Demarchy

Listen - Pat Martin, Justin Trudeau, the Globe and Mail, Mary Magdalene and the almighty Zeus can speculate about an NDP-Liberal merger, but it’s just not going to happen. The likelihood of the two parties shacking up for anything other than an awkward, sweaty, one-election-coalition is so beyond the realm of possibility, it’s absurd.

Let’s imagineer a narrative here.

The NDP has three times as many seats as the Liberals. That makes them three times bigger. The Liberals are the “natural governing party.” Maybe the NDP has a streak of self-confidence because of the so-called ‘orange wave’ and are thus over-evaluating their self-worth just a tad, but the Liberals self-perception is so out of whack with the current status of their party that nothing short of absolute control of the proposed merged party would satisfy them.

Because, realistically, any merged party would have a leadership structure that would be 66% New Democratic and 33% Liberal. Try convincing a Liberal to accept that. Telling Bob Rae that he can’t be prime minister, but he’ll instead get the coveted role of agriculture minister won’t fly too well, I don’t think.

And good luck trying to bridge the policy gap. The main source of contention at the last Liberal convention was about whether or not to discuss policy. The NDP’s problem was that they wanted to discuss the Gaza blockade,  supervised injection sites and preserving the word ‘socialist’ in their constitution.

Try convincing the labour unions that make up the NDP to accept the party that was no friend to the public sector or unions (hey guys, remember that time that Chretien ordered CUPW back to work and shafted them on fair negotiations? Good times.)

The entire recent history of Liberal governance flies in the face of every aspect of the NDP. From the tough austerity measures in the 90s that took $10 billion/year from social programs to legislation that killed the Canadian Advisory Council on the Status of Women.

And, politically expedient? Hardly.

For the NDP, merging with the Liberals would be like joining a drag-race while your car is hitched to a corpse that swallowed an anchor.

Nevermind that it’d be bad news for the Liberals because if, through some unholy alignment of the stars, the Liberals found an agreement that was to their liking and they did merge, it would require the whole-sale dismantling of everything the party stands for. No logical joint NDP-Liberal convention would allow the Liberals more than half the votes on the plenary. 

Given the Liberals penchant for morphing their platform and ideology in reaction to the winds of change, they may find themselves skittish inside a party that plows ahead with its brand of moderate social democracy, regardless of poll numbers, and hope it garners votes.

It figures, then, with Red Tories and left-wing Dippers wringing their hands about a stitched-together Frankenparty, there’s going to be a lot of party hopping (Red Tories to the Conservatives, left-wing Dippers back to the Bloc or the Greens) and possibly even two new parties. You think the Left is fractured now? Just wait.

And all this is without factoring in the insane complexity of trying to melt together two institutional structures that have been crafted via hundreds of years of history. The NDP is an observer in the Socialist International. Would the new party revoke its membership? The Liberals cede a rather large amount of power to their executive and senate caucus. The NDP has a streak of devolving a lot of power back to the membership, and are reflexively opposed to having a senate at all (let alone giving party fundraisers a seat in it.) 

And that’s a core party - there have been some public opinion polls suggesting a merged party would be moderately well received, leading some to conclude that it’s viable. However, if you were to try polling NDP members who would show up to a convention and vote? I promise you, it will not be quite so easy going.

And can you imagine Alf Apps referring to people as ‘brother’ and ‘sister’? Me either.

It’s all well and good to just say that a merger is convenient, or makes sense, etc. But it’s irresponsible to wryly fill up column inches with musings on something that will never, ever happen. I could write daily about a proposed merger between Denmark and New Zealond, the Habs and the Penguins, the Sun and the stars - but it’s not going to happen.