I’m Supposed to Write a Blog Post Today

When I rebooted this blog in the fall of 2018 I made a commitment to post at least once a month and so far I have kept that promise to myself. However I have not posted yet this month and it has been over a month since my last post. But what to write about.

Our neighbours to the south in the United States seem to be going deeper into the abyss day by day. People blame Trump, people blame the system, people blame the voters. But what more can be said that has not been said before.

In the Middle East a brutal genocide is being carried on against the Palestinian people by a governing regime of a state that was founded by holocaust survivors. Whatever can one say about that.

And what can we say about the British Labour party going off the ideological rails.

In Canada the people united to keep the Maple MAGA Conservative Party out of power by electing a Liberal government led by a small c conservative who has been called a climate activist. And this government thinks the key to our future is in becoming a fossil fuel superpower. How does one react to that.

I am at a loss for words about what to say about these things so there is no blog today,

The Next Four Years: An Opportunity for the New Democratic Party

The last election may have been an electoral disaster for the NDP but it is also an opportunity that should not be passed by.

Indeed the NDP should not be rushing into a leadership campaign but rather let the Parliamentary leader act as party leader until the party has a chance to rebuild itself.

The parliamentary party’s role for the next four years should be to, not play games, but support the government in it’s war on Trump’s tariffs and annexation talk and Maple MAGA’s efforts to Americanize Canada.

Meanwhile the broader party should start a process (preferably in collaboration with the Green Party and Canada’s social movements) similar to the 1961 founding of the New Party, which became The New Democratic Party, to build a true Social Democratic Party of Canada. It needs to abandon it’s experiment with left wing populism and build a party built on principles and philosophy. Some would call this ideology but the NDP is at it’s best when it is ideological. It is time for an NDP rebirth.

I would propose a two year time frame to do this purposefully and carefully including the election of a party leader for the new Social Democratic Party of Canada at the end.

This should be followed by two years to rebuild the membership and solidify links with Canada’s social movements and for the parliamentary caucus of the new Social Democratic Party of Canada to press for democratic reforms and in particular electoral reform, either through a Mixed Member Proportional (MMP) or  Ranked Ballot Voting system so that Canadians can elect a truly representative government in the next election without the possibility of the least desired party having one hundred percent of the power in the House of Commons.

Hopefully during this time the true conservatives in the Conservative Party will see the error of throwing their lot in with the Canadian Alliance and Reform Party and rebuild the former Progressive Conservative Party and exile the extremists to the right wing fringe so-called Peoples Party.