When Jody Wilson-Raybould announced that she would be running as an independent in the next election, she also declared that she was "not a party person." -- which begs the question: Is that a good thing? Andrew Coyne writes:
Independents, after all, even running as incumbents, rarely win in Canadian elections. Research shows that voters tend overwhelmingly to vote for the party first, the local candidate second. Without a party label, and the machinery that goes with it, independent candidates have a hard time getting heard, and would have even were the campaign finance rules not so heavily stacked in the parties’ favour: parties can raise funds, on which local candidates can draw, long before the writ is dropped, whereas indies cannot issue tax receipts for donations until after the election has been called.
Wilson-Raybould and Jane Philpott have distinct advantages. They are:
no ordinary incumbents, having carved out reputations in their time in government as fearless advocates for principle and/or competent managers. That they were so palpably mistreated by their former party and leader helps — people love to root for the underdog. And — the ace card — they can make a plausible case to their electorates that they will have more power as independents in the next Parliament than they might otherwise: more, even, than as members of any party.
[Both women] would be especially strongly situated, free to wheel and deal with all of the parties simultaneously, without themselves having to answer to any party. Add it up — the newly volatile politics of the internet age, their own star power, and the horse-trading possibilities in a hung Parliament — and the odds of these particular independents succeeding are considerably better than usual. Who knows? Maybe they’ll even lead a movement.
Still, what is troubling about Wilson-Raybould's declaration is that the problems we face today require collective solutions. We will not survive if we can't act collectively. Perhaps, Coyne writes, we need to redefine what we mean by "political parties:"
Between the unseemly chaos of politics without parties, and the rigid lockstep of Parliament as we know it, there is surely room for a different kind of party politics — one in which parties are seen as loose associations of the like-minded, and MPs as fully sentient beings, rather than identical voting machines useful only for delivering majorities to their leaders.
Oh, were that it was so.
6 comments:
Do we really need them?
"Prior to 1903, there were no political parties in British Columbia, other than at the federal level." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_British_Columbia
Both British and American systems allow MPs or Reps more freedom than the present dictatorial Canadian political parties.
I can remember my BC MLA standing up in the BC Legislative Assembly and respectively disagreeing with his Party Leader, Premier Bill Bennett who let him talk and respectfully listened. It can happen. These elected dictators we see today are essentially weak bullies. Question Period is a travesty, totally wasted time and effort.
I agree with you about Question Period, Toby. It's a total waste of time. And, in the original model for responsible government, the MP's were supposed to elect their leaders. Now the system is driven from the top, not the bottom.
Still, there is the problem of collective action. To get aanything done, MP's have to agree on an agenda.
Coyne's comments about a different kind of party politics is reminiscent of Trudeau's promise of "doing politics differently," Owen, and we all know how that turned out.
It would appear, Lorne, that the author of Ecclesiastes was right: “The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be; and that which is done is that which shall be done: and there is no new thing under the sun.”
I have come to see our political apparatus as an obstacle to the country and our provinces. That may be the end result of neoliberalism which shares certain incidents of sovereignty with the corporate sector and, no matter how well intentioned initially, inevitably creates a wedge between the electorate and those they install in office. Often the interests of capital and the public interest conflict and, over time, that inherent conflict warps the political sector, usually resulting in a decline of liberal democracy. This can lead to political capture (ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council) and regulatory capture (our own National Energy Board) by which the corporate sector acquires the reins of power in subtle, often unseen, but powerful ways.
Nowhere is this more apparent than in America with her "bought and paid for" Congress and the wholesale capitulation of the regulatory power to private interests, both at the expense of democracy and the public interest. That Gilens and Page (Princeton) study from 2014 shows clearly how American democracy was quietly replaced by plutocracy. From there, authoritarian, illiberal democracy is no great reach. That's what we see in Trump.
Of course we're not there, not yet. Could it come to Canada? How long ago was it we never imagined it could happen to the 'World's Greatest Democracy'? Even today I find that very hard to accept and yet it's right there, hiding in open sight.
Call it what you will, I call it progressivism, but it's what is so easily jettisoned in the neoliberal order and, once it is sufficiently expunged, democracy withers. That aspect is underway in Canada. Trudeau rode to power on promises of progressive reform only to abandon those commitments shortly after forming government.
What is the significance of political parties in an era of compromised democracy? I worry that we've already reached a point where few even understand what the progressive order is and simply forget what once was. I think Trudeau's fan club is in that group.
All politcal change -- whether progressive or regresssive -- requires collective action, Mound. I agree that the progesssive agenda, which guided this country's political future, has withered since the 1980's. What worries me is that there does not seem to be a lot of collective action to reverse the tide of neo-liberalism -- even though the failure of that movement is painfully obvious.
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