National Affairs by Claire Hoy — Consistent in her inconsistency

August 24, 2016 · 0 Comments

hoy Green Party Leader Elizabeth May has always been a bit of a nutbar.
But, unlike most other elected politicians, she’s been given a pass by most of the media.
This is a woman, you may recall, who in December 2014 introduced a motion to Parliament on behalf of the 9/11 “truthers,” the small cabal of wingnuts who believe 9/11 was a staged event, all the while claiming that she didn’t really buy their argument but had a “duty” to present it anyway. Please.
This is the same woman who, when news of former CBC radio star Jiam Ghomenshi’s sexual improprieties first broke, dashed off a tweet to say, “I think Jiam Ghomenshi is wonderful … his private life is none of our beeswax.” She later claimed she was upset by shootings in Ottawa that week. Really?
And this is also the woman who, at the 2015 Parliamentary Press Gallery dinner, had to be ushered off the stage by then transport minister Lisa Raitt when, in the middle of a rambling, disjointed diatribe, she yelled that convicted war criminal Omar Khadr had “more class than the whole f…ing cabinet.”
She later claimed “sleep deprivation” caused her to do it. Right.
Any other politician – particularly a Conservative one – who had done any of those things, would be consistently attacked by the media and likely hounded out of office.
But May, a likeable enough person, has continued to garner far more publicity for herself and her party – of which she is the only elected member – than she merits.
And now we learn that May is considering stepping down as leader of the Greens because the party rank and file ignored her position and approved a hateful anti-Israel motion from the so-called Boycott Divestment and Sanctions movement.
The Green Party – which has languished under May’s “leadership” either just at or below the meagre 5 percent of the total vote level – is not interested enough in foreign affairs to strike a policy on, oh, North Korea, or the Soviet invasion of the Ukraine.
But when it comes to Israel – the only democracy in the entire region – well, that’s another matter altogether. The majority of its members want the world to boycott Israel and May still says she hopes to talk them out of it, but since it was the vote of the convention the party has no real mechanism to reverse this one-sided policy.
Still, even though May claims to be totally opposed to the BDS movement, she now claims she is thinking of stepping down as leader as a result of it, but has already announced she’ll seek re-election in the next election, putting herself in the odd position of not wanting to lead a party she disagrees with but being perfectly content to represent the same party and collect her money and her future pension rights from the public purse.
Most people would see that as inconsistent, to say the least. But given May’s sketchy record of blurting out stupid things, then offering a weak defence as an explanation, one could say that one of the few things she is consistent about is her inconsistency.
It wasn’t that long ago that the media joined May’s bandwagon in insisting that as leader of a federal “party,” – albeit with a single seat in the Commons – she was just as entitled as the leaders of the three main parties to a seat on the televised election campaign leadership debates.
After all, since May was “green,” her other sins and the fact that most Canadians aren’t interested in her or her party, seemed totally irrelevant to her many cheerleaders in the media.
Given the fact that during her leadership tenure she has utterly failed to increase the percentage of her party’s popular vote, despite her overwhelmingly favorable coverage in the media, it’s doubtful that the Greens would do any worse under somebody else than they’ve done under her leadership.
But you would like to think that a person of principle, if she really is offended by the anti-Semitic nature of the BDS resolution, would resign immediately.
She certainly wouldn’t hang around to run for the same bunch next time, whether she runs as leader or as something else.