Wednesday, January 04, 2012

Travaillons ensemble

Following up on this post, I'll expand briefly on what looks to be one of the more interesting questions for the balance of the NDP's leadership race.

I've pointed out before that one of the subtle advantages of having a leadership race immediately after ascending to Official Opposition status is that the NDP isn't facing some of the job scarcity issues that might apply in a party with more entrenched power structures.

To the best of my knowledge, the NDP hasn't yet fully staffed its parliamentary offices under a permanent leader, nor has it come anywhere close to tapping into the full fund-raising potential for an official opposition party. And so it should be possible for a new leader building the party's future organization to add together the components of various leadership campaigns along with the NDP's existing organizational base.

That is, as long as there's a mutual willingness to work together. Which means that it may be worth asking both the leadership candidates and their supporters: what strengths do are they willing to acknowledge even in the candidates they're currently opposing? And what's their strategy to get all sides to join forces again at the end of the leadership campaign (not to mention on general party priorities in the meantime)?

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