: “I would much prefer to never have to worry about being a member of the ANDP,” he tweeted. “At least I can support the federal party and not feel like someone is telling me a bad joke about the environment.”
And – who knows? – someone might even pull a page from the book of the right and set up a social democratic fringe party strong enough to bleed off votes from whatever is left on the left.
So far, at least, nobody in the leadership race has suggested bringing back the nutty scheme of former Service Alberta Minister Brian Malkinson to change the Alberta NDP’s name to appease the same sentiment, thereby helping fritter away the party’s current brand. To wit: the Alberta political party that’s run by grownups.
But since many of Pancholi’s highest profile backers have emerged from the Red Tory wing of the Progressive Conservative Party and the Liberal and Alberta parties, don’t count on that idea not rearing its head again if Pancholi emerges as the winner.
Does anyone seriously believe the Liberals have a better brand in Alberta than the NDP?
As former NDP leader Brian Mason observed on social media: “Much of the dissatisfaction with the federal NDP in Alberta has to do with its support of the Trudeau Liberals. So it’s surprising that Rakhi Pancholi’s solution is to throw open the gates of the Alberta NDP to the Trudeau Liberals.” (Mason has endorsed Ganley. I have taken the liberty of lightly editing his tweet for clarity.)
Does anyone think a lot of traditional New Democrats won’t take a breakup with the federal NDP, let alone a name change, as evidence of a hostile reverse takeover of their party by a couple of political entities that have never enjoyed the success of the NDP under Rachel Notley?
To make matters worse, disaffiliation would probably require the federal NDP to change its constitution – opening a whole new forum for opponents to publicly relitigate the divorce.
No, let sleeping dogs lie. This is a bad idea that should be left undisturbed.
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Nick Seebruch, editor
