Doug Dynasty: Season 2 coming soon

Are you ready for another Doug Ford majority?

The static polls during this Ontario election mirror those of the federal election. In fact, there was more movement in the federal election with Paul's sabotage of the Greens and the gains of the People's Party.

This puts Ford's current success into perspective. Unlike the 350,000 Ontarians rallying behind the federal PPC in September 2021, no single leader or leadership team has been able to unify the dissident right. It's now split into three parties: the New Blue Party, the Ontario Party, and the PPC-linked Populist Party (formerly Ontario First).

Ford has also successfully mollified these dissidents with his demagogic appeals and class policies such as the license plate rebate in March, writing off a billion dollars in "accidental" payments to small businesses, and full-scale retreat from public health measures, notably mask mandates in workplaces.

Having neutralized the threat on his right, Ford has courted labour and made gains. Through the diligent efforts of Labour Minister Monte McNaughton, son of a successful regional business owner (the big fish in the small pond), the PCs have made inroads with some unions in the construction sector where sections of Ford's real business powerbase is located. Last fall, Ford even got the now-disgraced Jerry Dias and now-retired Smokey Thomas to join him at a press conference to talk up pathetic crumbs thrown to workers. Dias and Thomas are the leaders of unions who fought bloody strikes against the Harris government. Twenty-five years later and they're playing footsy with Ford.

Ford's success with labour stands in stark contrast to Erin O'Toole, also the son of a Mike Harris backbencher. O'Toole's appeal to labour fell flat on its face. He hadn't laid the groundwork like McNaughton did, and the proof was clear enough. It's not like he was any less duplicitous. Ford, like O'Toole, rolled out Uber's gig worker plans like the class warriors they are. But O'Toole fell victim to the Conservative caucus allies of the Freedom Convoy. O'Toole being turfed by caucus was a massive victory for emerging fascist forces in the country.

Ford presides over a much more coherent and effective political machine than O'Toole. Ford has proven himself a political scrapper who can marry demagogic appeals to the voter base while delivering for his power base.

O'Toole famously tacked hard right to win the support of social conservatives and deliver him the Conservative Party leadership, but within a few months he snubbed Sloan's entry to the shadow cabinet, and then displayed a little too much anti-fascism by expelling Sloan for accepting a donation from fascist Paul Fromm. By the spring of 2021, O'Toole reversed the party's position on carbon taxes and lectured the Conservative membership on accepting the hated Trudeau policy.

O'Toole really only had to be better than Andrew Scheer and he failed miserably. By contrast, Ford shocked the province twice in a few short months, going from the asshole brother of the dead Rob Ford, to PC Party leader to Premier of Ontario.

Once dismissed as a buffoon and populist who couldn't handle being criticized, Ford's easiest job as Premier has been fending off the hapless NDP and untrusted Liberals. Perhaps most incredibly, Ford was allowed to ride out a shockingly large number of labour-related controversies during the pandemic that ought to have alarmed and activated the unions in ways unseen since the Harris years. Instead "organized" labour sat on its hands.

The union leadership did almost nothing during the pandemic, proving its general cowardice, political incompetence, and absence of an organized membership base. Meanwhile, labour's militant minority is almost entirely unorganized and in such circumstances it is entirely dependent on the leadership providing direction for movement. Again, nothing happened.

We are entering a second year of rising private sector strikes in Ontario, especially now that inflation is climbing steadily. Yet, these strikes and the inflation cut to wages is entirely divorced from the election campaigns on offer. No party is talking about the strikes or inflation cutting wages. Nor is there any union strategy beyond collective bargaining. Most unions have contracted out politics to the establishment parties. The results have been disastrous ever since the OFL's Power of Many program corralled and demobilized good-willed trade unionists in the spring of 2019.

Is it any wonder the fragmented, weak and aimless House of Labour is incapable of fending off Ford's incursions, picking off some small but some significant unions over the past few years?

And so we find ourselves headed towards a second Doug Ford majority. Hopefully enough of us have recovered from the shock of this colossal, unspoken political defeat of the past two years, and are already busy laying the foundations for a new labour movement that can begin to take on our local business class in order to train for taking on the provincial elite.

We'll have our work cut out for us. Andrea Horwath is facing the end of her career with this fourth pathetic performance. A fight for the leadership of the party may result in some kind of left-wing challenge, but it will once again be a challenge that can't muster up a sliver of the Waffle's power in the early 70s. A hefty number leftists inside and outside the NDP have yet to get the memo on the Waffle's fate. Another left challenge inside the NDP during Ford's second term would be another setback and waste of precious time when priorities lie with an independent effort to rebuild a new left inside and outside labour.

Meanwhile, Del Duca faces dim prospects on numerous fronts despite the likelihood of the Liberals recapturing Official Opposition from the NDP. Del Dookie doesn't even have a seat right now. He got rinsed in 2018 by a PC challenger, and his prospects of winning this time are not considered good. He's also still carrying his rotten ministerial baggage from the last Liberal government. It is reasonable to assume Del Duca's efforts are a sacrifice to position the Liberals to win in 2026, not 2022: reclaim Official Opposition status from the NDP, regain voters lost to the NDP, and find a new leader who doesn't look like a weirdo and is not part of the McGuinty/Wynne legacy.

In short, we face the prospect of fighting a second Ford majority with the two main opposition parties out of commission because they're in the throes of a leadership race (or crisis). Voters may even turn to the Greens as an untested progressive-liberal alternative to a second Ford majority.

The necessity of an extra-parliamentary labour-community opposition cannot be overstated. Neither can the necessity of breaking with the narrow electoral strategies of the existing establishment parties.