Bill Tieleman does a nice round up of where the BC NDP is at and where it might be headed. I like that the NDP is having this as a public debate, though this is something the party should have done in 2005 after that election. BC already suffers from having no real right wing party - the BC Liberals are a Liberal party and are strongly in sync with the federal party. To lose the NDP to the middle means that we would really have two parties that occupy much of the same political ground. How would the radical and conservative approaches to how we govern ourselves be debated?

I see the long term narrative of politics being one about changing the status quo (radical) or maintaining the status quo (conservative). For the last generation the radical aspect of politics in much of the world has been the neo-liberal view. The traditional left has become the defenders of the modern welfare state and resisting change.

With a party of the mild centre right and anther of the mild centre left, there is no one that will be coming forward with bold ideas. There will be no one passionate about the issues. The 2009 election was a wonderful example of this. The Liberals ran on "We are competent and will not rock the boat" and the NDP ran on anything some pollster told them might resonate with the public, the opposition to the carbon tax being a perfect example of this.

Frankly the boldest political party in BC is the Green party, they are the only ones trying to think outside of the bland middle. Though without any MLAs, the media coverage is not there.