The centre did not hold

An Italian supermarket worker

When the epic horror story that is the capitalist coronavirus crisis is finally over the truth will be that the centre did not hold. Things had already fallen apart, but somehow many needed a catastrophe to truly show it.

For over a generation politicians of all stripes -- including  "social democrats" like Tony Blair and Roy Romanow and Democrats and liberals like Jean Chrétien, and Bill Clinton -- have devastated civil society, the social safety net, social solidarity and the institutions that were meant to protect working people.


After the trauma of the Great Depression and the Second World War, and with the alternative of a developing and seemingly energetic Soviet Union and Socialist Bloc, the capitalists were pushed into a post-war "compromise". Workers in the advanced west would get unions, middle-class wages, cars and homes, opportunity for their kids, and some semblance of job and social security in the hope that they would eschew a more radical alternative or communism.

The social democratic parties like Labour in the UK and the NDP in Canada bought into this fully. They became an essential electoral outlet that told working people that they had some version of "representation" in parliaments and legislatures while, when in power, actually selling them out in virtually every case. "Power" became an exercise in quisling attempts to prove that they would be good little capitalist managers and they, too, would stand firm in defense of the "western" system.

When the neo-liberal era dawned and the "death" of communism seemed to be the end of history no one bought into the new paradigm more than social democrats who were certain that they could build a new capitalism that would include everyone as "stakeholders" and that would truly allow equality of opportunity.

Of course, it was all a lie.

Over the last three decades inequality has risen to near feudal levels in virtually every respect. Not only is inequality staggering in terms of wages and lifestyles, but any semblance of democracy that once existed has been shown to be a sham from the rigged primaries and elections in the United States to the near Shakespearean tragedy that was the utter capitulation of Syriza in Greece.

The "left" gleefully participated in destroying the "welfare state" from Tony Blair's "Cool Britannia" to the saxophone prison state of Bill Clinton, to the neo-con "Liberal" budget in Canada of 1995 to the squandered opportunities of NDP governments from Nova Scotia to Ontario to British Columbia now.

Among the many travesties were the devastation of public health institutions and the decimation of laws protecting working people and, for example, renters.

When the 2008 crisis came the companies and banks were bailed out, but working people were allowed to drown. Barack Obama gave Wall St. criminals a pass and the penalty for corporate malfeasance was massive corporate welfare.

While there have been flashes of backlash against this in Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn the truth is that they have not led to much. They have failed, nobly perhaps, to change the disastrous course we are on. Sanders lingers in the Democratic primary at the moment, but it does not matter at all in terms of how this unfolding nightmare will play out other than in rearguard attempts to build enough public pressure to prevent the absolute worst. A worthwhile effort to be sure, but not one coming from a place of power.

With the coronavirus we are seeing the reality of the corporate state laid bare.

The corporations and their hired staff political class have built an economy and society that is entirely based around corporate power and the fantasy that "economic growth" meant something for everyone.

After having sold the public on tax cuts, contracted out public services and endless cutbacks, the corporations and the wealthy have being doing extraordinarily well while supposedly "advanced" countries like the United States and Canada lack sufficient hospital beds or infrastructure to cope with what is now on the horizon.

When we look, as working people, in vain for allies we see governments like the NDP in British  Columbia refusing at first to stop evictions by greedy landlords in the truly terrible housing market of Vancouver while also allowing mass concentrations of workers to continue to build colonial and environmentally destructive pipelines despite the obvious and terrible health risk this poses.

It is grotesque. It is appalling. It is enraging. It is predictable.

Some fightback has and will begin. We can only work to make sure it is not too late to prevent the mass destitution of millions of North American workers all while this terrible illness spreads exponentially.

But even if we do salvage some semblance of justice and fairness for working people during this terrible time we must remember that what the coronavirus has shown us is that the society we live in is built on fictions and injustice.

And that when the time came and the cases of illness and death spiraled out of control, the right spoke of opening the economy back up anyway even if that killed hundreds of thousands while the left fiddled with half-measures and its own impotence.

In the immediate future we are very likely to see the already greatly emboldened western far right encouraged and gaining momentum in this context of immense disempowerment and displacement.

