SpankyMcFarland

With the right leader the NDP might have its major disaster in the rear view mirror. Carney has vacated some of the political space occupied on the left by JT and has created a vacuum to fill. There’s definitely an opportunity there,

The way you put that puts the blame on Canadian voters rather than the Conservative Party. Why not start by assuming the voter is right and tailoring the message to appeal to as many of them as possible on the right and centre of the spectrum? The problem is partly Poilievre. He flirted with some non-moderate ideas like crypto and support for the Convoy and his style has a MAGA flavour. I think he would have serious difficulty uniting Canadians. The Tories have chosen to move to the right and make people like PP the moderates in the party now rather than the likes of Charest. Polievre is considerably to the right of most Canadians.

There are acquaintances who specialize in telling us when we’ve lost weight and others who prefer to tell us when we’ve put it on. Both have their value. Poilievre has been getting feedback from across the political spectrum about his abrasive style and confrontational tactics that are poorly suited to the grave national crisis we face. He seems determined to ignore such counsel and may yet face the consequences of such obstinacy.

Listening to David Mencer today on the new barrier in the West Bank. He was basically allowed to dodge all questions about compensation for Arab homeowners and farmers who will lose their land. If they don’t get fair compensation then that is stealing, pure and simple.

That’s a complicated matter. Both Palestinian Arabs and Ashkenazi Jews are partially of Canaanite ancestry. The Arabs, more accurately Arab language speakers, also have some ancestry from peninsular Arabia and elsewhere while the Jews who came from Europe have European ancestry, especially on the female side. What’s clear is that the ethno-religious makeup of the territory changed dramatically under late Ottoman and then British rule, with significant immigration from Europe that the Arabs generally opposed and also some influx from neighbouring Arab lands. The big difference with North America is that the existing population here was ultimately given full rights of citizenship, including suffrage. In Canada, many First Nations and Inuit have also negotiated land claims where they exercise significant rights over their ancestral territory. In fairness, we had the luxury of space and the indigenous population was small. The previous populations - hunter gatherers, Neolithic farmers, Yamnaya, Celts, Saxons, Danes, Norman French, Huguenots etc. - still live there to at least some extent but they have all integrated. https://www.theguardian.com/science/2018/feb/09/hes-one-of-us-modern-neighbours-welcome-cheddar-man What I find odd is how somebody in Newfoundland or New Mexico can cheer on the accurate claim of some Jewish ancestry in Israel going back thousands of years without reflecting on what that does to the legitimacy of the claim they have to this continent.

Likud came up with this all the way back in 1977. They are making it more than a slogan, though. https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/original-party-platform-of-the-likud-party There is another side to the coin about Irish support for Palestine - Northern Irish Protestant support for Israel. In recent decades, Israel and Palestine have become a proxy conflict for the Irish, a bit like the rivalry between Glasgow Rangers and Celtic. The Northern Protestants tend to see themselves as biblical settlers sent by God and the Catholics as Palestinians fighting to save their land from the invader. https://sluggerotoole.com/2024/04/15/why-unionists-tend-to-support-israel/ Coverage of evictions in the West Bank strike a deep chord in Ireland and recall similar events over the centuries of British occupation. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2025/dec/13/new-israeli-barrier-slice-through-precious-west-bank-farmland

It’s a five families type of idea, a mafia to run the world. What else would you expect? However, Trump looks like he is going to have his hands full at home for a while.

Serious tensions are fairly recent. Some historical background. The Jewish community in Ireland has always been small, grew after the Russian pogroms, especially from Lithuania, and peaked at around 5,500. Despite the bizarre allegations about Jews in Catholic school textbooks and the usual tropes highlighted by James Joyce in Ulysses, often directed against German Jews in particular, violent anti-Semitism never really got off the ground in contrast to the recurring violence between Christians there. One has to search hard for examples of deadly sectarian attacks. For example, in 1923, just after the Irish civil war, two Jewish men were shot dead in Dublin under circumstances that suggested a sectarian motive. The Dáil is the House of Commons equivalent. O’Higgins himself was later assassinated by the IRA. Nobody was caught but ten years later a government minister made the following allegations in a parliamentary debate: The Blueshirts were Ireland’s milder version of a fascist movement. They were associated with the right-wing parties that became Fine Gael. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blueshirts Jews tended to join the left-wing parties, including the largest one, Fianna Fáil. That’s about as bad as it got in terms of deadly violence and one can see from the coverage that the response to these murders was not favourable. More serious was Ireland’s failure to admit Jewish refugees from Europe after 1933.

