Jack Layton: At the Crossroads

(A slightly edited version of this piece appeared in today's Globe and Mail.)

Jack Layton now faces the most important decision of his political life: how to keep the NDP alive and progressive in the coming struggle for power between Stephen Harper and Stephane Dion.

Based on the choice made by NDP election strategists over the decades, including the approach taken by the party in the 2006 election, the NDP is likely to insist that the Liberals and Conservatives are equally reactionary and that the only genuine alternative is the NDP. This “tweedledum-tweedledee” approach was already offensive and patently false to many progressives by the time of the 1988 free trade election when Brian Mulroney campaigned for the deal he had negotiated with Ronald Reagan against Liberal John Turner who promised to tear up the free trade deal if elected.

In the 2006 election, the NDP pushed this approach to a further extreme. Jack Layton and his party directed their fire almost exclusively at Paul Martin’s Liberals as corrupt and unfit for office, while saying next to nothing about Stephen Harper and the threat posed to Canadians from his neo-conservative platform and ideology. It was as though the NDP had innocently slept through the past couple of decades of experiences throughout the West with neo-con governments.

Now Jack Layton and his advisors have to decide how to cope with Stephane Dion, whom Layton himself described as a man of principle only a few months ago in the confident belief that the corrupt Liberals would never pick such a leader. If it is not clear to NDP strategists that there’s a world of difference between the politics of Stephen Harper and Stephane Dion, this has certainly occurred to legions of progressive Canadians whose strongest wish is to replace the Harperites with a progressive government.

What is the NDP to do?

The NDP could try to make Stephen Harper look better than he really is on the environment and possibly one or two other issues. Given Dion’s strong showing in public opinion polls, Harper has as much interest in this as Layton. The Conservative and NDP leaders have already managed to find enough common ground on the environment to keep the government’s clean-air bill alive in a Commons committee. They could take this a step further with a concession by Harper on greenhouse gas targets that the NDP could welcome as a first step. This would be a way for Harper to moderate his image in Ontario and Quebec and it would allow Layton to argue that the NDP caucus is getting things done for working families and seniors.

The purpose of such a Harper-Layton duo (never to be acknowledged as such, of course) is that it could help both the Conservatives and the NDP stave off a rush of Canadians to support Stephane Dion.

I hope, for the sake of the country and for the sake of the NDP, that this is not the course adopted by Jack Layton.

The alternative course for him to take is to join those political forces that want Harper out of office as soon as possible. Layton ought to take a leading role---the leading role---in exposing Harper and the Conservatives for what they are. The one issue on which the NDP has genuinely done this is Afghanistan, where Layton has had the courage to call for a withdrawal of Canadian troops.

The NDP can do this as well on the environment. Everyone who has analyzed the issue knows that Harper will never do anything to slow the full-scale development of the oil sands projects in Alberta. And without slowing oil sands projects, Canada can only continue to increase its greenhouse gas emissions. Jack Layton should say this without equivocation.

On childcare and on insisting that the affluent pay their fair share of taxes, social democrats share no common ground with Conservatives. It ought to be clear to any New Democrat that if Harper were to win a majority of seats in the next election, he would attack Canada’s social state with a vengeance and seek to make a deal with Quebec sovereignists by savaging the power of the federal government.

Layton should make himself the leader of the movement to oust Harper from power. And in doing this, he can also look out for the long-term interests of the NDP. He should call on Stephane Dion to agree that the first step of a new Liberal government (likely a minority government) will be to introduce a scheme of proportional representation that can permanently end the dilemma progressives now have in deciding how to vote. With proportional representation, progressives can vote NDP without having to resort to the fiction that Liberals and Conservatives are peas in a pod.

If Stephane Dion is as progressive and guileless as he would have us believe, Layton should say, let him commit at once to proportional representation.

The next election is going to be a tough one for the NDP, no matter which strategic approach it takes. The party can come out of it with its political position as the leading edge of progressive politics intact, and with a strong caucus. But only if the NDP is unequivocal in making Stephen Harper the target. If Jack Layton goes back to “tweedledum-tweedledee”, not only is his party going to be punished at the polls by progressives who want Harper out, he will be endangering the long-term survival of the NDP.

Racism: Europe's Disease

Menton, France: Racism remains Europe’s disease. It takes a range of forms from outright exclusionism to the milder practice of labelling everyone according to ethnicity or religion, and making broadly pejorative comments about people based on the above.

