http://bit.ly/jNhYUD
Oddly I suspect a similar view ("to close the door on any future discussion of a merger ... is a serious tactical mistake") might find favour with most Liberals. That said, I do not see merger as making sense -- unless both the NDP and Liberal Parties change significantly. Some of what the NDP was looking at this weekend marks a real shift in their thinking. And Labour, in the UK, is not what it was in the 1970s. The Liberal convention in January may be significant too. It will be an interesting year ahead.
Joanna Smith
Ottawa Bureau
VANCOUVER — New Democrats have decided against rejecting any discussion of merging with the Liberals in a vote on the floor of the biennial policy convention on Sunday.
"To close the door on any future discussion of a merger with the Liberals is a serious tactical mistake," NDP MP Peter Stoffer (Sackville — Eastern Shore) told the roomful of delegates ahead of the vote.
The resolution would have had the party "refuse any and all discussion" of a merger with the federal Liberal party, and also any talk of a noncompete agreement with the Liberals in the next federal election.
2 comments:
I agree, and am much relieved that the motion was defeated. To talk of merger now, with the NDP exultant and Liberals despondent, would be premature and futile. Futile it may remain. But to make a point of closing off the possibility would be foolish. None of us can predict how the next four years will shape up politically.
> Some of what the NDP was looking at this weekend marks a real shift in their thinking.
Don't read too much into this. The NDP has been having these existential debates for fifty years now (remember the Waffle?). The only difference is, for most of those fifty years, nobody was watching.
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