For many years the NDP has supported changing from our current system of electing federal governments by Plurality Voting (PV), often misnamed First Past the Post, where the winning candidate in each constituency is the one polling the most votes, to one of Proportional Representation (PR) where a party’s share of seats is equal to its share of the popular vote.
Many NDP supporters advocate PR as a matter of principle. They start from the premise that votes are “wasted” unless they directly contribute to the election of a member. Under that premise, the only way to ensure that “every vote counts” is to apportion seats directly according to the share of the popular vote. Moreover, majority governments formed by parties that have captured less than half the popular vote are “artificial,” since the parties forming such governments were not the first choice of more than half the voters.
Others have more pragmatic reasons for supporting PR. The NDP has never formed a federal government and only after the 2011 election has it been even the second largest party in the House of Commons. This fact has led these pragmatists to conclude that the NDP is unlikely to win a federal election under PV. Looking for other ways to empower their party, these PR supporters have also noticed that in most federal elections the NDP has had the third-highest national popular vote. For them, PR is a way to maximize situations where the NDP will hold the balance of power between the two larger parties. In such situations, their party could obtain policy concessions in return for their support, and their elected members might even hold cabinet positions in a coalition government.
Both these arguments for replacing PV with PR raise troubling questions. Pre and post-election polling data reveal that in most federal elections parties forming a majority government with less than half the popular vote were, in fact, the party most acceptable to the majority of the voters. Their majorities are close approximations of what would have happened had those elections been held under a system of ranked ballots where voters rank the candidates in order of preference and the candidate with a majority of first and second preference votes wins. Moreover, while promising to “make every vote count,” the practical effect of PR is to maximize minority government situations where, by giving the third party the balance of power, the votes for the third most popular party end up counting more than those cast for either of the two more popular parties. This result is likely to strike most voters as undemocratic, rather than more accurately reflecting voter intentions.
This tendency of PR to privilege votes for third parties over those for the most popular parties may explain why none of the twenty majority NDP governments elected at the provincial level since 1970 in Alberta, British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Ontario and Saskatchewan has ever attempted to legislate PR in their provinces or even submit a PR proposal to a referendum. Only two of those twenty governments — Saskatchewan in 1971 and 1991– would have had majorities under PR.
At the federal level, the assumption that the NDP will always be the third party seems both too pessimistic and too optimistic. It is too pessimistic because the results of the last two election campaigns have shown that in the right circumstances the NDP could well form a minority or even a majority federal government under PV. The party formed the official opposition in 2011 largely because it won 77% of the seats in Quebec with 42% of the popular vote in that province. Had the NDP shown in the 2015 election that it could maintain that support, it is at least plausible to argue that enough voters elsewhere in Canada would have voted NDP rather than Liberal to replace the Harper Conservatives.
On the other hand, the assumption is too optimistic because the introduction of PR would encourage the growth and formation of parties appealing to specific issues and distinct slices of the ideological spectrum. Some, like the Greens, would compete with the NDP for centre-left votes. Others on the right might surpass the NDP in popular support by taking a hard line against immigration and abortion. There is no guarantee that the balance of power position would always or even usually be held by the NDP or even by a party of the centre-left under PR.
The promise by both the NDP and the Liberals to replace the current system of Plurality Voting arose from the particular circumstances of the 2011 federal election. This election was the exception to the rule cited earlier that parties forming majority governments with a minority of the popular vote are normally the most acceptable choice for the majority of voters. The Conservatives were able to form a majority government with less than 40% of the popular vote in 2011 with little second choice support from NDP or Liberal voters. This happened because the two Opposition parties almost evenly split the non-Conservative vote in Ontario and many constituencies in Atlantic Canada.
But, a system of ranked voting as well as PR would have prevented that result without necessarily giving a third party the balance of power. Moreover, as the result of the 2015 election demonstrated, higher turnout by non-Conservative voters and a more efficient distribution of the Liberal/NDP vote in many constituencies won by the Conservatives with a minority of the vote in 2011 were able to remedy the situation without changing the electoral system.
Given these considerations, NDP supporters might want to re-examine their party’s support for PR, both on grounds of principle and of long-term party advantage. True, the current system does not precisely reflect first preference popular voting, but it does produce governments which, because they usually have a majority, can be held fully accountable by voters for their record in office. That would not be the case for the individual parties in the coalition governments which would become the norm under PR. Accountability to voters is a benefit not to be discarded lightly.
The NDP’s success in electing majority governments in six provinces and the results of the 2011 election demonstrate that the party can form a federal government under the current system. The assumptions that they would always or even usually hold the balance of power under PR, and that such a system would never promote the interests of a party on the extreme right are questionable. Whether from idealism or self-interest, NDP supporters of PR might do well to heed the old warning, “Be careful what you wish for.”

