After the B.C. New Democratic Party went down to defeat in last month鈥檚 provincial election, some party insiders are taking a dangerous view of what happened. They鈥檙e blaming it on poor campaign strategy and a lacklustre showing by the leader, Adrian Dix.
In this view of the disaster, more attack ads, higher energy on the campaign trail and a stronger performance by Dix in the leaders鈥� debate would have clinched victory.
Dream on.
Christy Clark went into the campaign with the lowest approval rating of any premier in Canada 鈥� a grim 25 per cent. There are dental procedures with more popularity than that. Running attack ads to tell voters what they already believed about their premier would have been pointless.
It鈥檚 true that Dix at times appeared hesitant or uncertain. But in my home province of Saskatchewan, NDP leader Allan Blakeney won three elections in a row and the guy was a dreadful campaigner. He came across as inward, shy, almost pedantic at times.
No one would call Prime Minister Stephen Harper Mr. Congeniality. And he鈥檚 won three elections, too.
The hard truth is that policy, not posture, determined the outcome. Voters have two secret suspicions about the NDP (they have many more about the Liberals).
One is that financial management is not a concept with the party. This fear was confirmed when Dix danced around the question of when the budget would be balanced.
The other is that party activists will force environmental purity ahead of job creation. This belief also was confirmed, when Dix shifted position and opposed the Kinder Morgan oil pipeline from Edmonton to 91原创.
But there鈥檚 another way to approach this whole subject. In what manner, exactly, did the 2013 NDP platform differ from previous versions? With the exception of tax policy, where the proposals were more restrained, I can鈥檛 think of any important changes.
It was said of the Bourbons that they had forgotten nothing and learned nothing. The same could be said here: Bring back former minister Moe Sihota as party president, run with the same platform and everything will be fine.
It might be useful to consider what happened in Britain. Starting in 1979, the Labour party lost four elections in succession. After each defeat, the party dumped some of its more controversial positions. Not an easy task: Four leaders in succession paid the price for telling party activists some home truths.
Not until the fifth in a row, Tony Blair, arrived on the scene and proved to have a verbal facility equal to Bill Clinton鈥檚 (not necessarily a compliment), was Labour finally deemed electable by the voters.
Where is the comparable heart-searching and fact-facing among B.C. New Democrats? What alterations were made to show that lessons have indeed been learned?
In particular, how were the needs of blue-collar workers going to be addressed by taking absolutist positions on oil pipelines and the like? (If you鈥檙e thinking the Liberals just did that on the Northern Gateway project, read the fine print. They merely rejected the proposal in its present form.)
The result, improbably, was that Clark and her party were able to campaign as defenders of the working class, while the NDP came across as elitists. A complete reversal of roles and philosophy.
Dix has agreed to stay on for now, a decision he will surely regret. Try ruling an insurgent caucus after a disastrous outing like this.
But the real question is whether the moderate wing of the party can reclaim a leading position and force through some fundamental changes in policy.
Resource development, oil and gas extraction and lumber are the heart of our economy. Until the NDP come to grips with that fact, there are plenty more election defeats where this one came from.
Lawrie McFarlane is a retired civil servant. He was deputy health minister in B.C. during the mid-1990s.
