Pierre Poilievre’s popularity has taken a significant hit in the weeks since Parliament returned from the summer break, according to the latest Abacus Data polling.
I am not sure Layton would be as good as people suspect: there’s a big “die a hero or live long enough to become the villian” about his possible legacy.
He was a pretty good politician, and had a lot of charisma, but he was also responsible for toppling the Martin government despite knowing it would give us Harper. I wasn’t the biggest Martin fan, but we were really close to some real improvements under Martin, and instead of leveraging that, Layton rolled the dice and the result was a lost decade for progressivism.
If I had my choice of recent NDP leadership possibles, post-Layton, I’d have opted for Charlie Angus.
Fair enough. But despite any possible repercussions, the play was to make the NDP a much bigger player than it had ever been, and he succeeded; under him, the NDP became the official opposition for the first time in it’s history. If Layton were still around, and the NDP perhaps managed to retain the official opposition status, Canadian politics would have been forever changed. Instead we quickly reverted back to the Liberal/Conservative swap game every few election cycles.
I think regardless of the ultimate legacy of Layton, the status quo would have been shaken up. And at this point, any change is better than two entrenched and old political parties essentially power sharing every few years.
I think the reason the federal Liberals even ran with Trudeau–instead of another technocrat like Ignatieff–is that the NDP under Layton scared them shitless. They were, for the first time in their history, looking down the tubes at irrelevancy. If the NDP got traction, they (the Liberals) would stop being the default ABC choice.
Especially the NDP inroads in Quebec. That was scary.
They’d already seen this happen in Alberta, and it was well under way in other provinces. They needed Trudeau or someone like him to shine them up, or they’d be gone by the next cycle.
I am not sure Layton would be as good as people suspect: there’s a big “die a hero or live long enough to become the villian” about his possible legacy.
He was a pretty good politician, and had a lot of charisma, but he was also responsible for toppling the Martin government despite knowing it would give us Harper. I wasn’t the biggest Martin fan, but we were really close to some real improvements under Martin, and instead of leveraging that, Layton rolled the dice and the result was a lost decade for progressivism.
If I had my choice of recent NDP leadership possibles, post-Layton, I’d have opted for Charlie Angus.
Fair enough. But despite any possible repercussions, the play was to make the NDP a much bigger player than it had ever been, and he succeeded; under him, the NDP became the official opposition for the first time in it’s history. If Layton were still around, and the NDP perhaps managed to retain the official opposition status, Canadian politics would have been forever changed. Instead we quickly reverted back to the Liberal/Conservative swap game every few election cycles.
I think regardless of the ultimate legacy of Layton, the status quo would have been shaken up. And at this point, any change is better than two entrenched and old political parties essentially power sharing every few years.
True.
I think the reason the federal Liberals even ran with Trudeau–instead of another technocrat like Ignatieff–is that the NDP under Layton scared them shitless. They were, for the first time in their history, looking down the tubes at irrelevancy. If the NDP got traction, they (the Liberals) would stop being the default ABC choice.
Especially the NDP inroads in Quebec. That was scary.
They’d already seen this happen in Alberta, and it was well under way in other provinces. They needed Trudeau or someone like him to shine them up, or they’d be gone by the next cycle.
I just like they everyone is NDO we’ll ruin the country. Like the other two are not doing that.