It would seem to be obvious now that Carole James will be gone as NDP leader before the next election, the question is when and how the NDP times their leadership race.
It looks like there will be a new Liberal leader sometime in the spring of 2011. If the NDP waits till then to see who they would be facing, this would mean they would be holding their leadership convention in the late fall of 2011. This would seem to allow for enough time for the new NDP leader to make their mark in the 18 months in the run up to the election.
So when does Carole James announce she is stepping down? During the Liberal leadership race? Likely not the best timing as it would mean people would have to declare before knowing who the Liberal leader would be. My best guess is that she will announce her resignation in early June 2011 with a convention to be held in late November of 2011.
What this effectively means that the people running for the NDP leadership will be campaigning for a year with much of that time in secret. I am not sure what sort of an impact this will have on the parliamentary caucus, but it should improve membership. Given the low NDP membership at the moment, it would not be a hard task for an early but well organized campaign team to start taking over constituency associations. Signing up 4000 to 5000 people in specific ridings would give the team the control of 50 or more associations.
The first sign that there is something going on will be that the NDP membership is rising and some CAs have upset people because their CA has been 'hijacked'
4 comments:
Problem being is that the NDP is not that flexible.
Steel has iron fist grip on what happens and they only need to hold conventions every other century when they are out of power.
They also have this thing called a leadership review which guarantees no leadership race.
And why would James resign? The NDP is at 49%, probably gone up since the speech. The next Liberal leader will be likely from caucus, tied to the HST, Basi Virk and a dozen bad decisions.
Campbell spent a couple billion last week to try and buy time, so the new leader will have no grease to toss around.
This is the opposite of taking out the trash with you. Campbell's left the new leader with a stinking heap to deal with. And then they'll lose to Carole James and the NDP.
Read somewhere that the NDP is to have a leadership "review" in 2011 and those are easy for even the worst leader to pass.
As for a leadership race, I've no idea, but unless the party's constituency associations start getting their act together and demand one, it's doubtful we'll see a replacement for James before 2013. And that would be foolish, if so. But when have we seen smart politics by the James NDP?
Regarding leadership, I wish Jenny Kwan would have run for it back then. She and Joy MacPhail did a cracker of a job when there were just two NDP MLAs to serve as Official Opposition. THEN we had an effective, feisty, smart opposition. Under James, the more MLAs has only multiplied the extent of NDP whining. We've certainly seen nothing offered of substance.
We are not only angry at Campbell for the HST. We resent, the election lie, the BCR wasn't for sale. He sold our rivers. He shut down 51 mills. Our BC mill workers jobs, went to China along with our raw logs, in the name of cheap labor. Our hydro, is in a hell of a mess. The HST wasn't on Campbell and Hansen's radar. The HST papers were on Hansen's desk, long before the election. Another election lie. Our debt from the recession was only $495 million, another election lie. What ever party takes over, there is one hell of a mess to clean up from the BC Liberals. How many BC ministers, have been under investigation now? Who in the hell would trust them? Not me.
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