What if Iggy had a party and nobody came?
(On air editorial News 95.7 Halifax June 14th, 2010)
Liberal Leader Michael Ignatieff stopped by Halifax on the weekend, but did anybody notice, did anybody care?
On Saturday, the Chronicle Herald buried his visit in their coverage and on Sunday the Herald devoted a front page to Iggy recanting the notion of merging with the NDP – a rumor he failed to dispel earlier in Quebec City where he gave a confusing message about uniting the left/coalition government. So, Ignatieff had to re-allocate his media time, this time, by re-stating, his “no” to joining up with the NDP.
Ignatieff as Liberal leader has proven time and again to be a bad communicator with a personality that most Canadians have problems relating to. Those are the facts. Will he get better? We’ll see.
But the whole Liberal strategy is to be the “alternative” to Stephen Harper, but are they doing that? They have no policies, no platform, or central set of ideas with which to build a brand around. Being all things to all people may work if you are in power, but away from power the Liberal’s problems with their identity has been heightened by the Conservatives shift to the political center. The Tories in Ottawa have been handing out the candy for years now and it’s having an effect. The fact that the Tories are generally regarded as good stewards of the economy who aren’t raising our taxes doesn’t hurt either.
If Ignatieff really wanted to get our attention when he came to Halifax he might’ve discussed the billion dollar boondoggle of the G8/G20 summit by declaring Halifax would’ve been a better site option than Toronto. Halifax would’ve saved taxpayers millions. We’ve done it before, and Halifax currently hosts a yearly international security summit where some of the most powerful people in the world easily fly in and out.
I was there last year and saw it myself.
No, the Liberals since the death of Trudeau are a party running on only the fumes of ideas. And while Chrétien, for a time, held the Trudeau flame aloft and while Martin branded himself as a deficit buster, poor old Ignatieff is left to just say “vote for me.”
Increasingly, the Liberal Party of Canada is a road less traveled. Sadly, Liberals may wish for the good old days of Stephanie Dion. Remember him?
One Response to “ What if Iggy had a party and nobody came? ”
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June 17th, 2010 at 10:39 pm
I agree with you mostly on this, brother. But let me give you some of my own musings to oppose/accompany yours, depending on one’s perspective.
Michael Ignatieff is Canada’s John Kerry, though Harper is certainly no George Jr. But Iggy has the same personality deficits that Kerry had during his swing at the center of the White House in ’04, yet both are as smart as they come when it gets down to politics and economics. If the left does not unite soon, clearly the next election will produce another minority government. By the left I’m talking about the Libs and the NDP. Obviously, between Ignatieff and Jack Layton, however, Layton has the fire and swagger brimming with confidence that Canada demands of its leaders whether they like them or not. The Liberals under Ignatieff will never see majority rule, and neither will the NDP and for that matter the Conservatives, for the simple reason that the Bloc has wedged its ugly separatist nose into the nation’s political spectrum despite the fact that it has nothing to do with national interests at all. But that’s another subject. Still, the Bloc has made the Liberals and NDP uniting a necessity if there is to be a majority government in Canada again. And it won’t happen until that happens.
The Conservatives are doing fine. Stephen Harper and his Con cronies successfully managed to silence the Progressive Conservative breakaways and crush them into submission like he does with most that oppose him publicly. The right is in one piece while the left is divided in two, just the way the Cons want them. And the cycle will just continue of conservative parties inheriting balanced books (not just here… look at the U.S.; remember the shape of the economy the States was in when Clinton left?), go on crazy spending sprees, running amok with the country’s money like bulls in a China shop, and leave the mess like a bunch of drunken party crashers for the taxpayers to clean up, via the Liberals, except the hangovers are always suffered by we who never drank the booze. And as is with every single formed government that comes to power, the Cons will regroup while the right cleans the place up by looking for the next big scandal to chop down the liberal cherry tree in the next election. Or maybe the one after.
But it sure would be nice if, one way or another, we could stop this nonsense of the spectre of a federal election constantly hanging over our heads. Maybe that should be looked at too.
In any case… you can blame Iggy for the Liberals’ party woes, but the real skunk under the shed is the Bloc.