Watching the New Democratic Party’s pre-leadership fight recalls those nature documentaries about how prides of lions sort themselves out.
There’s usually that moment when one of the younger lions, after skulking around through two commercial breaks, decides to make his move. He challenges the old alpha male and drives him off, then takes over.
Poor old lion, you think, watching the old boy limp across the savannah. But inside the pride, the other lions scarcely bat an eye. The doddering old fool got exactly what he deserved, they think. Then they go kill an antelope to celebrate.
It must be tough on NDP Leader Adrian Dix and president Moe Sihota right now to be in a vaguely similar position. There’s no single young upstart who is challenging them. It’s more like the whole party is suddenly balking, arguing every move Dix and Sihota want to make.
Even when they try to be open and inclusive and hold a conference call to talk things over — as they did this week — it goes sideways on them. To add insult, the feeling in some quarters is that all of a sudden they are old-guard fogies who need to be shuffled off.
They’ve already agreed to shuffle off themselves. But that doesn’t seem to be good enough. More than a few members have stopped accepting any of their decisions on their way out the door. It’s gotten to the point where even the idea of putting one of their decisions to a vote had to be postponed, because the argument on that conference call got so strident.
The specific point being argued is boring to most people outside the party. It’s whether to hold a leadership convention on May 25, 2014, as Dix recommends, or wait until later.
Nobody but them cares about this. But they care a lot. Partly because the ramifications of each option compound on each other.
If they go early, some federal MPs like Skeena’s Nathan Cullen, might rule themselves out. And the race isn’t exactly off to a furious start. It has been five weeks since Dix announced he was stepping down, and the only news so far is that obvious contender John Horgan isn’t interested in running.
If they go late, they might find some better candidates. But that means treading water for a year or more.
It’s a bit of a paradox that the old guard wants to move quicker than the impatient upstarts do. But if the movement to hold off for a while gains ground, it could easily morph into a movement to not only wait a while, but to wait a while with an interim leader.
Some of them appear bloody-minded enough at this point to dump Dix overboard just because he’s still around. The timing issue is a surrogate argument. What they really want is a chance to lash out at the leadership for blowing the election.
It might seem unlikely to get that far. But then again, it was unlikely that 133 people on the provincial council wouldn’t concur with a decision made by the 36 of them who are on the executive. That’s what happened this week, though.
It amounts to an unpleasant milestone for Sihota and Dix. They made their names two decades ago as aggressive young keeners, ready to take on all comers. Sihota was a charismatic, problematic cabinet minister in the NDP governments of the 1990s, while Dix was a hard-driving aide to Glen Clark as a cabinet minister, and chief of staff when Clark became premier.
On their climbs up the ladder, they stepped on a few toes and had more than their share of spats with members of their own team. They took time outs after the NDP government crashed in 2001, and returned a few years later, Dix as an MLA and eventually leader, Sihota as the paid president of the party.
It looked like a winning combination until May, when they lost a sure thing.
Now the former young Turks are the establishment, and a crowd of impatient younger Turks are eyeing them resentfully.
The circle of life can be a vicious one.