In France, the great current national debate is about “belonging and not belonging”. Who is French and who is not? France has had a divided soul on this question dating all the way back to the French Revolution. Much earlier than most other countries, France separated citizenship from ethnicity. In theory at least a citizen of France was French regardless of ethnicity. From this starting point---by the beginning of the 20th century---the concept of a secular educational system developed in which the teaching of religion and the display of religious symbols was banned.

But France has been very leaky around the edges since time immemorial on the creation of a society in which ethnicity and religion are not factors in determining social ranking. Although France was a country that opened its doors to immigrants for many decades---without immigration since 1945, the population of the country would be millions fewer than the current population of 62 million---the prejudice against immigrants has been a powerful, politically salient, issue over the past couple of decades.

The central target of anti-immigrant sentiment is the six million strong community of Muslims, who are mostly of North African origin. Several years ago, the French National Assembly passed legislation banning the wearing of religion symbols by students in public schools. While Muslims were not singled out in the legislation, the visceral political goal of the exercise was to ban the wearing of the voile (head scarf) by Muslim school girls. While secular republicanism was being proclaimed, a line was being drawn between the majority and the Muslim minority.

It is not difficult to encounter the sentiments that keep race, religion and immigration live issues in France. Over the past month in the corner of France where I reside---Menton and the rest of the Cote d’Azur---immigrant bashing has come up in many conversations, no matter what has been the ostensible topic of conversation.

Some immigrants fit in much better than others is the sentiment of one group of older French and Italian and speakers I encountered. This group settles on the idea that Chinese immigrants----of whom there are few in this region---are inoffensive and don’t make trouble, in striking contrast to other immigrant groups. Too many immigrants, one Italian tells me, won’t work in old, established societies such as France and Italy that have a great national culture to protect. In newer societies such as that of Canada, he says, this doesn’t matter so much because Canadians don’t really have such a prized culture. (I’ve encountered this idea many times. Europeans puff themselves up and proclaim their strong identification with a culture that goes back a thousand years and more. They look at me as though I am a naked, barely formed creature as a Canadian with much less to lose than they. Meanwhile, I watch them signing up for wireless Internet, and getting ready to try out their skating skills on the artificial rink being readied for Christmas on the shore of the Mediterranean. Christmas here, where there is no snow, is tarted up with pine trees sprinkled with something that is supposed to look like snow. The big movie here in recent weeks was the new James Bond offering. Apparently cultures can absorb all of these inputs, while the sight of brown faces threatens the supposed connections dating back to the dawn of time.) I meet a middle aged British woman who says she now feels no affinity with London. It is no longer a city where you hear English spoken on the Underground she says. In Central London, all you hear is Russian, she claims.

If these constant ethnic and racial narratives form the background, there is also the foreground where naked racism is on display. A few weeks ago a mob of Paris Saint Germain supporters converged on a McDonald’s in central Paris after a soccer game with an Israeli team. They moved in threateningly on one Israeli supporter and a black man who was nearby. Under threat, the black man, who was an undercover cop drew his weapon and fired, killing one man and wounding another. The policeman has since been cleared of wrong-doing on the grounds of self-defence.

The PSG fans were from an extremist group known as the Kop of Boulogne, whose adherents have attended games. Their practice was to sit together in one section where they chanted racist slogans and picked fights with other fans and supporters of other teams. Following the shooting at the McDonalds, the Kop of Boulogne section of the stands has been shut down and members of the group are banned from the games.

The fact that such racist groups have attached themselves to soccer teams in France, England, Italy and other European countries, bespeaks the wider problem of overt racist dialogue and thuggery.

I’ll have more to say on this question of “belonging and not belonging” in Europe in future posts.

December 7, 2006: Sixty-Five Years After Pearl Harbour

Sixty-five years ago today, Japan launched its sneak attack on the American Pacific fleet at Pearl Harbour. The day before the attack, the Soviet army stopped the Germans on the outskirts of Moscow.

On these two days, December 6 and December 7, 1941, the outline of the world order to come over the next half century became dimly visible.

The Americans, who had wrestled with their attitude to Hitler’s war, were suddenly forced into a Pacific and a European war. From the disaster of Pearl Harbour, the American Empire (largely a Western Hemisphere affair until then) was catapulted into a true world empire. And the Soviet Union gave the first convincing demonstration that it would survive Hitler’s invasion.