To counter this will require a mass movement and a new anti-capitalist vision. We know that this will not be forthcoming from the parties of the institutionalized "left". The rotten edifices of parties like the Democrats and the NDP are corrupted by parliamentarianism and a fundamental faith in the system. Large elements of the Labour Party worked to destroy Corbyn, for example, because when push comes to shove they would rather have the Conservatives in power than an actual socialist. We need to move far beyond the notion that fairness is just a little bit of tinkering away or that by electing this or that candidate in an old-line party we can achieve transformative change.

This is by no means an easy task and I am not suggesting that a blueprint exists for how to do it, but when "Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned;", such is the moment for the left to rise again out of the ashes of the old order.

It had best lest it is the rough beast of fascism that slouches instead towards Bethlehem to be born.

The Blairites and NDP leadership share the same contempt for their party members

By Jesse Zimmerman 

Across the Pond...

The past few weeks have been, to say the very least, intense in the UK.  As most of us know, following the Brexit vote, Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn has been facing a challenge against his leadership by key Members of Parliament, blaming Corbyn for the result of the EU referendum.  This is absurd, and it has been demonstrated that Corbyn is not responsible for the LEAVE vote winning.  Of course, for Blairites and New Labour, facts have never mattered.

The time, the Blairite cronies figured, was right to scapegoat the leader that they have long opposed.  It is a moment of uncertainty and national frustration so they made their play which for now seems to be failing.  Corbyn dug in his heels, and refused to step down and take the blame for something that was not his fault.  The architects of the coup dug in as well.  172 out of 216 Labour MP’s voted against Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership in a vote of no confidence.  One could be forgiven for assuming that this is the democratic will of the party since most MPs have chosen to discard their leader.  However, when one looks at the party membership of Labour itself, it tells a very different story.

In actuality, in real life, in the real actually existing world outside of the elite bubble, Jeremy Corbyn has the support of members of the party.  A poll released on the 1st of July revealed Labour Party members largely support Jeremy Corbyn.  Adding to that, as of now,  Labour Party membership has surged, growing exponentially each day since the attempted coup started with 600,000 people joining specifically, according to many reports, to support Jeremy Corbyn.

Suffice to say, Jeremy Corbyn has support from his own party membership.  If a leadership vote were held today, he would easily maintain his position.

On top of this, the direction that Jeremy Corbyn is taking the Labour Party in matches up with mainstream public opinion.  The grassroots membership of the Labour Party and in large part the UK populace, is in agreement with Corbyn in ways very similarly to the Bernie Sanders phenomenon in the United States.  This entire fiasco illustrates clearly the gigantic gulf that exists between the party brass of Labour (elites that exist in a bubble) and the mass public opinion that they are insulated from.

When I was a child I recall reading the fable, The Emperor’s New Clothes.  When I was finished I couldn’t quite understand it.  Now that I am an adult, having experienced the self-denial of sycophants and opportunistic, yes-person types, I get it. Watching the events unfold in Britain, I am reminded of the New Democratic Party brass and the Mulcairites.

Both parties were founded by grassroots democracy, by ordinary hard-working people, all of whom wanted to do politics differently.  They accomplished much, but over the decades, in order to make the party “respectable” (neo-liberal) they changed their ways guided by entrenched elites.  The NDP brass has ignored resolutions on policy made by members at conventions, for instance, demonstrating a contempt for party democracy.

Anyone who has encountered these bullies on social media is familiar with how they operate.  Just recently I recall reading a post by a particularly brown-nosed member of the party who criticized both Bernie Sanders and Corbyn as “irrelevant” and left an NDP grassroots Facebook group citing “too many extremists”.  This person was also supporting the Blairite coup against Corbyn, and (surprise!) supported Thomas Mulcair in the past.

Party brass members seem to want to remain insulated from popular opinion and the national mood, ultimately making the NDP’s actual electoral chances minimal in the long term.  In the days of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn -- with its coming of age millennials, frustrated at the status quo and the context the previous generation has given them -- it is absolutely mind-boggling how so many within the NDP want to “keep going centrist”.  It is this attitude of supposed parties on the Left that has aided the strange new populist Right in gaining the support of so many young people and working people.  It is truly astounding.

