Können Marit Stiles Ontarios gleitende neue Demokraten retten? – thestar.com
https://www.thestar.com/politics/provincial/can-marit-stiles-save-ontarios-sliding-new-democrats/article_96c418ef-af59-4fa6-bf62-b8830ef3254e.html
Können Marit Stiles Ontarios gleitende neue Demokraten retten? – thestar.com
https://www.thestar.com/politics/provincial/can-marit-stiles-save-ontarios-sliding-new-democrats/article_96c418ef-af59-4fa6-bf62-b8830ef3254e.html
7 Kommentare
No and it doesn’t look like anyone else can. When only one person enters a leadership race for a party it’s pretty damn sad.
The Ontario NDP’s biggest problem is that they are still seen by many as too radical. If they took a page from their counterparts in Western Canada, I think they would perform better. There were plenty of qualified people who could have run for the leadership alongside Marit Stiles, but as I see it, the party faces two major obstacles.
The first is Doug Ford. It is hard to go up against someone who changes with the wind. He is not rooted in any clear ideology, which makes it difficult to build a consistent challenge against him.
The second obstacle is the NDP itself. There were individuals who could have, and likely would have, put their names forward for the leadership but chose not to, largely because they did not check the right boxes. That kind of environment discourages good people from stepping up and limits the party’s ability to grow.
If the NDP wants to be taken seriously, they need to find their footing in the political centre. They also need to start acting like the official opposition, because if they do not, the average Ontarian is not going to see them that way. In Ontario, the NDP always seems to play second fiddle to the Liberals, even when they hold more seats.
As long as the Ontario Liberals continue to have:
1. A leader no one likes
2. An inability to raise money
Then ONDP still has hope.
I don’t think Stiles can fix that the political landscape in Ontario simply isn’t in their favour. The Tories under Ford are a big tent party so the OLP and ONDP are mostly after the same voters.
It’s also not clear how they could merge since one party has more seats but the other gets more votes.
There is a strategic clarity desperately needed on the left in Ontario.
The NDP clinging to moral victories while the Conservatives steamroll with 38% of the vote isn’t noble — it’s negligent. If we actually care about progressive outcomes (healthcare, education, climate action, housing), then basic vote math should be our North Star. Instead, we get turf wars over whose shade of orange or green is more righteous, while Doug Ford sells off public assets like it’s a garage sale.
The progressive vote split isn’t just unfortunate — it’s self-inflicted. The Conservatives aren’t winning because they’re popular. They’re winning because the left is too proud to collaborate.
A merger, alliance, or even a riding-level pact between the NDP, Liberals, and Greens could stop this nonsense cold. But that would take real leadership and a willingness to put policy ahead of party — something that’s been in short supply for a while now.
So yeah. Either get serious about power, or stop pretending we’re e fighting for change. Because the right sure as hell is.
The NDP in Ontario are in a tough spot.
Just look at their platform last election – 16 items. Hard to sell a vision to people if you aren’t focused. Doug Ford’s party basically limited their ‚platform‘ to a postcard sized amount. The NDP need to accept they have to simplify their approach.
Another thing – Leadership: Getting out there is one thing … being able to sell the leader to the public is another. That’s one thing Andrea was able to really well in 2018 then lost her footing in 2022 … selling herself as a leader. Stiles seems to not be able to sell herself widely to the public especially in core areas like social media.
They are dealing with the fact that the non-PC vote is divided among 2 other major parties. That just doesn’t work at the provincial level. Pretty much every other province (other than Quebec which is weird and cycles parties in and out of relevance) is a 2 party structure at this point. You have the right of center (UCP, BCCP, PC, Sask, etc.) and then typically have either the Liberals OR the NDP as the center/left center party.
Ontario has the problem that they have both the Liberals and NDP splitting the non-PC vote, and anywhere where that happens (see also for example Nova Scotia), it just results in the PCs winning massive majorities, often with sub-40% of the popular vote.
The answer is that they either need to merge or conduct a hostile takeover of the OLP. Until that happens, the PCs are your natural governing party.