Carole James' hold on the B.C. New Democratic Party leadership remains tenuous despite surviving a weekend vote to hold a leadership convention, says ousted MLA Bob Simpson.
James is still subject to a "leadership review" through secret ballot vote by the party membership when the annual convention is held, Simpson said Tuesday.
"She's been given a year, effectively, to prove herself to the broader membership of the NDP and to get a mandate from them as opposed to immediately step aside and have a leadership convention," said Simpson.
Saturday's vote was limited to the provincial council which is the party's governing body between conventions.
Given her standing in a recent poll is even lower than outgoing Liberal leader Gordon Campbell's, Simpson said James has plenty of work to do to win over party members at the convention.
But he doubts James will make the right moves and asserted James either showed her true colours or accepted bad advice by requiring her supporters to wear yellow scarves, a feature of the campaign in which she won the leadership in the first place.
A baker's dozen of 13 MLAs refused to wear the scarves and since the vote was by a show of hands, Simpson argued the apparel was not necessary.
"The scarves had nothing to do with the function of provincial council," he said. "It was a pure, straight up political tactic to try and get the 13 NDPs to toe the line and put the scarves on.
He labelled the move "crass politics" and suggested it was party president Moe Sihota's idea.
Simpson believes Sihota was also behind the decision to have him kicked out of caucus last month after a critical review of James' speech to the Union of British Columbia Municipalities. "I have been fighting with him on a consistent basis inside caucus because I don't like his politics, I don't like how he operates and I thought he was overstepping his bounds," said Simpson, who noted caucus chair Norm McDonald and party whip Patricia Conroy resigned over the way the ouster was handled.
To gain members' confidence and improve her standing in the polls, Simpson said James "needs to stop speaking to British Columbians in platitudes and start speaking to them with firm policy direction."
In other words, she needs to say more than "I want to be premier so we can address child poverty" and articulate a plan. Anything less is a "disservice to B.C. and politics in B.C."
James also needs to reign in Sihota, in Simpson's view. "The party president's only responsibility is to get the party ready for the next election and Moe has stepped over his bounds in terms of how he operates with caucus and various other things," Simpson said.
A motion to bring Simpson back into the NDP caucus was raised Saturday but ruled out of order, which did not come as surprise to Simpson because the issue is a caucus matter not an issue for the provincial council.
Simpson now plans to exercise his access to resources as an independent MLA and, with the help of staff, develop a legislative agenda. "My intent is to go into that legislature and start to demonstrate a different kind of politics is available to us," he said.
