Between Sarah Jama's expulsion from the ONDP caucus, the Paul Miller fiasco in Hamilton East, and the glorious do-nothing reign of Hamilton Mayor Andrea Horwath, you can see the NDP cratering in Hamilton, one of the historic NDP strongholds in Ontario. We've already seen the big cracks in other traditional NDP strongholds in Windsor, Sault Ste. Marie, Timmins, and across northern Ontario. We've also seen the NDP's big gains in working-class Brampton completely rolled back in the wake of the ONDP's incredible backstabbing of their Brampton North MPP, Kevin Yarde, just before the 2022 election.
Chow's mayoralty will likely cut against the Ontario NDP's holding of 9 out of 25 GTA seats. Only a significant 20% drop in voter turnout allowed the NDP to hold 9 of their 11 GTA seats they won in 2018. To emphasize how precarious these seats are, in 2014 the NDP only won 2 GTA seats with 208,000 votes. In 2022, they held on to 9 GTA seats with 240,000 votes.
If people do not believe that the Toronto mayoralty will have an impact on the Ontario NDP's fortunes, they ought to look back at how the Ontario NDP government destroyed Jack Layton's chances at winning the mayor's race in Toronto in November 1991.
Last but not least, it is worth revisiting what happened in the 2022 election. As the Official Opposition, the NDP lost 813,000 votes. This is completely unprecedented for an Official Opposition in Ontario. It is a defeat unmatched in Ontario NDP history since the 1995 ousting of the Bob Rae government which lost 854,000 votes. In 2022, Premier Ford's PCs only lost 407,000 votes. Double the number of people came out of the 2018-2022 shitshow deciding not to vote NDP than deciding against voting Ford. That's incredible.
All this said, the Ontario NDP could very well win the next election. But this would be an election victory built on the undemocratic foundations of a right-wing party machine. An Ontario NDP victory would no doubt be a "wave election" like it was in 1990. A coalesced anti-incumbent vote, like we saw in 1990 Ontario or 2015 Alberta, could put the NDP in office.
If people do not believe that the Toronto mayoralty will have an impact on the Ontario NDP's fortunes, they ought to look back at how the Ontario NDP government destroyed Jack Layton's chances at winning the mayor's race in Toronto in November 1991.
Layton was deemed the front-runner in the race, especially because the right-wing vote was split. With Bob Rae's increasingly unpopular government as the perfect foil, the right was able to get their shit together, back a single candidate, and wallop Layton in the election. This was before "progressive" Toronto was forcibly merged by Harris with the surrounding "conservative" suburban cities in 1997.
Last but not least, it is worth revisiting what happened in the 2022 election. As the Official Opposition, the NDP lost 813,000 votes. This is completely unprecedented for an Official Opposition in Ontario. It is a defeat unmatched in Ontario NDP history since the 1995 ousting of the Bob Rae government which lost 854,000 votes. In 2022, Premier Ford's PCs only lost 407,000 votes. Double the number of people came out of the 2018-2022 shitshow deciding not to vote NDP than deciding against voting Ford. That's incredible.
All this said, the Ontario NDP could very well win the next election. But this would be an election victory built on the undemocratic foundations of a right-wing party machine. An Ontario NDP victory would no doubt be a "wave election" like it was in 1990. A coalesced anti-incumbent vote, like we saw in 1990 Ontario or 2015 Alberta, could put the NDP in office.
However, it's been three decades since Ontario's first (and still only) NDP government took a hard right turn to public austerity and ripping up collective agreements to impose rollbacks - so corporations and the rich didn't have to carry the load of the economic devastation of the early 1990s.
Since the early 1990s, we've seen several generations of politicians, staff, and activists pour through the ONDP and refuse to come to terms with the party's rightward lurch in government, at the federal level, and in office in other provinces. The left and labour dissidents have shrivelled in size and strength since then. In fact, it's been a downhill slide for these principled forces within the NDP since the Waffle expulsion from the Ontario NDP in 1972. The right is no longer ascendent. Its control of the NDP is now deeply entrenched.
The Ontario NDP's post-Rae successes have been built on a new social base that is more capitalist, more right-wing and wealthier than it once was. It has been a long road, but right-wing NDP rule in various provinces since 1990 has succeeded in winning the "centre" - at the expense of expanding and building the left. It's a conscious strategy that has worked. Expectations are lowered, and policies are indistinguishable from the old Liberal parties in Ontario and federally.
At this point, principled trade unionists, socialists and anti-imperialists have no space left in the party. The viciously unjust discipline against Jama and others, such as Joel Harden, gets the desired result of either a purge or the domestication of dissidents. A reasoned left-wing assessment of the Ontario NDP can only conclude that the party is an enemy formation for anyone pushing a socialist, labour and internationalist agenda.