Will the NDP ever be a relevant political force in this new era?

Jesse Zimmerman is one of the main bloggers at WhatIsLeft.net -- on which this post first appeared -- a blog dedicated to examining the contemporary state of Canada's Left.  Zimmerman, a writer of fiction by trade, grew up in Toronto. Check out his fiction website, Junction Landlord. 

See also: Justin Trudeau's 'Elbowgate' and the dark side of sunny ways

See also: NDP inhibits internal democracy with steep leadership race entry fee

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Bernie ascendant

Last night saw the once presumed establishment Democratic Party Presidential nominee Hilary Clinton squeak out, apparently, the narrowest of wins over self-described Democratic Socialist upstart Bernie Sanders. While Iowa Democratic officials, as of the time of this posting, have not as yet declared officially who won, Clinton has crowned herself the victor. Either way, Iowa is not a "winner take all state" so both Sanders and Clinton will emerge with a basically equal number of delegates.


But this victory, even if confirmed,  may yet prove to be a Pyrrhic one.



As Sanders himself put it:

"Nine months ago, we came to this beautiful state, we had no political organization, we had no money, we had no name recognition and we were taking on the most powerful political organization in the United States of America."

Despite the many obstacles and the alleged aversion of Americans to socialism, Sanders' momentum has been steadily building to the point where he is no longer a fringe voice simply trying to put some ideas out there, but is actually a serious contender.

The importance of this in efforts to revive a socialist and anti-capitalist electoral movement in both the United States and Canada cannot be overstated.

Many have pointed to the obvious limitations of Sanders -- from his vague and not terribly progressive foreign policy ideas to the fact that his "socialism" often seems to be really a very aggressive form of reformism or statist New Deal style liberalism -- though these quibbles would often seem to miss the point.

The significance of Bernie Sanders lies not in the minutiae of his socialism or its purity, but in the fact that today one can read an opinion piece on the CNN website that states:

 A few months ago, the notion that a democratic socialist could seriously challenge a front-runner who has been preparing to win in the Iowa caucuses since 2008 would have seemed ludicrous. But that is no longer the case.

Sanders has made the ludicrous and unthinkable thinkable. He has put the idea of socialism, however vaguely conceived or constructed,  as a possible electoral reality and alternative back into the discourse in the United States in a way it has not been in decades.

Whatever the flaws of Sanders, this represents a huge reversal of fortune and victory for the idea that there can even be a socialist idea in America. This is a remarkable accomplishment totally unforeseen even a few months ago.

He has also shown that there is a very real, palpable thirst out there for genuine alternatives to the neo-liberal austerity consensus of the last 30 years that has delivered a society of staggering inequality and runaway corporate power, as well as to 'Third Way' notions of  'progressiveism' that essentially accept this "reality" while hoping presumably  to tinker with its worst excesses.

In the United Kingdom with Jeremy Corbyn we also saw this push back against the Blairite clones who had led the UK's Labour Party for a generation and had alienated it from those who it had always been meant to represent, regardless of whether that would result in nominal electoral successes that really changed little for the vast majority of people.

Yet in Canada the once social democratic NDP under Tom Mulcair has seen this tired Blair vision of capitulation to right wing narratives that flowed out of the 1990's become firmly entrenched as its ideology and vision of governance.

With Bernie ascendant in the US and inspiring huge crowds and packed to capacity rallies to a fever-pitch of excitement at the notion that possibly an economy and government that is entirely beholden to corporations and the wealthy is not inevitable, and with a Labour Party returning to its roots and seeing a stunning growth in its membership and in the enthusiasm of its base, maybe it is time for those on the electoral left in Canada to stop simply applauding these developments abroad and to do something -- whether inside or outside the NDP -- to make them happen at home.

photo via wikimedia commons

See also: It appears the NDP strategists are stuck in the 90’s – again

See also: Raising Monuments -- How Corbyn may yet turn the tide

The NDP, Nathan Cullen, Paul Dewar and the Canadian social democratic delusion

As we head into 2016 there is little that is more pathetic and disturbing from the point-of-view of that ever narrowing band of Canadian social democrats or "democratic socialists" than the descent of the New Democratic Party into a state of abject delusional thinking and total political irrelevance.

