Sure they shifted right but they are not right of centre.

I actually agree with a lot of what you’re saying, except perhaps what is considered center. I absolutely agree we could use a more left-leaning party, whether that is the NDP or a new party, but more importantly, we need a system that allows more than two parties to consistently have a meaningful impact in government.

I don’t necessarily think this new party, or the new NDP, should be as left-leaning as you do, but that also wouldn’t matter as much if we didn’t have the lack of representation that parties with less but still notable support receive in our current system.

Agree to disagree. Maybe not right of the centre in the US, and maybe not right of centre in Germany these days, or right of centre in the UK. But right of where centre should be, and used to be in many different countries. Our whole political system needs a kick to the left and push centre back from it’s constant rightward creep. I mean, the US is collapsing into fascism and our own Conservative party have been mimicking a lot of their actions. Liberals keep moving to the right and now overlap what used to be Progressive Conservative territory, and the NDP keep trying to water down their policies to draw Liberal voters without going too far. Centre has shifted, so maybe the NDP is left of what centre has become in our current political landscape, but is right of where centre used to be. And there’s a whole heck of a lot of room between the NDP now and full-blown Leninist bullshit. I think more people should reflect of what ‘centre’ has become, and that a little bit of socialism is NOT communism. The US just keeps spewing everywhere, all over our media, that socialists are commies, and commies are bad.

In Chile, for example, they wouldn’t view the NDP as being as being particularly left of centre if at all. Their current government with Boric is quite a bit left of the NDP, and their pre-US-fucking-everything-up government was even more left. Relatively, the NDP is a pretty firmly centre party that has been selling out to more and more ‘free market solutions’ and bandaid fixes rather than being a socialist party. None of the Chileans I know in Canada consider the NDP to be a left of centre party, and my friends feel totally unrepresented by any of the parties because none of them are really left-of-centre.

I think I may be a bit more extreme in my examples to try and highlight the point. And I agree to disagree on the centre. My wife is Chilean, and their current government is quite a bit left of the NDP and she would totally consider the NDP to be even more right of centre than I do. But that doesn’t really matter. I think somewhere in that left of centre bubble there is a good place to be found.

And I agree with you that we need more parties. And a new electoral system, maybe a mixed-member proportional system or something that retains some geographic representation. Ideally I think minority governance is where it’s at. We can’t and shouldn’t all have the same ideas, and nobody should be able to just force through legislation with a majority. The whole point of that with some brainstorming we can make something better together that generally works for everyone, although some people can never be pleased.

Fixing the electoral system and having another left-of-centre party don’t have to be mutually exclusive. I’d like to see both. And maybe a few more parties that represent other peoples perspectives so that we can do away with majority governments and let parties work together and make compromises to govern instead of the constant political ping-pong of majority governments undoing everything of the previous government and the constant negativity and attacks and tantrums. And I’m talking about a moderate, democratic, socialist party. Not some authoritarian communist party.

They sure seem to be trying to be; hopefully new leadership brings them back to their roots as a labour party

I don’t support forcing our values onto other countries, at least to a certain extent. The NDP definitely lost its way under Singh and became blinkered by identity politics. But I have hope that they can be rejuvenated with a strong economic populist and leftist message for the next election.

Poilievre would increase GST so poor pay taxes. That was the whole point of Mulroney’s GST.

They aren’t an independent party at all.

If you support a one state solution I think you’re highly immoral. Sounds like you do want a one state solution.

If you don’t want a one state solution you are immoral because a two state solution would be mass deportation from both sides