A new suggestion

Andrew Potter's take on the name-changing debate within the NDP is definitely worth a read as one of the better arguments I've seen on the side of keeping the name as is:

What the left in Canada should be trying to do is secure their base and push it out, not sacrifice it in the name of centrism.

Which is why the last thing they should do is drop the "New" from their name. The "New" in the name isn't a statement of the party's origins, like "New Coke." It's a promise that offers the ongoing hope of political change, social progress and institutional renewal. This is the very core of the NDP's brand identity, and far from giving it up, they should make it the activating ideal of their platform and messaging.

The party actually took a step in this direction during the last election, with their "New Strong" ad campaign. It was easily the best set of ads from any of the major parties, and it did a very good job of repositioning their policy negatives (anti-Americanism, anti-corporation) as strength. If I were in charge of the NDP's new brand strategy, I would put the promise of New at the very centre: New Environmentalism. New Economy. New Sovereignty. The New Democrats.

Of course, Potter's suggestion doesn't exactly break new ground, as similar messages have been used to good effect. But it's certainly worth wondering whether an all-out emphasis on "new" as part of the NDP's message might do more to help the party than eliminating the term.

Mind you, there's one major risk involved in that strategy on its own: the more the NDP relies on "new" as part of its message in a single election campaign, the more public fatigue may develop with the term as part of the party's brand.

But fortunately, the party may have an ideal opportunity for a litmus test as to whether the term has run its course.

After all, the resolutions before this weekend's convention will include an option to send the name issue for study as well as one to make the change immediately.

Obviously if the party sees value in keeping the "new" it won't want to go with an immediate switch. But might it make sense to support the deferral option as a compromise at the convention, then get as much mileage out of a "new" message as possible in the next election campaign to produce a fresh batch of information as to the impact the term is currently having on the NDP's brand?

(Edit: fixed formatting.)

Light blogging ahead

Apparently there's some kind of event going on this weekend, and yours truly departs tomorrow to leave some time to explore Nova Scotia. Expect updates once the convention starts, but light if any posting in the meantime.

Deep thought

Maybe Bruce Campion-Smith has a point that the NDP should assume it will be referred to by a two-letter acronym. Just think how the many Canadians are already confused into thinking that elections consist of a choice between a wire service and a vinyl record.

On policy discussions

Following up on yesterday's post about Andrew Steele's misplaced attempts to smear the NDP, let's take the opportunity to point out one of the most interesting aspects of the Halifax convention that seems to have slipped below the radar so far. While Steele wrongly criticizes the NDP for not planning to discuss policy, the reality is that the party has in fact put together a policy book (warning: PDF) which will form the basis for the resolutions to be debated at the convention. So rather than merely debating freestanding topics (as the Libs are apparently continuing to do), the NDP will in fact be carrying on a more thorough policy discussion based on fitting specific resolutions into a full set of governing principles.

Of course, we're still waiting on word as to what resolutions will be addressed at the convention, and there will almost certainly be areas where there's some lively dispute as to how the current policy book should be changed. But it's surely a point in its favour that the NDP (unlike Steele's party of choice) is actually willing to make its principles public for discussion and debate. And as a reward, the NDP will come out of the convention with the framework of a full platform to show for it.

On separation

The NDP's upcoming convention is starting to get plenty of mainstream coverage. But while most of the reporting about a party name change and election readiness sounds familiar, there does appear to be one new development in the topics up for discussion:

In related resolutions, delegates will be asked whether to separate the NDP's provincial and federal memberships, which total about 70,000.

"As the caucus gets larger, as we build our infrastructure and get our party into more of a breakthrough mode, these issues are taking on a greater significance," says NDP national director Brad Lavigne.

Now, I'll be curious to see what rationale there is for splitting off provincial and federal memberships. But for now, I'd have to be skeptical of the proposal.

After all, a common membership list effectively allows the two levels of NDP organization to complement each other: where one recruits a new member, the other both benefits from the new arrival within the party, and can avoid putting its own resources into pursuing the same individual. In contrast, a membership split would seem to me to require each level of the party to go through its own registration process for each individual member - creating double the workload just to administer the current level of membership even if the numbers stay the same.

So even leaving aside the question of whether a split membership process would make it more difficult to share information or otherwise coordinate between the federal and provincial wings, there would seem to be an obvious cost to the plan.

Meanwhile, the apparent benefit of splitting the two types of membership would be the potential to add new members at one level of government who prefer not to be affiliated at the other. But it's hard to see how the federal party would stand to gain much on that front either.

Of the provinces where there's any arguable gap in political orientation between the NDP's federal and provincial wings, it's uniformly the provincial wing which has expanded its reach somewhat further toward the political centre than the federal wing. Which means that by separating the lists, the federal NDP would seem to be undercutting its own apparent efforts to work with an expanded base of potential support. Yet it's not clear that the provincial wings would seem to benefit much from a split either, as the dual membership requirement may well keep more activists inside the party's tent than would be the case otherwise.

Mind you, there's an important exception to the rule in Quebec, where one can make the case that there might be a wave of potential recruits into the federal NDP who wouldn't want to bind themselves to any provincial party in the process. Indeed, I'm not sure for the moment how the dual membership requirement even applies in a province where the NDP doesn't run candidates provincially.

That said, it would seem to make more sense to establish an exception for provinces where there isn't a substantial NDP presence at the provincial level than to make a change which would radically overhaul the party's membership structure across the country. And hopefully the convention will agree that the last thing that either the federal or provincial wings should want to do is to limit the NDP's cooperation and party unity across jurisdictional divides.

Speaking of the NDP Convention...

For those looking for the latest unofficial news on the NDP's convention in Halifax this summer, keep an eye on Devin's blog for details about the Tweet Up planned for the Saturday night, as well as a Twitter feed about the convention.