Goodbye NDP!

Jugmeet Singh has announced that he is tearing up a crucial deal that keeps the current government in power. That will put the Conservatives under Pierre Poilievre in power and that's a bad thing. It will injure the Liberal Party and put them out of power, but more importantly it will destroy the NDP. I used to work in elections for NDP candidates and family members still do. The NDP lost its way with its principles some time ago, so I don't work for them anymore, but I have always voted NDP. Given the current news that is set to change. 

It was quibbles about principles and struggles with a cynical party brass at the DNC that put Donald Trump in office. This current nonsense is reminiscent of that. In order to make some point of principle, arguably not even applicable in the current case involving Railways, Jugmeet Singh and whoever is supporting him in the NDP have decided to throw away the work of lifetimes by millions building the (formerly) socialist alternative to a capitalist hegemony. He/they do not have that right. They are custodians of  the NDP heritage, not the owner. 

My daughter called to ask if I had seen the news. I had not. While on the phone with her, I said the NDP site must have something to say about this, so I went to the site. Here is what I was confronted with, front and center: "Jagmeet Singh is running for Prime Minister. Rich CEOs have had their government. It's the people's time."

That is the worst of cynical, self-serving political hypocrisy. Destroying the party and implicitly putting a monster in power is hardly hopeful. Jagmeet has never realistically been in a position to be Prime Minister, so that is effectively either delusional or a flat-out lie. Calling an election right now does not end the "Rich CEOs time". I casts it in stone until the end of a decade. The "people's time" is about to be to strain under the yoke of the most heartless possible Canadian Federal Party for years. 

Polls are both fallible and/or rigged to be used for political gain, but they are generally in the ballpark. I'm not sure which axe they have to grind, but I just went looking for any poll to give a flavor of what I know to be the case. This is the first I found (https://338canada.com/federal.htm), current as of a few days ago: In an election called now, the PCs (the bad guys) would win a majority and rule the roost absolutely for years with someone truly reckless, mean-spirited, grossly misogynist, morally, and technically and financially illiterate. The liberals would take a huge hit getting knocked back by possibly half their seats or more. The NDP would, in my estimation, barely keep or even possibly lose their official party status. Jagmeet Singh is not only not going to be the next Prime Minister, if sanity prevails he will effectively not even remain the leader of his party. 

I will update later if it turns out not to be as bad as it looks, but I am not nearly optimistic. The very most optimistic look at this is that it was a terrible misstatement, they put together a new agreement, and they unwind the optics somehow. I dearly wish this is the case because a federal election now would be a disaster with no upside whatsoever. 

Note: Not that it affects my thinking in this matter, but in the interest of full disclosure I have family members who are still NDP members and still actively work in elections. Oddly enough, a family member that is a subject matter expert works for a Liberal MP. More importantly, I have been involved with politics a great deal over the past decade. By coincidence, the post before this was on the subject of a private members bill by an NDP MP (https://blog.bobtrower.com/2024/09/glbi-is-not-ubi-bill-c-223.html). Somewhat tangential to this, I am the designer of secure electronic voting and am authoring voting software.