“Well Ms. May,” I was saying to the Green Party leader, “nice showing in the byelections. But what good does it do? Doesn’t your Green Party scoring better just split the opposition vote more? Doesn’t it make it harder for progressives to ever defeat the Harper Conservatives?”
Au contraire, responds Elizabeth May. “It improves the chances of Stephen Harper being defeated. And I’ll tell you why. Because we’re the only party committed to cooperation. If we appear marginal I wouldn’t have the clout it takes to get the other opposition to cooperate to defeat him.”
Now, she claims, she is gaining that clout — and just at the right time. With the byelections it’s become “screamingly evident,” she maintains, that the opposition parties must have joint nomination meetings or cooperation of some kind to end the vote-splitting.
She will begin a new push for a cooperation pact now. “I’m besieged by people all the time begging us to cooperate. We have to get it on the table. There has to be a pact for 2015.”
There is some support in the other parties. Joyce Murray, the British Columbia MP, opened her Liberal leadership campaign this week by putting forward joint nominations as a key proposal in her platform. Nathan Cullen, the NDP’s deputy leader, ran for the leadership of his party, and finished third, proposing that kind of cooperation.
Ms. May has had a big month. She was named parliamentarian of the year by Maclean’s magazine. “I was gobsmacked,” she said. “It’s a great honour.” Then the byelections saw her party almost knock off the NDP in Victoria. Overall in the three contests, her Greens increased their share of the vote more than any other party.
But it was the Greens’ strong third-place showing in Calgary Centre which took away from the Liberal vote and allowed the Conservatives to hold the seat. It need not have happened. She says she approached the other parties before the campaigns to explore cooperation agreements but they wouldn’t listen. “And so we ran as hard as we could.”
Ms. May says she is open to any number of variations on how to work out deals to combine forces against the Conservatives in ridings that they won narrowly in the 2011 election. NDP leader Tom Mulcair has stated his opposition to such agreements. But Ms. May says that when he sees that the Liberals are not going away and that the Greens are rising, he may start to change his mind.
As for the Liberals: “I can talk to them easily,” she says. “They have indicated to me that cooperation is possible.”
The one sticking point is that the Greens want to get support for the idea of moving toward a system of proportional representation. The first-past-the-post system has given what the Green leader calls “false majorities” to both the Liberals and the Conservatives. Liberal leadership favourite Justin Trudeau doesn’t favour proportional representation, says Ms. May, but the NDP does, at least in theory.
Her party’s good showing this week needs to be seen in perspective. Byelections tend to produce good results for smaller protest parties. The Greens have done well in byelections in the past only to be disappointed on election day.
But the return of the environment and climate change as high-profile issues is helping the party. In British Columbia, Ms. May claims that the Conservative vote is collapsing. “It is entirely due to Stephen Harper’s demonizing people who oppose the Enbridge project and who want to keep our coastline clear of supertankers as radicals suspected of taking foreign funding.”
Ms. May has long been a proponent of opposition parties joining hands. She reached a deal with then-Liberal leader Stephane Dion prior to the 2008 election. He agreed not to run a Liberal candidate in the Nova Scotia riding she was contesting in exchange for her party’s support on environmental issues.
She is probably correct in thinking her better standing will give her increased credibility in seeking campaign arrangements with other parties. The fact that the New Democrats are not distancing themselves from the Liberals in terms of public support may assist the prospect as well. There is no chance for a formal merger between the NDP and the Grits before the next campaign, so they might settle for the next best thing.
But reaching a cooperation deal will not be easy, not for either of those parties or the Greens themselves. In any negotiation for joint riding nominations, the Greens would be at a distinct disadvantage, having scored much lower than the other two parties in the big majority of ridings in the last election.
Elizabeth May is a determined leader, however. She has demonstrated before, and is prepared to demonstrate again, that she is prepared to put the good of the country before the good of the party.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Lawrence Martin
Au contraire, responds Elizabeth May. “It improves the chances of Stephen Harper being defeated. And I’ll tell you why. Because we’re the only party committed to cooperation. If we appear marginal I wouldn’t have the clout it takes to get the other opposition to cooperate to defeat him.”
Now, she claims, she is gaining that clout — and just at the right time. With the byelections it’s become “screamingly evident,” she maintains, that the opposition parties must have joint nomination meetings or cooperation of some kind to end the vote-splitting.
She will begin a new push for a cooperation pact now. “I’m besieged by people all the time begging us to cooperate. We have to get it on the table. There has to be a pact for 2015.”
There is some support in the other parties. Joyce Murray, the British Columbia MP, opened her Liberal leadership campaign this week by putting forward joint nominations as a key proposal in her platform. Nathan Cullen, the NDP’s deputy leader, ran for the leadership of his party, and finished third, proposing that kind of cooperation.
Ms. May has had a big month. She was named parliamentarian of the year by Maclean’s magazine. “I was gobsmacked,” she said. “It’s a great honour.” Then the byelections saw her party almost knock off the NDP in Victoria. Overall in the three contests, her Greens increased their share of the vote more than any other party.
But it was the Greens’ strong third-place showing in Calgary Centre which took away from the Liberal vote and allowed the Conservatives to hold the seat. It need not have happened. She says she approached the other parties before the campaigns to explore cooperation agreements but they wouldn’t listen. “And so we ran as hard as we could.”
Ms. May says she is open to any number of variations on how to work out deals to combine forces against the Conservatives in ridings that they won narrowly in the 2011 election. NDP leader Tom Mulcair has stated his opposition to such agreements. But Ms. May says that when he sees that the Liberals are not going away and that the Greens are rising, he may start to change his mind.
As for the Liberals: “I can talk to them easily,” she says. “They have indicated to me that cooperation is possible.”
The one sticking point is that the Greens want to get support for the idea of moving toward a system of proportional representation. The first-past-the-post system has given what the Green leader calls “false majorities” to both the Liberals and the Conservatives. Liberal leadership favourite Justin Trudeau doesn’t favour proportional representation, says Ms. May, but the NDP does, at least in theory.
Her party’s good showing this week needs to be seen in perspective. Byelections tend to produce good results for smaller protest parties. The Greens have done well in byelections in the past only to be disappointed on election day.
But the return of the environment and climate change as high-profile issues is helping the party. In British Columbia, Ms. May claims that the Conservative vote is collapsing. “It is entirely due to Stephen Harper’s demonizing people who oppose the Enbridge project and who want to keep our coastline clear of supertankers as radicals suspected of taking foreign funding.”
Ms. May has long been a proponent of opposition parties joining hands. She reached a deal with then-Liberal leader Stephane Dion prior to the 2008 election. He agreed not to run a Liberal candidate in the Nova Scotia riding she was contesting in exchange for her party’s support on environmental issues.
She is probably correct in thinking her better standing will give her increased credibility in seeking campaign arrangements with other parties. The fact that the New Democrats are not distancing themselves from the Liberals in terms of public support may assist the prospect as well. There is no chance for a formal merger between the NDP and the Grits before the next campaign, so they might settle for the next best thing.
But reaching a cooperation deal will not be easy, not for either of those parties or the Greens themselves. In any negotiation for joint riding nominations, the Greens would be at a distinct disadvantage, having scored much lower than the other two parties in the big majority of ridings in the last election.
Elizabeth May is a determined leader, however. She has demonstrated before, and is prepared to demonstrate again, that she is prepared to put the good of the country before the good of the party.
Original Article
Source: ipolitics
Author: Lawrence Martin
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