This is highlighted by the party's "group-think" circular emptiness that has led it to a dead end from which there is, at present, seemingly no exit.

Going into 2015 the NDP, led by former provincial Quebec Liberal cabinet minister Tom Mulcair, appeared to be in a position to actually take power. The Faustian bargain that party members had made by placing an allegedly "electable" Third Way, Tony Blair style leader -- the most right-wing leader the party has had without any doubt -- looked as if it had a chance of "success" in the electoral sense that was now all that mattered to those who were still hanging around.

Yet this bargain failed catastrophically and disastrously as Mulcair led the party to what can only be seen as one of the most unprecedented failures of "mainstream" bourgeois politics in Canada with the NDP becoming the first party in the country's history to allow a third place party, in this case the Liberals led by Justin Trudeau, to catapult themselves over the Official Opposition and into power.

And it all happened in an entirely predictable, slow-motion derailment the signs of which were clear to many of us on the left but were completely ignored by New Democrat partisans out of what can only be described as an internal party culture that demands almost suicidal compliance and self-destructive obedience to what turned out to be a completely inept leadership clique.

Despite that fact that many left critics, including on this blog, warned that the obvious and intentional shift to the right in the framing of the party's policies would not end well and was out of touch with where the Canadian people were today, the NDP and its partisans insisted that a centrist, uninspiring, empty-headed stab at office would deliver not the New Jerusalem but rather the well-paying jobs that come from the trappings of power and the bragging rights that accompany one's team "winning" something as when a room of chicken wing eating, beer swilling football fans applaud the triumph of this or that side in this or that championship match.

There was glory to be had. And years of very, very good salaries and pontificating soundbites of "social democratic" politicians being so very responsible and so very governmental as they gave press conferences to explain why more press conferences were needed to admit that the new government was not going to do much of anything.

Tragically for the party something happened on the road to Ottawa. And that something was the unexpected political smarts of Justin Trudeau -- or, at the very least, Trudeau's political advisers.

Sensing the obvious change in public opinion they ran, as did Kathleen Wynne the year before in Ontario, a campaign nominally on the "left" of the NDP. A campaign long on grand rhetoric and, of course, bereft of any real meaning. They were, however, only able to do this as the NDP had abandoned the field altogether and chosen to run a campaign that sought not simply to "reassure" voters that the party would not be much of a change but that also tried to dampen any expectations that its election would accomplish anything in advance.

This proved to be an error that was punished as craven errors like this by power hungry left politicians often are.

In some ways, perhaps, it would have been better for leftists had this shell of an echo of a social democratic party won if only to hasten the disillusion that needs to occur with the NDP in order for a new left electoral movement within or without the party to emerge, but the Blairites commanding the ship were utterly incapable of delivering results.

And so we are in the bizarre political moment in our history where the NDP is seeking to continue to justify its very existence given its now total insignificance and yet cannot do so without attempting to maintain the fiction that it lost not due to its actual political cowardice and emptiness but rather due to this-that-or-the-next-thing none of which had anything to do, of course, with the cabal of political dimwits who ran the campaign.

And so we have bright lights like Nathan Cullen, who ran for the leadership of the NDP in 2012 favouring a merger with the Liberals, and Paul Dewar absolutely refusing to accept any type of responsibility or to admit that the campaign may have been fundamentally misguided.

Instead they insist that it was all due to the niqab issue, "celebrity", or whatever other pathetic excuse for their own failings they can grasp at.

Dewar on CBC Radio sounded almost as if he could not understand how any of it happened.

Cullen, meanwhile, creates an absurd alternate reality where social democratic and social democratic governments cannot run deficits or where allegedly "working people" (as if this is who they aimed their middle-class narrative driven campaign at) will not abide them despite the fact that this can be clearly and demonstrably be proven to be false.

The NDP did not go down fighting on principle as these folks seeking to justify their continued paycheques would imply.

It was not the media and the voters who were wrong, as New Democrats seem to insist, it was the NDP!

It lost entirely due to its abject and obvious lack of principle, its dour and unpleasant leader and its complete inability to confront the vapid "sunny ways" rhetoric of Justin Trudeau or to come up with the "ambitious" ideas that the Liberals were worried they would come up with.

