If Jane Austen was writing today in Vancouver, she might open up her post-election column with the line It is a truth universally acknowledged that a man in possession of a Che Guevara T-shirt can single handedly doom a long established local party. In doing so, she would be joining an almost universal chorus from defeated COPE candidates and mainstream pundits. They all agree that the defeats experienced by COPE can be blamed on Tim Louis, that feisty lawyer, city council veteran and grassroots advocate.
He was too radical, they suggest, unwilling to support the realistic strategy that saw COPE co-operate with the Vision campaign, and just not cuddly enough.
It was Louis and Louis alone, according to this consensus, who kept David Cadman from being nominated by COPE and thus drove voters away from the 40-year-old civic party. (In point of fact, it was COPE establishment favorite R.J. Aquino who defeated a notably lethargic Cadman nomination run, not Louis.) Cadman, who has a long and honorable history of public service in this city, has not added any lustre to his otherwise admirable record by endorsing this implausible account.
It really wasnt all about you, David. And it really wasnt all about Tim, either. While the anti-Louis narrative has been repeated so often that it passes in many quarters for common sense, it is in fact altogether unpersuasive.
Louis did not kill COPE, and the sooner that COPE survivors give up on demonizing Louis, the sooner they can get on with the difficult task of analyzing what really led to their defeat. A failure to do so would be a loss not only for COPE, but a loss for the city. Demonizing Tim Louis will only delay or perhaps prevent altogether a necessary process of renewal at COPE, and without a revitalized COPE, the political life of Â鶹´«Ã½Ó³»will be much diminished.
So, if we are not entirely persuaded by the anti-Louis narrative, how are we to understand COPEs dismayingly poor results in the last election? Here are a few thoughts.
Maybe the trouble started in 2002, when COPE decided to ally with celebrity candidate Larry Campbell, a decision that led to a sweeping (but in the end Pyrrhic) victory. Soon enough, according to reliable sources at city hall, the irascible Campbell unleashed a barrage of behind the scenes bullying against the few COPE councillors who resisted his demands that developer and gambling interests trump COPEs policy commitments. Campbell led the more compliant and centrist COPE councillors out of the party and founded Vision, a clear (and currently very successful) attempt to create a middle of the road party with some social and environmental ornamentation on a sturdy pro-developer framework. So maybe Campbell killed COPE.
When organized labour and influential members of the NDP combined to pressure a decimated COPE into a tactical alliance with Vision for the last two civic elections, the groundwork for the recent COPE defeat was laid. Forbidden by the terms of the deal with Vision from running a full slate of candidates, and silenced by a deal that required COPE candidates not criticize Visions less savoury policies, COPE was largely ignored by the mainstream media, and when mentioned at all was almost universally and derisively identified as Visions junior partner. So maybe organized labour, NDP heavies, a majority of COPE members and the mainstream media killed COPE.
The arguments that persuaded many within COPE that a tactical alliance with Vision was the only way to prevent splitting the left and allowing a NPA victory seemed compelling to many at the time, but the results of the last two elections are decisive. If COPE remains as Visions junior partner and fails to run full slates and define its own distinct policy positions, it is doomed to irrelevance and the NPA will nevertheless continue to exist, and both of those outcomes would be unfortunate.
Just dont blame it on Tim Louis.
