I can not understand why Carole James did not announce her resignation right after the last election.
Over and over again the public shows that it has no confidence in her ability to be premier.
The NDP has been a shadow of what it could be under her time as leader and needs to stop being an aimless poll driven opposition party and become a government in waiting.
She has overstayed her welcome as leader and is facing this revolt in large part because everyone watching BC politics expected her to have resigned after the last election.
I am not a big believer in the polls, but the newest Mustel Poll is not something that can give Carole James any comfort. All it confirms to me is the fact that the NDP has a natural ceiling and is somewhere in the mid 40s of support. Even with everything going on with the Liberals, 50%-60% of the population is not keen on the NDP.
The NDP should be sitting at 55-60% support. The party is static in support.
There are better people that could be leader of the party and there is time to make the change. If James resigns soon and the NDP chooses a new leader after the Liberals, they steal the honeymoon from the government.
Is Carole James and the people around her so desperate for the power that they are willing to harm the chances of the NDP becoming government? This revolt would not be happening if her advisors had seen the reality of BC politics and urged to step down last year.
If James has any significant vote against her this weekend, she should immediately resign for the benefit of the NDP and the future politics of BC.
As to the Mustel poll of NDP at 42% and the Liberals at 37%, this just does not ring true to me. I am not sure any of the polls really matter much until it is clear who is the leader of the Liberals and Conservatives and what is happening with the NDP.
1 comment:
I have couple well actually more than a couple of ideas as to what I think might be going on
1. Despite the apparent hypocrisy of the NDP at least federally all along the NDP has indicated that they would support HST transition funding for Quebec implementing their own version of the HST many years ago. The thing is if you look at some of what Flaherty has been saying in QP an agreement with Quebec on this might coming sooner rather than later. Thus NDP realizing the jam their in might be in is already trying to pull back its opposition to the HST.
2. There was an article recently in the Hill Times citing NDP MP Pat Martin indicating the Conservatives had an understanding with the Bloc that there would be no federal election until 2012. Part of this "understanding" was the conservatives would sign an agreement for HST funding for Quebec. Knowing the Federal Conservatives any legislation for Quebec will be poison pilled from the perspective of the NDP re some type of language will be in it saying how great the HST is for the existing provinces including BC.
3. Carole James in my mind has been the face of this more right leaning populist shift of the NDP on not just the HST but also the Carbon Tax and in general palling around with Bill Vander Zalm who is not exactly popular with a lot of longtime NDP members. If the NDP is going to reverse these stances I think James would lose a lot of credibility.
4. More specifically some of complaints I am hearing the dissidents tend to be orriented around this idea again the Carole James is too concerned about with hanging around with Bill Vander Zalm and not concerned enough about more traditional NDP issues such as the ALR, fish farms, the forrestry sector, and additional safe injection sites all of which the dissidents think are winning issues with population at large.
5. I would argue the aforementioned issues actually fit in very well with the Green party and that is something the NDP should be deadly afraid of. This whole is starting to remind me of the whole Stockwell Day leadership challenge back in 2001 when a whole bunch of caucus members at least temporarily sat with the old PC party until they could get Day to stepdown
6. Everybody thinks the Green's are unelectable having said that no one knows what their platform actually is which gives plenty of opportunity for lets say newly arriving NDP members to change the platform without anyone realizing the difference. Kind of like how former Socred were able to move into the BC Liberals in the early 1990s without anyone noticing differences from the earlier version of the party back in 1980s.
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