53. Election time 1997: The new and “updated thinking”

Unpublished
7 May 1997

Re Jeffrey Simpson’s column: There’s little new about the New Democrats’ philosophy (May 7):
On the evening of the recent British election, Lord Jeffrey Archer, past champion and member of the Thatcher and Major governments was asked by a TV journalist to identify the main historical achievements of the British conservative revolution. Candidly, Archer claimed two successes: one being the political decimation of the union movement, the second being the forcing of the Labour Party to re-organise itself around conservative principles.
In seeking novelty, Mr. Simpson ignores the “New” Democratic Party’s move to a ‘pluralism’ long before the British Labour Party, or, that “New” Labour as a new government is supporting a EU Social Chapter on worker rights.
In fact the NDP and the left regularly engage in fresh compromises without losing their ability to imagine a social democracy. Not so the Canadian class of the fiscally-conservative-but-socially-progressive with their so-called “updated thinking”. Conservatives and liberals alike have spent the last thirteen years visibly and audibly struggling and tripping over the most basic hurdles of cultural diversity, equity and social justice at home and abroad.
What is newly available for Mr. Simpson’s Viewmaster ™ is a portrait of the many Canadians — including those without job pension funds and RRSPs not directly owning stock in corporations — unwilling in the next five years to trust politicians or pundits to the right of the NDP with the task of computing anything beyond simply cutting deficits.