In other words, they lost entirely because they chose a centrist vision, not despite it.

There already was a Diet Coke on offer in the Liberal party. The NDP attempt to frame itself as the Coke Zero option might have succeeded in the horrible empty game that is today's mainstream narrative, but it not only did not deserve to, it ultimately didn't.

New Democrats appear incapable of grasping that in attempting to be the Liberal party they lost to it. In attempting to supplant the Liberal party they became it.

When the NDP ceased to be an actual alternative to our present political reality it ceased to have any reason to exist.

This or that wave of public opinion in a very short period could make or break it. Actual Liberals with personality and a paint-by-numbers vision could derail it.

There is no mystery to this. It was telegraphed. The only people on the left who failed to see it coming were New Democrats.

Now the party is claiming to enter a period of introspection while its representatives continue to deny their own culpability in the debacle they participated in and facilitated.

Denial will not change anything or serve those who desperately need a left political alternative well. It serves only to give so many candidates, apologists and party members cover when they seek to absolve themselves or explain why they did not speak up when it might have mattered.

But it will allow the NDP and its truncated narrative and decimated caucus a thread upon which to cling to seek to justify its continued existence when it has become an ideological and political irrelevancy.

See also: Catastrophe: The NDP lost because it deserved to

See also: Doubling down on disaster

Why Socialist?

So, why Socialist?


Living, as we are alleged to be, in the post-ideological, post-political era, why should we continue, as a movement, to fight for socialism? Given the abject and apparent failures of some supposed "socialist" regimes, given their appalling human rights abuses and their obvious inability provide a comparable standard of living to that enjoyed in many advanced capitalist countries, why would one persist in the belief that a socialist society is not only possible but is necessary?



The left, as much as the right, has a past to account for. In our zeal to defeat inequality and injustice many on the left have supported governments that enforced the worst forms of inequity -- through violence, denial of free speech and intimidation -- that the working class can face. We have been willing to turn a blind eye to the reality that workers in some of these supposed "socialist" societies had (and in some cases have) less freedom and power than their brothers and sisters in capitalist countries. We have confused the power that flows from the idea and goal of worker self-government and worker ownership with the false god of state power and oppression. Millions of dead later it is enough to make one embrace the notion that the "triumph" of free enterprise is a positive thing and that the only alternative to the anarchy of unregulated capitalism is the unregulated anarchy envisioned by the post-modernist, anti-electoral crew who seems to eschew government power altogether in the mystical hope that we can create a fair and equitable society for all without, presumably, a government of any kind.

And then there is apathy -- the sad and sorry mind set of so many that draws a line from work to home to whatever shopping outlet they feel will fulfill the empty promise of a consumer driven lifestyle. Or, alternately, the many who feel that "politics" is somehow boring or facile and that their own personal devotion to sports, fashion, television, materialism, mysticism, or whatever else is presented as "individual" choice by the purveyors of the latest trend the supposedly individualistic herd is to embrace this week.

On the left are those who feel that devotion to the ends is enough. Given the supposed resistance of the public to socialism why bother? Why not just abandon the idea and fight for social justice in general, cause by cause, letting labels drop? Ideology is irrelevant if we can get results!

But it is just not true.

Socialism is the idea that we can create a society whose primary objective is to generate economic and social justice for all by fostering conditions of equality in which each of us is allowed to thrive and pursue the dreams and personal objectives that they wish to, regardless of the fate of their birth, colour, gender, or any other systemic problems. It is the idea that every individual is entitled to the self-worth of personal actualization that is only possible when we create conditions that allow for an equal starting point. It is the principle that we have the right to be who we are, to love who we want, to express ourselves as we wish, without the state, the church or the arbiters of community values having the power to stop us. It is the sense that we should, through the democratization of the economy, allow for workers to play a greater role in running their companies and that the government, our government, should represent the interests of the vast majority of citizens ahead of the corporate few.

It is, at its heart, when removed from the base detours of the dictatorial left, the strident affirmation of individual and personal freedom in the face of the oppressive emptiness of the hollow pseudo-individualism of the "free market".

