From Watching the Green Party Contest.

As I started writing this I had just turned off the TV from the Green party leadership virtual convention. I would rather not have to hear the grovelling concession speeches.

So the Green party establishment’s hand picked candidate won. It was close. It is questionable whether a real “green socialist” candidate would have been able to effectively move the party in a good direction.

This sounds like I am a Dmitri Lascaris, Maryam Haddad, and Amitie Kuttner supporter. Those were my own first, second, and third rankings. I am a Lascaris fan; us baldies have to stick together.

If The Greens cannot be moved in a leftward direction, there is not much point to that party. I think the public is starting to figure that out. I hope none of the above mentioned favourites of mine think that the NDP could be an alternative.

Party Down

There is a lot to say here about the realities of party politics in Canada under our single member plurality voting system and in these times of the collapse of the neoliberal order. The gist of it is that parliaments and electoral politics is becoming increasingly irrelevant. Going to a proportional representation system is not going to solve the problem; it has gotten way beyond that.

The fact is, representational democracy, whatever voting system is used, is not really democracy, it is a plan for an oligarchy. All the political parties we have in Canada are the voices of a faction of the ruling…