This week the Baker-Hamilton Report, and Defense Secretary Designate Robert Gates in testimony before Congress, have said that the U.S. is not winning the war in Iraq. Just over a month ago, before the Republicans lost the Congressional elections, this would have been heresy. The Baker-Hamilton Report, not only advocates a withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq sometime in 2008, but calls for negotiations with Syria and Iran, leading examples of states that sponsor terror according to Bush administration orthodoxy.

While releasing his report, James Baker, patrician elder statesman from the Bush Sr. administration, reminded the media that it was American policy to talk to foes during the more than four decades of the Cold War.

On December 7, 1941, Americans resolved that they would mobilize their unmatched industrial might to defeat Imperial Japan and Nazi Germany (war with Germany came four days later when Hitler declared war on the United States.)

In the United States, the theory that, given a chance, war can yield stellar results, lasted only until the Korean War in the early 1950s. Fought to a standstill by North Korean and Chinese troops, Americans turned to war hero Dwight D. Eisenhower to end the Korean conflict. Eisenhower, the conqueror of Western Europe, enjoyed the standing to negotiate a halt to the fighting. That was something Lyndon Johnson, who was not a war hero did not dare to do a decade later when he inherited the presidency and the Vietnam War. The quagmire and humiliation of Vietnam (ending with Richard Nixon’s resignation from the presidency in August 1974), inoculated the American people and future administrations against serious wars, that is, until George W. Bush came to office. (George Bush Sr.’s first Gulf War was a cake walk with few American casualties, but he was wise enough not to march to Baghdad.)

September 11, 2001, the terror attack on New York and Washington, was the defining event in the presidency of George W. Bush. It was regularly compared to Pearl Harbour in the weeks following the attack. But September 11 did not turn out the way Pearl Harbour did. While Pearl Harbour provoked the rise of an American global empire, September 11 spawned two wars, in Afghanistan and Iraq, both of them going badly for the United States. While the New York Times still calls the Afghan conflict “the good war”, it too will not end in a glorious American victory.

December 7, Pearl Harbour Day, is usually an occasion for Americans to watch war movies and to remind themselves that they must never allow themselves to be taken by surprise by any foe again. This year, two-thirds of a century on from the day Franklin Delano Roosevelt said “would live in infamy”, Americans are contemplating the limits of the utility of force.

Stephane Dion: Next Steps on the Journey

Stephane Dion. Stephane Dion. I have to repeat the name because I’m still getting used to the idea that he is the leader of the Liberal Party.

I was wrong in my take on the race. While, I calculated correctly that in the end Liberals would reject the “shooting star” candidacy of Michael Ignatieff, that led me to the conclusion that either Gerard Kennedy or Bob Rae would win. Wrong.

As author of the Clarity Act, I thought---and still think---that Dion has problems with a very large number of Quebecers. As a former minister of the environment, during a time when the Liberals were doing nothing useful to clean up the environment, I thought---and still think---Dion had baggage. As a former member of the Chretien cabinet, I thought---and still think---that Dion would be the recipient from Stephen Harper of cheap shots at him as a passenger in a vehicle powered by corruption. As a rather scratchy guy, I wondered---and still wonder---how Dion would do in Ontario as Liberal leader.

In the end, it was Michael Ignatieff who did himself in. His missteps on too many issues convinced people that he was not ready to lead a political party. Where he will be in three or four years, no one knows, but he’ll never be Liberal leader. Neither will Bob Rae, who made a better run of it than I thought he would when he announced his candidacy. Rae comes out of the campaign with honour. He enriched the dialogue and he still has much to contribute. Gerard Kennedy may well have done the right thing in going over to Dion at the critical moment. He will have to play a large role in the next election campaign in Ontario and the West if the Liberals are to win.

I’m warily optimistic about the road ahead. The issue in the next campaign will be Stephen Harper and his record. For Dion to win, Harper will have to shoot himself in the foot. And he’s been doing that on a host of issues. While I give him credit for his action on Income Trusts and on Quebec as a nation in Canada (whatever his motives), on childcare, the Kelowna aboriginal development agreement, Afghanistan and the environment, he has been dead wrong.

