Note: The third installment of a veteran dissident's analysis of the Langford Now challenge to a multi-decade pro-business occupation of Langford City Hall. These are being published for the purpose of informing and stoking a new perspective and understanding of left-wing municipal strategy.
In my third Langford Democracy Forum post, I share my own Leftie view of the main political features of the campaign with a week to go until E-Day. My specific perspective is based on my outsider observations of the campaign and is influenced by my democratic local politics experience in public education discussed in previous posts. My political take is markedly distinct from all the players in the Langford election and I am not a member of any elector organization.
Working from the rather simple assumption that elections are firmly political matters, I also understand that the conventions of local politics in Canada skew heavily against formal politics, particularly official links with provincial and federal parties. This mushy reality is in stark contrast to the UK Parliamentary system which has national parties with direct local affiliates. The general aversion to official politics in local affairs exaggerates the active depoliticization of debate which operates at all levels in Canada. Politics is almost entirely reduced to a marketing war between competing pro-corporate right-wing party brands.
In my experience as a BC school board trustee in the early days of the hard-Right Campbell regime, Board-majority trustees repeatedly protested the political nature of my opposition work, which was based on the open anti-cutbacks platform I was elected upon. Their own personal affiliations to the BC Liberals and NDP were common knowledge but not normally spoken of. I found the disingenuous chastisements against “politics” to be a dodge from having to argue for an increasingly indefensible ruling politics.
So, I was surprised that the gauntlet thrown down by Langford Now, in the form of an elector organization with five candidates, was met with such political gusto by the Mayor and his full-complement Council slate in their determination to reinforce Developer Party rule at City Hall.
LN is trying to create a different idea and approach to the style and conduct of politics in the City. The group is dedicated to priorities like environmental protection, greater community governance say and public initiatives. LN does not oppose development-for-profit in principle but have attacked Community First Langford for their myriad of Developer connections. There are also three independents running including two incumbents who have recently fallen out with the Mayor, citing his autocratic behaviour. All three are leaning hard into professing sympathy with LN’s opposition to run-away development.
In terms of the politics of this battle, the Mayor’s Developers’ First slate is deploying its establishment advantages—loads of campaign dough, control of the City and other public departments, solid support from the business class and five of seven incumbencies capped by a Mayor who rides a substantial cult of salesman’s personality.
The Mayor and his minions are making their political case through three main “common sense” stories which share roots in right-wing “trickle-down” economics:
- The “Little Town That Did” Story of a three-decade journey from impoverished township to a prosperous small city with low taxes on wealth and national accolades for breakneck business development.
- The “Job-Killer” Story that tars all opponents as aiming for the destruction of livelihoods and families by suggesting any check on corporate property development.
- The “Steady-Hand” Story which counsels keeping experienced politicians at the till(er) of City Hall to weather a brewing economic storm.
LN has its own political narratives which are anchored by desires for “balance”, more inclusive decision-making practices and the encouragement of “sustainable development” which includes sensible oversight to prevent fiascos like the failed building project on Claude Road. LN has an advancing critique of governance issues and conduct including the packing of City committees with Developers, serial secrecy in the service of sweetheart business deals, a freehand for profitable eco-trashing evidenced in the lack of a tree protection City by-law, etc.
A LN organizer explained to me recently that the connection being made with the voter is not formally political but more of an emotional sense that development has simply gone too far and too fast in its harm to both nature and neighbourhood liveability. LN draws on a widening sense that Langford is well behind the governance curve of other jurisdictions in areas such as climate change, environmental protection and City planning. Public reaction to the Mayor’s dogmatic rejection of formal progression in Langford’s governance model while also surreptitiously sliding LN ideas into the CFL platform both speak to how the newcomer opposition has been shaping this election’s political debate.
While I appreciate that LN’s electoral arguments are based, on the one hand, by what they understand and believe and, on the other, what they think broadens their appeal, dealing with the CFL political hardball approach and their free-market fables is going to be a longer-range challenge extending well beyond the election. Even critics of the Mayor concede much of the Orwellian logic of his right-wing stories, which points to the hard limits on organizing for democratic change in the City.
In future political battles, a democratic force in Langford would challenge the remarkable vapidness of the Mayor’s free-market fables. For example, rather than conceding the essential role that the Mayor and his lackeys have played in Langford’s rise as a Wild West Developer Utopia, one can sensibly note that Developers’ First is simply a more brazen expression of the corrupt corporate politics that dominate every municipality based on right-wing “trickle-down” political economy premises. Following from this, it is abundantly evident that bags of straw and clumps of mud stowed in the chairs at Council would engender the same results as provided by the ancient crew currently on board whose only real function is to rubberstamp administration “recommendations” and developer “proposals”.
Furthermore, it is also evident that the “Job-Killer” smear is entirely disingenuous on a number of critical counts, namely that:
- For Developers’ First, the only jobs worthy of consideration are the relatively low-wage and insecure employment provided by corporate construction.
- Such “job creation” is simply a cover for Developer profit-looting which, unlike the jobs, is readily carried over into further plundering expeditions on public lands and established neighbourhoods.
- Construction and other insecure jobs are killed all the time but almost never by opposition to corporate development. Job-killing is the exclusive domain of the corporate class who delight in the practise and are currently licking their chops at the prospect of mass firings to protect record profits amid rising inflation and interest rates.
In regards to the “Steady-Hand” Story of the essential role that Triassic Era representation provides in rough economic times, the surface appearance of common sense is readily dispelled when one considers that the current players at City Hall accept as a matter of faith the longstanding right-wing trickle down economic model that has produced this very crisis. Monopoly market apologists want the working majority to believe that continuing on the same political and economic path which has led to the current disaster is the only way out of it.
In considering all of this, my outside observation is that there is a good chance of a “hybridized” political outcome coming to Langford on October 15th. The broad acceptance of the Mayor’s cult-of-personality and his fatuous free market fables point to the strong likelihood he will be re-elected. But I have heard from a number of Mayor McD-boosters that they also want to see “diversity” at the Council table with the suggestion that the community needs to call time on Triassic Era representation. If this hybridized outcome does transpire, it will demonstrate that the bedrock developer establishment is breaking up in Langford but won’t be vanquished in one election sweep. The battle for full democracy based on the priorities of the working majority in Langford has only just begun.