You are welcome to try and change our system if you don’t like it.

I hope what should be clear from my posts is that I am ambivalent about floor crossings. My opinion on them hasn’t changed because the Liberals are in power at the moment. I believe they are a necessary evil, a somewhat unsavoury process whereby accountability by a party and its leader is preserved. No party can afford to take the support of its MPs for granted.

That viewpoint puts loyalty to the party above all other considerations but MPs are not party functionaries who have to unquestioningly follow the party line. It’s not our system, not yet anyway, thank goodness. The more I see of politics, the more I admire politicians and what they have to go through these days. Thank God somebody still wants to do it.

In our system no MP’s allegiance to a party is absolute, nor should it be. Floor crossings are a verdict of sorts on a party and its leader.

Maybe. We are also in an unprecedented national crisis where the last thing we need is a government that can’t get its legislation through and govern effectively. To be fair to Mr. Ma, this could also be affecting his thinking. Yes. In fairness, I wouldn’t fault any party leader for a visceral response immediately after such an event. It’s a shock.

We are in a bitter trade war started by our closest ally. That means the job description of the leader of the Official Opposition has changed. The harshest words should be reserved for a foreign country that has betrayed our friendship and is threatening to destroy our vital industries. At such a perilous moment, criticism of our government should look reluctant and reflective, not reflexive on every issue. There’ll be lots of time for old-style partisan fighting down the road but not now. Poilievre has failed to take this very basic point on board. He seems unable to even change his tone. Ironically, doing the right thing might improve his own favourability numbers with Canadians.

I would prefer to see it on a specific major issue, perhaps one of conscience. Of course, there are big public smiles for a floor crosser from the team getting bigger but the trustworthiness of such a person would have to be questioned.

I don’t believe Trump is somehow going to make tariffs increase net jobs in the US. He should have been listening a little more closely when he attended business school. Needless to say, jobs overall may increase down there for many other reasons but not because of tariffs.

This is our system of government. We elect MPs, not parties. How they organize is their business.

Bad news for Poilievre, to state the obvious. He seems unable to adapt to the new conditions that have followed the arrival of asteroid Trump.

That may be true on a particular policy right now but the spectrum of possible policies between the two parties is quite different. At the moment things are looking good for them. However, we live in very uncertain times. Trump is a strategic threat to our country. Hostility to him is entirely reasonable for Canadians. In fact I’m suspicious of any Canadian who still sings his praises. And his record of corruption already makes anything in Canada look trivial by comparison.

His tariff taxes will not result in more jobs for Americans. Eventually, even many of his own supporters will figure that out. It’s a ridiculous idea.

Voting against it shows they want to stay in government.

At the moment the MAGA faithful seem confused, unsure of whom to blame for the many policy missteps. They’re like Russian serfs mumbling, “if only the Tsar knew”, as they try to make sense of events, looking for scapegoats other than the cult leader. Some of them will see the light eventually. Mad Marge is an example of that.

Nice little tribute to departing ambassador Kirsten Hillman by Tory trade critic Adam Chambers. Just a few words but struck the right note.

In 1940, Clement Attlee joined Winston Churchill’s wartime government despite their profound political differences and served under him right through the war before winning by a landslide in the 1945 election. That’s the sort of patience every politician could learn from.

Carney has moved to the right, creating political space on the left for the NDP, Greens and BQ to fill if they can. Poilievre would be better off avoiding games in parliament that make him look unserious if noticed at all and letting the tensions in the Liberal party play out. Furthermore, he needs to rebuild his credibility as a mature politician worthy of running the country. Like resilience, restraint, and energy, patience is one of those vital political virtues that are less talked about but no less important. The PM has very little political experience and will make lots of mistakes. There’s no need to manufacture controversy.