Looks like I've come down with the feared
summer cold, so I can't really do this one justice. But the political event of this season will be the
Green Party leadership convention in August. Party Leader Elizabeth May, who could have run and won as a Liberal in any number of ridings around Canada, but instead attempted out of the goodness of her heart to wield this pathetic band of drug dealing hippies and crystal waving amateur psychics into a legitimate political force--and apparently succeeded, as the latest polls have them with enough support to win a couple of seats out in B.C.--may well be ousted in the name of
"grass-roots democracy". WTF? In brief: the Party may demand Ms. May fight a leadership campaign and, if so, she may tell them to go blow it out their ass.
I could go on and on about how stupid the Greens are being here, because basically they amount to
nothing without E. May. But I won't. I'll just point out that, once she is gone, at least half of the eight to twelve per cent of the electorate GP Canada commands will redistribute to a party that doesn't raise funds via salmon bakes or selling you magic mushrooms out of the back of a Volkswagen van. In our fragmented political land-scape, that's as big a political "re-alignment" as we are likely to see in awhile.
7 comments:
"...Elizabeth May, who could have run and won as a Liberal in any number of ridings around Canada..."
You mean you'd actually want her?
Hope she stays as leader. Also, the GP needs to get out of giving the impression they are a one platform Party. All you ever hear from them is about the environment but there's much more to them than that.
Get better soon!
LS,
Damn right I would.
I think Elizabeth May is actually a huge liability to the Green party (which is why i hope they keep her). She is abrasive, disorganized, cannot keep any staff and has had zero news coverage in the past year (except for a few articles about how she may lose her job). It doesn't matter if the Green party is led by May or by some anonymous organic farmer - people who tell pollsters they are voting Green don't care who the leader is - they just like the idea of party with the word "green" in its proper name. They got more votes in the last BC and Ontario election with very low profile unknown leaders than they got federally with May - who is a big eye sore and turns people off.
It's true that there is more to the Green Party than the environment. The other policies they have are 1. that their leader deserves a seat, 2. that their leader needs to be included in the leaders debate and 3. that they deserve more publicity...
There is no leadership contest scheduled for the Greens this year. There are three resolutions at our BGM regarding leadership terms and one leadership review.
Greens will be voting on whether they want to change the leadership role to one similar to the other political parties (leader sets own term), whether they want to keep the 4 year term but allow flexibility (1 year) to account for minority governments or whether they want the current constitution followed.
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