Just a few years ago, Anjali Appadurai looked at the BC NDP and saw a party filled with activists and climate champions who were on the verge of taking power and making the kind of sweeping reforms they’d been promising for more than a decade.
Now, five years into the NDP as government, she sees something different: An ageing, out-of-touch, listless group of New Democrats who have made so many compromises, watered down so many promises, and are so focused on staying in power that they are barely distinguishable from the political rivals they were once desperate to topple.
“I remember when the NDP had their first win, when (David) Eby and a bunch of other really cool folks got elected and I was part of the group of people absolutely cheering them on — here were friends of friends, colleagues for some of us, people who were in our movements, organizing for the same things,” Appadurai said in an interview.
“It was suddenly this feeling of whoa our friends are in power, what happens next?”
Unfortunately, as Appadurai puts it, what happened next was “pandering” and “tradeoffs” for a New Democratic government whose “priorities are completely backwards,” whose climate goals are “woefully inadequate,” who “wants to push ahead with the status quo,” and who has become the “political class” it once revolted against.
Today's the day we launch our campaign for the future of our beautiful province. Join us at Robson Square at 5pm! ✨ https://t.co/OyZ0JN5eB9 pic.twitter.com/0K3j0Qnn3R
— Anjali Appadurai (@AnjaliApp) August 15, 2022
“People across the province are increasingly disillusioned with the party,” said Appadurai, who works for the Climate Emergency Unit and previously the Sierra Club BC and West Coast Environmental Law.
“Whether that’s New Democrats unhappy with the direction the party has taken, and believe the party hasn’t held up traditional values and they believe the party has strayed from its soul, or it’s young folks who don’t feel represented by this part and are feeling disillusioned with electoral politics in general.”
That led Appadurai, 32, to launch her bid for BC NDP leader earlier this month.
“I think a lot of people don’t feel they have a political home anymore,” she said.
“I certainly don’t feel that way. But I maintain this is the party that should be championing the values of the movement. This party should be evolving with the movement if it is really the people’s party. The movements I do come out of do represent the next generation of the party, if we are able to organize and turn the party back to its values.”
In deciding to run on climate-focused agenda, Appadurai became the only person so far to challenge David Eby for the job of becoming the province’s 37th premier.
“Ten years ago, he was the insurgent, the activist,” Appadurai said in her launch video on social media, referencing Eby’s past as a civil liberties activist. “But what David Eby represents right now is the party establishment. It is the party status quo.”
Appadurai has disrupted what appeared to be Eby’s coronation as leader.
It will force Eby to run a full leadership campaign to December, instead of taking power in mid-October, limiting his ability to change the February provincial budget if he wins (as he likely will).
It will also mean Eby has to publicly debate Appadurai on several environmental issues that are uncomfortable for the current BC NDP government in which Eby has held a senior cabinet position — including Site C, fracking, LNG development, old growth logging and continued public subsidies for the oil and gas sector.
It’s not new territory for Appadurai, who ran for the federal NDP in Vancouver-Granville in 2021 and challenged her own party on its positions during that race too. She lost by fewer than 500 votes, in what was one of the closest races in the country.
“Last year in the federal election people were like, if you are criticizing the party so much why are you running for them?” she said. “My answer was that I want to make the party better, I want to evolve its values.”
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Appadurai has been unusually blunt in her critique of the BC NDP and Eby so far. It has rankled many of the New Democrats who might privately support her goals, but are turned off by her fiery rhetoric.
Still, talking to Appadurai is like talking to a BC New Democrat running for office 10 years ago. She’s young, bright, articulate, passionate and entirely focused on kicking down doors in Victoria to execute the sweeping political change she’s convinced is necessary for her generation.
She sounds a lot like George Heyman, before he became Environment Minister and had to swallow Premier John Horgan’s decisions to pursue a highly-polluting LNG industry.
Or, like Lana Popham, before she became Agriculture Minister and had to reverse her opposition to a Site C dam that the NDP chose to continue building.
Or, like Michelle Mungall, before she became the previous Energy Minister and had keep paying public subsidies for fracking and gas development that she used to publicly oppose.
Or, like Jennifer Whiteside, before she became Education Minister in a cabinet that is lowballing public workers on wage hikes that as a union executive she’d fought to be higher and fairer.
Appadurai said she’ll be out at the picket line supporting the BCGEU during its ongoing strike action — a position that is another thumb in the eye to the establishment of the party she’s running to lead.
“To put it very simply, the people in power don’t get it,” she said of the current NDP cabinet.
All of this makes establishment New Democrats extremely anxious about Appadurai’s candidacy.
She’s backed by the cash and organizational power of an environmental movement that was once highly-influential within the NDP, but in recent years has taken a backseat to the party’s focus on affordable for middle-class urban voters in Metro Vancouver.
That political calculus has come back to bite the party in the form of a candidate who threatens to upend the apple cart in a leadership race the current NDP caucus and cabinet would prefer to avoid.
Whether Appadurai can sign up the new members necessary to truly challenge Eby is an open question and an enormous uphill battle.
But what’s abundantly clear is this: Appadurai represents a lost generation of activists for the BC NDP. And the party should be thinking long and hard about its future, if its youngest and brightest members are disillusioned about what it has become in government.
Rob is Daily Hive’s Political Columnist, tackling the biggest political stories in BC. You can catch him on CHEK News as their on-air Political Correspondent.
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