A cleaned up Liberal Party running on a progressive platform can defeat Harper. And hopefully Jack Layton will add to the progressive momentum by making the Conservatives the target next time out, rather than trying to sink Dion. (Jack’s comment at the last NDP convention that Dion was a man of principle and that for that reason he was highly unlikely to be chosen Liberal leader, will make an all out assault a little more difficult.)

Elizabeth May and the Greens can also contribute to the progressive momentum.

Nicolas Sarkozy Serves Up a Helping of Economic Liberalism, Spiced with Law and Order

Menton, France: It surprised no one when Nicolas Sarkozy, France’s Minister of the Interior announced last week that he would be a candidate for the French presidency, in elections to be held next spring. He moved his announcement up a little to counter the positive media run Segolene Royal has been enjoying since she was named as the candidate of the Socialist Party. Sarkozy will have to face competition from other contenders, most notably Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin, but he is almost certain to win the nomination of the mainstream right in January.

Sarkozy is a formidable candidate, more than that, he is a political phenomenon. Since he burst on the political scene a couple of decades ago, as a young stalwart who was often seen in the company of Jacques Chirac---the two men are no longer fond of one another---Sarkozy’s hunger for advancement has stood out in every photograph, every interview, every speech. This man schemes for the top job with an appetite that has caused people to scrutinize him with equal helpings of admiration and anxiety. Members of France’s political class often display hubris, large egos and disdain for their competitors whether they are adherents of their own parties or of opposing parties. But none of them has done it with the ferocity and determination of Nicolas Sarkozy.

Sarkozy has preferred the job of Interior Minister, which gives him charge of the police and domestic security, in preference to that of prime minister. In France while presidents command respect, prime ministers do the dirty work, having to take care of the details of daily political life. If there is a disruptive strike, a spike in unemployment, a spate of plant closures, or an outcry among employers that the social charges they pay are too high, it is the prime minister who is roasted night after night on television news shows. While Chirac made it to the Elysee Palace (domicile of French presidents) after serving as prime minister, Sarkozy has been happy to leave the tougher job to de Villepin.

Sarkozy basks in the glory of being France’s tough guy. Whenever a riot occurs, he is there within hours, accompanied by the forces of France’s CRS, the tough national police, who don’t resemble any cop you’ve ever met on a beat. He cloaks himself in the colours of the French Republic, insisting that all will be treated equally, but that anyone who runs afoul of the law will receive stern punishment. Last year’s riots that erupted in the Paris suburbs, and spread to other parts of the country, where youths of North African origin feel deeply alienated from the mainstream culture that marginalizes them, made Sarkozy’s message resonate with a very large part of the French population.

Fear of social unrest and violence that wells up from marginalized and poorly understood segments of the population has fueled right-wing politics in many industrialized countries in recent decades. Without this fuel, Sarkozy would never have emerged as the leading candidate of the mainstream right.

Along with law and order, Sarkozy is running on a program the French call economic “liberalism”, which means a more market driven economy, with a reduction in social support for employees. The program is not original. It is a call to greater competitiveness on the backs of wage and salary earners that is the common political currency of the right everywhere in the industrialized world.

Nor is the combination of law and order and economic liberalism----which we in the English-speaking world call neo-conservatism---particularly original. In the very different social context of the United States, that combination has been the bread and butter of the Republican Party since Barry Goldwater won the party’s presidential nomination in 1964.

All political struggles are arguments about how the state should be structured and whom it should serve. The political right in the West marshals those forces that desire a shift in the balance within capitalism that favours capital against labour. The right uses the law and order issue to dress itself in populist garb. The political left tries to make gains for working people when possible. When the tide is running the other way, the left tries to hang onto the ground gained in the past.

In an age when capital can flow anywhere and there is plenty of cheap labour in Asia and other parts of the world, working people in the West are on the defensive. And their position is weakened further when the cry for law and order resonates.

That is why Sarkozy starts his campaign for the presidency from a position of strength. But he is far from unassailable. For one thing, if his political program is supposed to guarantee social peace, why have social tensions grown in France during his watch as Minister of the Interior?

Moreover, Segolene Royal is a formidable candidate. She speaks plainly about the conditions faced by working people, the marginalized in the suburbs and about the problems of an economy in which jobs are being lost in manufacturing almost every week. She talks tough about crime, but also about addressing the social causes of unrest.

The latest public opinion poll puts Segolene Royal and Nicolas Sarkozy dead even, each with fifty per cent support.