The great victory of the supporters of the capitalist system over the last quarter century has been their ability to create cynicism and apolitical attitudes in large segments of the population on the basis of the misguided and ultimately anti-democratic idea that politics is largely irrelevant and that the markets and inexorable economic interests of business will dictate social outcomes regardless of the will of the people. They have been aided in this by the actions of supposed left governments which have been the willing accomplices in the destruction of the social solidarity net of the post-war compromise. It is worthy of note that this applies to every single recent provincial NDP government in Manitoba, Nova Scotia & elsewhere, Clinton's Democrats, the Liberal Party of Canada and the Blair led Labour Party in the UK.

They have also been aided by the clever promise of the dramatic economic growth of the post-socialist era which delivered record profits and wealth at the expense of any notion of fair or reasonable distribution.

Yet this same era of growth corresponded with a technological revolution that allowed the vast majority of the citizens of the developed world to at least adorn themselves with one or another of the various trinkets that we have come to associate with "living well" whether it be a Playstation, a cell phone, a digital camera, an ipod or whatever other device we all now desperately "need".

Having successfully conjoined the politically reactionary onslaught against the post-war gains of workers with the remarkably wide spread distribution of token items of apparent material success and the total defeat in the North American media of voices of dissent and representatives of labour, an entire generation of people has grown up thinking that politics is either irrelevant or has nothing to do with their day-to-day lives or desires.

What this apparent ideological victory has failed to do, however, is to eliminate the basic flaw in the engine of unregulated capitalist growth, that of inequality. Quite the opposite. This era of unprecedented economic vitality has seen ever greater income disparity and the increasingly immoral and repugnant expansion of poverty and a lack of public services while the wealthy bask in the added personal surpluses brought on by disgraceful tax cuts. While the average worker sees their job security and income decline in ever more non-unionized environments, the corporate elite can rest assured of massive government or business buyouts in the event that they do a bad job running their companies! While the bitter sections of the disenfranchised rant about immigrants or those on welfare, the wealthy exist and thrive on government backed bailouts or "development" handouts delivered to their already overburdened bank accounts without any requirement for them to fairly treat their employees or to even pledge to keep their businesses in the jurisdictions that gave them them the cash!

Socialism, it seems, is just fine for the well-to-do.

The real socialist alternative, the actual dream for a better future, however, will never truly die for the very reason that, at heart, the human spirit cannot endure such appallingly unfair and egregious inequity without many millions of people feeling that there must be a better, a fairer and a more just way to create and distribute wealth. The human spirit cannot abide the disgrace of six-year olds going hungry or facing homelessness in nations that hand tens of billions of dollars out to corporate entities. The human spirit recoils at the violence inherent in the reality of our present state of social insecurity created by supposedly progressive liberals and democrats who, throughout the '90's, actively participated in the vile attacks of the political class on the the unemployed, unions, health care, welfare, public spending, education and more and who now stand rudderless and stunned in the face of the collapse of the very system that they engendered.

So why socialism?

Because socialism is the voice of the poor, the workers, the middle class, the disenfranchised, those who wish to express themselves without the oppressive weight of church or state, and those who stand against the terrible toll that economic instability takes on people and families. Socialism is an antidote to apathy and the irrelevance of a life that sacrifices security, justice and freedom for material reward. Socialism is not just an alternative, it is the only true alternative to our present course -- it is a vision of a better world that does not rely on hate, fear or religion, but instead takes the needs of human beings as its starting and ending point. It is, at its best a process that never reaches a conclusion because the human condition can and will always be made better by people themselves. It is a spirit of constant yearning to make a world with peace, equality and democracy for all, regardless of race, religion, gender, sexual orientation, or economic starting point.

It is a liberating and wonderful way to look at ourselves and other people.

And it is a way to say you not only care but that you truly want to do something about the terrible social and economic conditions faced by hundreds of millions of fellow citizens around this global community we live in. Something systemic, something total, something real.

This can only happen, will only happen -- despite all the rhetoric of the free market devotees and the neo-anarchist, anti-government left -- if we elect Socialist governments with a broad and coherent agenda for the creation of a socialist economy. Governments that are willing to accept setbacks and defeats on our path forward, but who, even when out of power, never cease to fight for the overhaul and reinvention of our society. Governments that will place the interests of us all against those of capital.

