Vancouver Province
for January 14, 2000

The NDP are toast. They're in the self destruct mode and nothing will deter them – not even brave statements that ranks will be closed and we'll all get behind the leader, blah, blah, blah. I can't imagine even Gordon Campbell blowing this one no matter who he's up against. No, folks, this leadership convention, by the time it finally happens, will have demonstrated to one and all in living colour that the NDP have not the leader, the vision or indeed the competence to warrant any further voter attention. All the candidates were in there helping Glen Clark hold his job even after they knew that he ought to have resigned the morning after the police raid on his home. That they're stuck with. They're turkeys and Thanksgiving is upon us.

That's the trouble, you see. The NDP have no one running who left the ship early enough to claim they had nothing to do with it hitting the rocks. One of them in fact, Gordon Wilson, is the only example in memory of a rat joining the sinking ship. It doesn't matter how you slice it, Ujjal Dosanjh was around for the entire Clark debacle and, in fact, prolonged it by not demanding his resignation on March 4, 1999 when he knew that Clark was under police investigation. Wilson, far from denouncing Clark, now has him firmly in his camp.

There's Wilson's difficulty. He would have the NDP mainstream believe that he's the wave of the future. He's the man with the forward looking ideas, the man of vision the NDP have waited for lo these many moons. But that's not only a hard position to justify it's what the Jews call Chutzpah – which essentially means the man who murders his parents then claims mercy on the ground he's an orphan. For all Gordon Wilson's claims to political vision and a new NDP he is at the same time begging for, and receiving help from the likes of Dave Barrett. For all Wilson talks about clean government he's at the same time twisting pinkies with Moe Sihota in a courtship that has all the subtlety of two gorillas in lust. As if that weren't bad enough, beating his gums and the bushes for BC's newest socialist, is none other than the disgraced Glen Clark himself! I mean, really!

Ujjal Dosanjh has plenty of troubles of his own. He thinks of himself as a paragon of political virtue yet it was he who, knowing that Clark was under criminal investigation, let him govern for five months. And let it not be forgotten that it was Dave Barrett himself who, before Clark was dead, much less cool in his political shroud, remonstrated with Dosanjh for having his acolytes beating the bushes for his eventual leadership.

But Mr Dosanjh has another rap – he's dull. He's very dull, in fact. And associated with that is an utter lack of a vision to sell. Earlier this week his newest partner, Joy McPhail, on my show, announced with great conviction that Mr Dosanjh's vision was to take the NDP back to its roots, to  its core constituency. Gadfrey Daniel, if it's one thing voters don't want to hear it's that!

So it's a new vision with Gordon Wilson as supported by Dave Barrett, Glen Clark and Moe Sihota or the new vision of Ujjal Dosanjh which takes us back to the chants and dreams of the 1930s.

But won't Gordon Wilson give Gordon Campbell and the Liberals fits?

Probably. If Campbell's dumb enough to get into a public televised debate with him. Bill Bennett knew he was no circus performer and he refused to debate Dave Barrett yet won three straight elections. The issue isn't debating skills but cleaning up the mess and the public knows it. If Campbell simply says that he has no intention in trying to "out act" an actor followed by the usual platitudes that he's spending his time taking his message to the people, he'll get beaten up on by the media but he won't lose any votes and he avoids the risk of another Wilson one-liner as happened in 1991.

Given the choices, no matter how bad Gordon Campbell might look to some, he looks a hell of a lot better than any of the gobblers who want to bepremier for a few months. They're destined for the roasting pan.