Vancouver’s municipal liberals are restless. “Sam Sullivan is desperate. He’s a desperate man and he acts like politics is war” according to normally sober Vision Councillor Raymond Louie. Meanwhile, David Cadman, COPE’s lone remaining Councillor, told the Georgia Straight that the cruel reign of Mayor Sam “is in fact the dictatorship of one, namely Sam.”

This absurd hyperbole has no relation to reality. Like sharks they sense blood, Sam’s blood to be precise, and the mere whiff of it intoxicates them.

Sam’s problem

Some long-dead European philosopher once said that, by definition, a modern political party is divided against itself; that is, it is made up of elements with contradictory beliefs and goals. The problem therefore becomes a struggle for hegemony within each party while simultaneously keeping the various strands glued together. Control and conflict are locked in an endless embrace within all modern political parties, while only political sects and cults within them agree on everything. The NPA has been fortunate in that, despite being a rocky marriage between establishment Conservative and Liberal elements, while they might have internal disagreements, they have always been able to unite to keep the socialist hordes, that is, the old COPE, at bay. The problem for Sam is that, as anyone can see, COPE’s and Vision’s political goals are no longer qualitatively different from those of the NPA. Thus, the glue binding the NPA together has weakened and now we see significant elements of the Liberal wing of the NPA bolting to Vision. Major rumblings within his own party began even before Sam received his party’s candidacy in the last election when he had the temerity to face off with ubbër Liberal Christy Clarke, thereby halting her expected coronation. That the other blue blood Vancouver establishment figure, Carole Taylor, recently considered running at all, even outside of Vancouver’s establishment municipal parties, shows just how frayed the NPA’s historic grand coalition really is.

COPE and Vision: NDP farm teams?

The challenge for COPE and Vision, on the other hand, is to assert an identity separate from one another. Both are dominated by NDP elements. Three sitting NDP MLAs attended COPE’s May 2007 AGM. A number of the current COPE representatives and board and are close to NDP MLA David Chudnovsky. Meanwhile, at Vision, Jim Green, Geoff Meggs, Tim Stevenson, Am Johal and Mike Magee are all closely identified with the NDP. The current front-runner as the Vision Mayoral candidate, the Kennedyesque Gregor Robertson, is currently an NDP MLA.

This does not mean that there are not small differences between these two municipal parties. COPE continues to have a further left element gathered around what is left of the so-called COPE “Classic” side of the party. COPE also has the burden of Vancouver District Labour Council bureaucrats always pushing it rightward. Vision (like the NDP) continues to drift further right and has now been joined by a sizeable contingent of card-carrying Liberals. Local Vision scribbler Alex Tsakumis claims that three dozen NPA members attended the recent Vision AGM. Vision’s big coup was in bringing Greg Wilson, who worked on the last NPA municipal campaign, not only into the tent, but onto the Executive Board.

Negotiations or slaughter?

Since the recapture of the Executive Board by a pro-NDP group at the last membership meeting, COPE has told anyone that will listen about the need for a coalition with Vision. The two parties have been quietly negotiating on this for ages. What stumbling block remains in the path? COPE Executive Committee co-chair Rachel Marcuse told the Vancouver Sun’s Frances Bula that COPE wants a mayoral candidate that both COPE and Vision can support to run as an independent. However, Robertson told Bula he does not see “how that would work logistically.” Meanwhile, COPE is threatening to run a full slate of candidates including a mayoral candidate if Vision does not agree with this demand. Are they bluffing? You bet.

The current COPE negotiators are lambs invited to Vision’s dinner table. Take for example the fact that at their AGM, Vision members voted to allow the executive board the right to appoint candidates at any level—city council, school board or parks board in the next election. Put aside the undemocratic nature of this right the Vision members forfeited to their board and look instead at the strategy behind the move. Vision retains a sludge hammer with which to threaten COPE negotiators while they work out the details of their nuptial agreement. If Vision membership had put a specific number of Vision candidates to be nominated in writing, then COPE could assume the remaining spaces would be left for them. Now, Vision can tell COPE, “So, you won’t agree to this? Well then we’ll nominate a full slate and leave you with nothing.” This is the type of no-holds barred politics that Vision’s back room brawlers routinely engage in.

But more importantly, COPE no longer has any ideological reason to resist Vision. What stops COPE representatives from walking en masse over to Vision? Certainly there is no significant difference between the COPE representatives and Vision’s representatives. In fact, the differences between COPE, Vision and the NPA are more a question of degree and style, not substance. Current elected officials from each party, Raymond Louie, Sam Sullivan, Peter Ladner, Spencer Herbert, Kim Capri, Allan de Genova, Tim Stevenson and Allan Wong all share essentially the same politics. Sure Vision and COPE might get an extra few dozen social housing units built (though this is debatable), but the differences are not significant. The Vision/COPE alliance in the last municipal election destroyed oppositional politics in this city. The alliance accomplished its goal: the destruction of a true municipal oppositional politics, with the loss of COPE “Classic” councillors Fred Bass, Tim Louis and Anne Roberts.

The real political function of groups like Vision, the NDP and the current COPE is to guard the left side of the political spectrum against the chance of an authentically alternative political formation taking shape. This is why the NDP needs to control COPE, although they also dominate Vision, because to walk to Vision would be to leave COPE to its oppositional element, thus allowing that group to demonstrate what oppositional politics can really look like. And it just might appeal to a very large group of people.

What will Vision be like in power?

We don’t need to guess how Vision will govern once elected. Mayor Larry Campbell’s term in power was essentially Vision in power. At that time, working in tandem with their NPA colleagues (and opposed in vote after vote by Councillors Bass, Louis and Roberts), Vision (Larry Campbell, Jim Green, Raymond Louie and Tim Stevenson, then called “COPE-Lite”) brought us the Canada Line and the Olympics, they sat out the ward referendum ensuring its defeat, and they raised taxes to pay for more police and to lessen the load on big business and developers. So remember, next election, Vote Vision, I mean COPE, I mean the NPA. Well, really, what’s the difference?