This piece originally appeared on my original blog and then on rabble.ca, in both cases in slightly different forms. 

See also: Why Socialism? by Albert Einstein

It appears the NDP strategists are stuck in the 90’s – again

by Fraser Needham

As NDP strategists mull over the polls this weekend and try to figure out why their shift to the right of the Liberals on the issue of balanced budgets and deficit financing doesn’t seem to be playing out as they hoped in Ontario, they might be wise to take some time out and do a little research on the British Labour Party leadership election.

Early projections seem to indicate rogue left wing MP Jeremy Corbyn is poised to win the party’s leadership race on Sept. 12. Corbyn is not only left wing, if he wins the Labour leadership, he would be the party’s most left leader in more than three decades dating back to the early 1980’s when Labour was led by Michael Foot.

The longtime Labour politician has also remained unshakeable in his convictions of what he believes constitutes a truly social democratic society. Or, to put it more succinctly, Corbyn has never advocated tax cuts for the middle class as one way of achieving social democratic goals.

The Blairites are of course horrified but it doesn’t really matter what they think if the majority of the Labour Party membership is behind Corbyn which they appear to be. The British press is already speculating the MP from Islington -- who chooses to wear a suit and tie as little as possible and likes to speak his mind about his left convictions -- could pose a real problem for David Cameron and the Conservatives and actually become Prime Minister in the near future. Some journalists are accusing the Blairites of being stuck in the past and failing to see the on the ground appeal of a guy like Jeremy Corbyn to a significant constituency of voters.

Let’s shift over to the Canadian political scene for a moment.

Although the people running the Federal NDP and its provincial wings these days will never admit it publicly, they are strongly influenced by Third Way politics and the vision that Tony Blair very firmly stamped on the British Labour Party in the early 1990’s. Third Way politics basically says there is no way social democratic parties can get elected anymore on the types of platforms they ran on from the post World War Two period up until the early 1980’s. They believe all voters, including working class voters, have moved on from any opposition to capitalism, favour neoliberal ideology without question, do not believe an interventionist state in the economy can ever have a positive influence, are anti-labour and much more individualistic than they had been in the past.

So wherein lies the hope for social democratic parties as far as how the Third Way sees it? There is a "third way" that can be instituted which means social democratic parties have to far lower their expectations of the past by fully embracing the inequities of the free market, eliminating government intervention in the economy from the policy book, sometimes reducing income taxes and certainly never raising them, being firmly committed to balancing the budget, trying to appear as business friendly as possible and never, ever doing anything pro-labour.

If social democratic parties are willing to accept the cold and harsh realities that the general public has moved significantly to the right, they can then make themselves palatable to voters and actually win elections. What is their advantage over the right wing parties? They are a kinder, gentler form of neoliberal party than the mean spirited right. They seek not to destroy the state but to try to preserve it in the current harsh realities that we live in. Their goal is not to completely eliminate taxes but maybe just keep them where they are or reduce them slightly. These parties are also much more easily able to present themselves as more open minded and liberal parties on social issues than the right wing parties who are really neoconservative parties and believe in a much less socially liberal society.

The Third Way is the strategy New Labour ran and was elected in Britain on in the 1997, 2001 and 2005 elections. It was the platform that was used in Saskatchewan that saw four straight NDP governments elected from 1991 to 2003. It is also the strategy that has been used by the Manitoba NDP that is now in its fourth consecutive term after winning power in 1999. A lot of NDP strategists would probably argue that the short-lived Bob Rae NDP government in Ontario in the early 1990’s might have lasted longer had it been willing to accept Third Way strategies a little more fully or at least a lot sooner.

However, all of a sudden the Third Way strategy doesn’t seem to be working as well as it once did. New Labour lost the 2010 British election and was soundly defeated in this spring’s election by the Conservatives. Many of its losses came at the expense of a much more left Scottish Nationalist Party.

