Coalition to Build a Better BC

A few months back I looked at this new group, which uses slogans and words that sound like they are from the NDP, and commented that it was not something that looked like a serious grassroots coalition.   Two months on and it seems the group is functionally dead.

The site has no new events since their rally in April.   In fact other than a mention of an Arts Summit this coming weekend, the website looks dead.

With 30 partners to the coalition, you would think that there would be a couple of people willing to put in the energy to having a functioning website that acted as a community for on the left opposed to the government.   Their Facebook presence is also dead since April 10th.

It says to me there is no energy or drive on the left at this time in BC.  The NDP may be at the mid 40s in popularity, but as a party they continue to be short of any sense of energy or drive.  The NDP feels very thin on the ground with respect to what they would do if they were government.

Contrast this to the Fight Against HST campaign.   There is life in the group, it is active, it has created communities of newly politically active people, it is the opposition to the government.   It is also a populist right wing movement.   Yes, there are many on the left involved, but the core of the group it is much more like the start of the Reform party or the sort of populist politics of WAC Bennett.

Looking at these two groups, it would seem that in BC at this time is is the right wing that is getting motivated to remove the Liberals from government.  How does this play out in 2013?  It is very hard to say, but if there is a strong BC Conservative Party, there could he a major shift in how people vote in BC.   Many provincial NDP voters seem to vote Liberal federally, this is bad news for the NDP if we have the same parties provincially as federally.   This has not happened in a BC election since 1937.