You might think that after the NDP’s implosion in the recent election, the high-level operatives that have been running the party for the last two decades would take a beat. Maybe do some soul-searching. Perhaps even canvass the opinions of the party’s disappointed members—not to mention the nearly two million NDP voters whose e-day pencils drifted over to other parties in last month’s vote.
But the party’s class of professional consultants with whom power is concentrated do not recognize a fundamental problem with their approach. These are operatives who cycle between senior staff positions in the federal and provincial parties and financially-lucrative, post-partisan corporate firms, and who have shaped the NDP in their image: more moderate, suspicious of the party’s members as well as social movements, and out of touch with working class realities.
Far from seeing this as a moment for a much-needed reset, they are trying to ensure the leadership race will be hostile to any candidate who might want to lead the NDP in a new direction.
The Liberals are currently being shored up by the Bloc, so no.
Officially? I thought that they were going on a vote by vote basis. In that case, given that the CPC will always vote against the government, when something comes up that both the Bloc and the NDP are against it becomes a race to say who will vote against it first. This forces the other party to vote for something they dislike, or suffer an election (at least for confidence motions).