In Saskatchewan, the NDP was soundly defeated by the right wing Saskatchewan Party in the 2007 election and then thoroughly routed by them again in the 2011 election – suffering the party’s worst electoral loss since its very early CCF days. The once formidable Saskatchewan NDP now sits rudderless and directionless in opposition with only a rump of nine seats. The party is not positioned to win the next election and it could be a number of years before they are competitive again. To give the Saskatchewan Party credit, they were forward thinking enough to shift slightly left after their surprising 2003 election loss – eliminating any public fears that they would privatize Crown corporations, generally maintaining existing government services and shedding the image of being nothing more than a neoconservative party trying to move the province to the hard right.

The B.C. NDP was supposed to be a shoe-in for government in the 2013 election as a discredited Liberal government appeared to be on its way out. However, the party ran on a moderate centre-right platform and was soundly defeated. The Manitoba NDP is likely headed for defeat in the next provincial election. The Nova Scotia NDP was elected for the first time on a centre-left platform in 2009 but only lasted one term being defeated by Liberals in the 2013 election.

And perhaps the biggest screw up of them all – the Ontario NDP’s bizarre decision to trigger an election in the spring of 2014 and then run on a right wing populist platform. Right of, you guessed it, the Liberals this time around.

Every thing they did in the campaign seemed designed out of some sort of Mike Harris/Rob Ford handbook. The NDP railed out against government excess and tried to position itself as the party of small business. It lashed out at the Toronto “elites,” which was pretty much anyone who questioned their ethics or motives, and wondered why many unions in the province decided not to support them after the NDP was running a campaign that was in many ways hostile to labour. They accused the Liberals of running a fiscally irresponsible campaign when in reality the Liberal campaign was hardly fiscally ambitious at all. The party even decided to place a cover ad in the Toronto Sun of all newspapers – you know – to reach out to all their blue-collar right wing friends who read it.

And it all made such “common sense.” Except to voters of course who decided to re-elect the Liberals to a majority on election day and reward the NDP with a third place finish.

Now the Federal NDP strategists will tell you the party ran on a centre-right platform in the 2011 election winning more seats than it ever has and becoming the official opposition for the first time in the party’s history. However, if they were actually honest -- and in their current state of hubris they most likely wouldn’t be -- they would admit that the party’s good fortunes had much more to do with the strange circumstances of that particular election than anything that was in the NDP platform.

First, the Liberals hit what will be for them likely rock bottom running under a leader which is the worst the party has ever seen in its modern history in Michael Ignatieff. Ignatieff wasn’t even able to hold his own Toronto seat.

Second, after almost 20 years of successful campaigns in Quebec, the Bloc Quebecois completely imploded and bit the dust leaving a tremendous opportunity for another party to become dominant in the province. With the Liberals remaining largely discredited in Quebec since the sponsorship scandal and the Conservatives quickly wearing out their welcome after the 2006 election, the NDP was able to seize that opportunity and fill the gap.

Third, and most important, the NDP was very well served by their late leader Jack Layton who admirably decided to fight the campaign despite suffering the effects of a recent hip replacement and what later came to be known was terminal cancer. In his fourth campaign as party leader, Layton caught on like wildfire across the country but no more so than in Quebec where his meteoric increase in popularity there sealed the deal for the NDP in the province.

The point of all this is the NDP might actually want to try something that would be considered a little “radical” to those people running the party these days. Rather than always shifting right why not shift a little left? Maybe consider that working people might actually be a little bit fed up after 25 years of neoliberal policies and lies that have left them worse off than at any time since before the Second World War. That people may not be so easily tricked into the deficit hysteria as they were 20 years ago. That they even may be willing to pay a bit more in income taxes if this means better public services.

In general, why not just try and run on the values your party was founded on rather than someone else’s? You certainly would make your base happy and give your party members and campaign workers something to believe in again and you might just gain some votes and a little respect at the same time.

It also likely wouldn’t splatter as much egg on your face as promising to balance the budget heading into a looming recession.

Just a thought.

Fraser Needham is a freelance journalist living in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan. He has been working and writing in Saskatchewan for the past 15 years. Aside from the Saskatchewan CCF/NDP, he follows Aboriginal issues and politics closely.

See also: The follies of the NDP running a right wing populist campaign

See also: Playing the progressive card -- Trudeau's cynical, but clever, "left shift"

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