2012 NDP leadership convention

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Just for the record (which means that there's no need for anyone to actually respond to this post), the Boardbashi has no problems with this thread, given that Layton set the ball rolling with his last letter.

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Not the Brian Topp that fans of Spaced would be familiar with, amirite?

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and sharing the name of a British sitcom character.

In fairness, it was a very good sitcom and that character was one of its (many) highlights.

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Who said the woman had to be viable? There are surely Canadian equivalents of Diane Abbott out there.

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Are figures published for party membership in Canada?

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I suppose the plan was to have been a little more complex than watercolours?

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That was a reference to Brian Topp, rather than Brian Topp.

I should seriously stop doing this.

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Far too early for such things to matter all that much, I think.

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Greatly expanding membership in Quebec would also be a good way of putting down roots there. Which is essential.

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Any chance of them being released by riding?

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Eh, people at the top of political parties never get on. There are always factions of some sort or other; it isn't even necessarily a bad thing.

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The first one, obviously.

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I am bewildered at exactly why so many have endorsed Topp and why he's become the 'frontrunner.'

He's a powerful Party insider. The NDP, both federally and some provincial branches, have gone with such people before (David Lewis would be one example).

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Only 1600/90000 NDP members are Quebecers. The math definitely isn't working for him right now.

To the photocopier!

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Eh, they were more than fine with it when articulated by Layton in the Spring.

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Nystrom backing a Quebecer is interesting from a historical perspective, to say the least.

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Nystrom backing a Quebecer is interesting from a historical perspective, to say the least.

Care to say more?
I don't really know Nystrom, I'm too young and the coverage of NDP in Quebec before Layton was inexistant.

I probably phrased that in the wrong way; I don't mean 'interesting' as 'surprising' but just as 'interesting'. Nystrom was heavily involved in political debates over constitutional issues in the 80s and 90s. I think, though may be misremembering, that he was always opposed to the cruder forms of federalism.

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I assume you mean Trudeauvian centralism.

Indeed. I wrote 'cruder' because, intellectually, there's nothing there...

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This particular digression is weird given that Layton in 2011 ran on a distinctly less radical platform that Blair did in 1997. The NDP don't need to play a game of endless 'moderation' as they are very moderate already (as was pretty always their wont until the 1990s).

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There was always a similar crowd here, of course. Very early period Blair.

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If anything the clever thing for him to do would be the opposite. Right now he seems to be making similar errors to David Miliband last year.

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He's on the Left generally (obviously) but also (and obviously) on the Right of the NDP.

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Politicians often think it's a good idea to raise their profile. But we knew that she was very ambitious anyway.

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Is it okay if we all mutually agree to never mention 308 on this board? I think that would be good for everyone

It could be made A Rule, I suppose.