Given the recent history of events within the left in Vancouver civic politics, leftwing COPE would be on solid moral ground to ignore what left-centrist Vision Vancouver chooses to do in preparation for the 2008 civic elections, and run a full slate for Mayor, Council, Park Board, and School Board. But from a purely strategic point of view, without some kind of cooperation with Vision Vancouver and other left-side parties, including the Greens, this morally righteous position would lead to electoral catastrophe for them all. The same caveat, however, can and should be nailed to Vision Vancouver’s door as well: ignore what COPE does and face total oblivion.

The numbers tell the same bedtime story to both cowering parties. Over the last four elections, the extremist rightwing NPA candidates varied in their performance at the polls between a high of 51% in 1996 to a low of 33% in 2002, while COPE candidates (pro-rated to take into account they didn’t always run full slates), varied in their performance from a high of 54% in 2002 to a low of 28% in 1996. A distribution graph of seats on Council referenced by percentage of ballots cast shows fairly consistently—and for all parties —that one seat is rewarded for every 3% in the polls, once you’re over 30%.

If the aim of all anti-NPA forces is to restrict that One Big Party to no more than a minority four seats on Council, all ten NPA candidates must collectively be held to no more than 42% of total votes in 2008. That has only happened once in the last four elections. But their average in those four elections has only been marginally, and tantalizingly, higher than that crucial level, at 43.7%.

Too many anti-NPA forces

Conversely, an electoral coalition looking to secure six seats on Council to guarantee a majority that excludes the NPA, would need 48%. Non-NPA candidates have together taken more than 48% of the votes in every election. The problem is, non-NPA votes have always been split up among an average of 38 candidates in each of the last four elections. Had there been an electoral coalition arrayed against the NPA, resulting in a cutting in half the number of anti-NPA candidates fielded in elections, such an arrangement would have left the NPA with minorities of four councillors in 1996, three in 1999, none in 2002, and three in 2005.

Though it has certainly evolved into quite a different monster today, the origins of the Non-Partisan Association lie in a strictly electoral coalition arrayed against what was, back in the first half of the last century, a single, unified, and looming party. To this day, NPA spokespeople insist the NPA is not really a party at all, but rather a temporary pooling of resources across a broad spectrum of people and interests into a loose cooperative-like organization that only comes into being during election campaigns, only to be virtually extinguished after the election. It used to exist only for the strict purpose of electing candidates of any kind and description to Council, so long as they were not from the One Big Party—the Socialists.

NPA opposed the idea of parties

In its earlier decades, the NPA floated no platforms, espoused no policies, and favoured no political philosophies, except for the one overriding principle of keeping out the One Big Party. Members of radically differing political organizations espousing totally contradictory platforms nonetheless cooperated at election time, for the sole purpose of denying seats on Council to The One Big Party, which it succeeded in doing in virtually every election since the NPA was founded. Once the NPA-associated candidates won seats on Council they, quite often, and quite loudly, opposed one another in debates and voting on the various issues that came up. Because it never was a party, no one could say the bickering was evidence the party was splitting. It was expected that winning NPA-associated candidates would part after the election and go their own separate ways. In between elections, they felt free, and indeed were free, to pursue their separate identities, their separate platforms, and their separate aims in politics generally.

That’s all in the past because, by today, the NPA has become the monolithic One Big Party it was originally formed to keep out. The same single-platform single-agenda dominance of civic issues that the NPA was originally formed to prevent, is what the NPA, in its long string of electoral successes, has become. Like the story goes in a lot of dark fairy tales, the NPA has became the very monster inside the gates it was meant to keep at bay outside the gates.

The Liberals, the Conservatives, the Tories, the Libertarians, and other parties found, in the earlier part of last century, that when they separately tried to take on the One Big Party that threatened to dominate democratic discussion of civic issues—then the Socialists—they all got efficiently crushed every time. It’s the same result today for the Progressives, the Socialists, the Greens, the Liberals, the Red Conservatives, and other parties.

When they go up separately against the latest manifestation of the One Big Party, the NPA, they all get crushed. It’s the same problem, only this time the One Big Party looms from the right instead of the left. But it brings the same single-minded, ideological dominance of civic discussion that the earlier manifestation threatened—and it often puts on Council the same kind of thoughtless, place-holder functionaries, too.

The solution may be to tear a sheet from the NPA’s historical playbook and create one big anti-NPA electoral coalition in which every participating party and individual retains, before and after the 2008 election, their own separate identities and platforms. The coalition itself, created only for the purpose of the election, can be dissolved after the election, and carry no powers, no identity, and no platforms through the period between elections. In fact, virtually nothing needs to be shared between the participating parties and individuals beyond some means of divvying up the ten slots that such an electoral coalition needs to be limited to if it is to be successful at keeping out the NPA’s One Big Party candidates.

Do what the NPA used to do

That can’t be too hard. And once it’s done, all the successful non-NPA parties and people can once again go back to debating sharply among themselves about the issues they are trying to grapple with, there being no guarantee there will be any rigid adherence to any one party line in between elections—because there wouldn’t be any one party. COPE people stay COPE, Vision people stay Vision, Green people stay Green, and anyone else who joins, stays who they are. After all, the new organization wouldn’t be a party at all, only an electoral association, just like the NPA got away with describing itself as for so long, one formed only to keep out of Vancouver civic politics the dominance of issues by One Big Party, no matter who that might be.