One of the big temptations in life is to analyze global phenomena in local terms. I've been going on about the decline of the west's big centre-left parties for a few weeks now in large part because I think this is one of those phenomena that we have to look at from the larger perspective.
If I were still a Liberal, the following chart would make me break out in a cold sweat.
That shows the percentage of the popular vote garnered by the Liberal Party in federal elections beginning in 1945 running up to the most recent election this May. I've left out all other parties, who won and so forth so what we can focus on the larger trend and that larger trend is negative. The peaks keep getting a little lower than the last peak and the troughs keep getting deeper; the long term trend is down.
Regardless of who the leader was at any particular moment, no matter which of the various factions within the party was dominant, the Liberal Party of Canada has been getting progressively less popular for more than sixty years now.
A good party leader would look at this and immediately realize that a a return to fundamentals is not what is called for but, rather, would conclude that it's time to rethink those fundamentals. It's not a matter of blame. The accordion was once the most popular musical instrument in the world and then it was supplanted by the guitar. This didn't happen because there was something wrong with the accordion. It happened because the culture around the accordion changed making it a far less desirable instrument. The culture around the Liberal Party and the other formerly great centralizing parties has changed making these parties, as they have existed until now, far less desirable than they used to be.
The good news for these parties is that they are not like a musical instrument. They have the power to redefine themselves to be more in accord with the culture. That, however, is precisely what they are not doing as I will discuss later this morning.
If I were still a Liberal, the following chart would make me break out in a cold sweat.
That shows the percentage of the popular vote garnered by the Liberal Party in federal elections beginning in 1945 running up to the most recent election this May. I've left out all other parties, who won and so forth so what we can focus on the larger trend and that larger trend is negative. The peaks keep getting a little lower than the last peak and the troughs keep getting deeper; the long term trend is down.
Regardless of who the leader was at any particular moment, no matter which of the various factions within the party was dominant, the Liberal Party of Canada has been getting progressively less popular for more than sixty years now.
A good party leader would look at this and immediately realize that a a return to fundamentals is not what is called for but, rather, would conclude that it's time to rethink those fundamentals. It's not a matter of blame. The accordion was once the most popular musical instrument in the world and then it was supplanted by the guitar. This didn't happen because there was something wrong with the accordion. It happened because the culture around the accordion changed making it a far less desirable instrument. The culture around the Liberal Party and the other formerly great centralizing parties has changed making these parties, as they have existed until now, far less desirable than they used to be.
The good news for these parties is that they are not like a musical instrument. They have the power to redefine themselves to be more in accord with the culture. That, however, is precisely what they are not doing as I will discuss later this morning.
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