The Practical Liberal | Kyle Olsen, president of the Alberta Young Liberals, endorses New Liberal, New Focus
At the close of the spring legislative session last week, Kevin Taft once again told impatient reporters that he’d announce his plans regarding the leadership of the Liberal Party by the end of the month.
But that doesn’t mean that the rest of the Liberals haven’t already started planning for a possible post-Taft era.
At the end of last month, a group of predominantly Calgary Liberals released a manifesto called New Liberal, New Focus onto the web, setting out their positions in the ongoing discussions about the future of the Alberta Liberals. Specifically, they oppose a name change and a merger with the NDP. They also propose a reinterpretation of Liberal values.
Corey Hogan, a 26-year-old Calgary Liberal and political consultant, is one of the document’s primary authors, and he calls it a more practical look at how the party can move forward.
“There’s been a lot of discussion within the party about the future,” Hogan says. “It almost felt like this was running away from us. A bunch of us who are proud Liberals felt that we had to change not who we are but what we do.”
New Liberal has been downloaded more than 800 times since it was posted, and about 60 people have endorsed it. The group is seeking opinions from everyone, including disaffected members of other political parties and the general public.
“It wouldn’t do us any good to have these discussions in smoke filled rooms,” Hogan says. “We need to bring more people into it. We need to broaden our big tent.”
Values And Votes
New Liberal does a good job of assessing the strategic situation and laying out why the Liberals need a makeover, says Harold Jansen, a political scientist at the University of Lethbridge, but cautions that the answers Hogan and his co-authors present are far from inspiring.
“The core values that they define aren’t ones that I think the Conservatives would disagree with,” he says. “That’s what I find paradoxical. They say if they change the name they’ll drift away from their principles and then basically the principle that defines them is that they’re not the NDP or the Conservatives.”
But that practicality is what appeals to Kyle Olsen, president of the Alberta Young Liberals, and another Calgarian.
“It’s a bit of a wake-up call,” he says, “to people who have become too focused on ideological purity and not enough on winning.”
He says the party needs to prioritize its values, and ditch policies that aren’t gaining traction among voters. (Energy re-regulation is on his ditch list.) He’d rather form a government and implement 60 per cent of their ideas than continue criticizing from the opposition sidelines.
Taft To Get Shaft?
It’s difficult to talk in concrete terms about the future policies and direction of the Alberta Liberals before the October leadership convention even takes place; after all, much of the party’s platform (and how they market it to the public) will depend on the personality of the leader. But New Liberal does give some indication of a possible path.
For instance, it recommends rebranding the party as the “New Liberals” in lieu of a wholesale name-change—a proposal modeled on Britain’s Labour Party, who revitalized themselves at the polls by rebranding themselves as the energetic, youthful “New Labour.” A full name-change, on the other hand, might come off as a transparent attempt to fool voters into thinking the Liberals had undergone more of a reinvention than they actually have. (Calgary-Mountain View MLA David Swann, who has expressed tentative support for a name change, says he would only want a new name if the party were truly revamped.)
Whatever they choose to call themselves, Jansen says, the Liberals can’t present themselves as a different party in the same way New Labour did if they don’t elect a new leader. And that new leader will need to bring the same charisma and fresh ideas to the role that Tony Blair brought to the Labour Party.
Kevin Taft says he doesn’t feel any pressure to leave because of the changes being proposed by the New Liberal group or Swann. “I think there does need to be a process of renewal,” he says. “I said from the beginning that everything is on the table, including my leadership. I’ve got lots of people urging me to stay and I know there’s a current urging me to go. I’m pretty philosophical about it.”