Learning from Prentice and Peterson
A week before the remarkable upset of the Alberta Progressive Conservative government after 44 consecutive years in power, one commentator saw a striking parallel to an election twenty-five years earlier when David Peterson’s Ontario Liberals went down to an equally shocking defeat. Janet Brown, an Alberta pollster and political commentator for the CBC, noted that both governments, banking on large leads in the polls shortly before the election call had opportunistically called snap elections and had then been decisively rejected by the voters.
But the similarities between the two elections go much deeper and may provide lessons to federal parties seeking our votes in October. Here are circumstances common to both the Alberta and Ontario elections: recession is looming and jobs are threatened, but both governments focus on balancing their budgets rather than stimulating the economy; despite this failure to address voters’ economic concerns, both government parties initially retain large leads over their opponents in the polls; moreover, the main opponents to their political right are in disarray and the main opponent on the political left has never formed a government. It seems an opportune time for the ruling parties to call a snap election and cement their large legislative majorities.
But, once the election is called, those healthy leads in the polls melt away. Worse, a viable alternative emerges as the leader of the NDP performs strongly in the televised leaders’ debate and that party surges to the lead in the polls. The government is defeated and the Premier resigns as party leader.
There were, of course, significant differences between the two elections. In contrast to the Alberta PC dynasty, the Peterson Liberals had been in power only five years. Unlike the Alberta PCs they had not been threatened with overwhelming defeat just over a year prior to the election call. And their last pre-election budget came more than three months rather than less than two weeks prior to that call.
With all this in mind, the chronology of the Alberta PC dynasty’s fall is worth examining, referencing similarities to the Peterson Liberals’ 1990 defeat.
Extensive public opinion research conducted over the past eighteen months illustrates the roller coaster ride which took the PCs from near certain defeat to Wild Rose during the dying days of Alison Redford’s leadership, to a strong recovery during the first months of Jim Prentice’s leadership, then down to defeat at the hands of Rachel Notley’s New Democrats.
In early March 2014, just prior to Redford’s resignation as Premier and party leader, a Think HQ poll showed the Wild Rose Party overwhelmingly ahead of the PCs by 46% to 19%, with the Liberals and NDP at 16% and 15% respectively. In late August and early September 2014, just prior to Prentice’s election as PC leader, the Wild Rose lead over the PCs had narrowed to four percentage points (33% vs. 29%). Immediately following Prentice’s election, the PCs won four by-elections on October 27. An Insights West poll in late November and early December 2014 showed the PCs back in front of Wild Rose by 35% to 29%, with the Liberals at 15% and the NDP at 16%. In early December, the PC resurgence seemed cemented when nine Wild Rose members, including then-leader Danielle Smith, crossed the floor of the legislature to join their former opponents.
Just as a rise in the provincial unemployment rate from 5.2% to 6.7% in the six months prior to the Ontario election had unsettled voters in that province, similar economic angst was generated in Alberta by a precipitous drop in oil prices from $93.29 in early September 2014 to $53.27 by the end of the year.
Despite this, the floor-crossing by a majority of the Wild Rose MPPs in early December restored the PCs to a level of support even higher than they had attained in the April 2012 general election. By mid-February 2015, an Environics poll showed the PCs with 46% of the popular vote compared to 18% for the Liberals, 17% for the NDP and 16% for Wild Rose. These data suggested voters were about to give the PCs that most rare of political gifts, a second chance. Similarly, in Ontario when the election was called at the end of July 1990 the Liberals stood at 50% in the polls and the Progressive Conservatives had just elected a new leader in Mike Harris.
However, the Alberta PCs still had to face the challenge of bringing in a budget reflecting the impact of the sharp fall in oil revenue royalties. The budget tabled on March 26 offered little relief to voters anxious about their economic prospects. It proposed several tax increases, sharply cut spending on public services, and still projected a deficit of some $5 billion. Similarly, the Peterson Liberals in April 1990 had presented a balanced budget with no measures to stimulate employment.
A poll taken almost immediately after the Alberta budget (March 27-30) by Insights West showed the PCs now only narrowly leading Wild Rose by 31% to 27%, with the NDP at 22% and the Liberals at 14%. Despite this evidence of the budget’s unpopularity, Prentice decided to call an early election even though he was not required to go to the polls for another year.
The early election call was not well-received by voters. A poll taken in early April by the Forum organization showed Wild Rose leading the PCs by 31% to 27%, with the NDP at 26% and the Liberals at 12%. At this point it was clear that the electorate was looking for an alternative to replace the PCs. Who that alternative would be was soon decided.
The final key event in the collapse of the PC dynasty was the Leaders’ Debate on April 23rd. A pedestrian performance by new Wild Rose leader Brian Jean and a strong one by NDP leader Rachel Notley resulted in the “Time for a Change” vote coalescing behind the New Democrats. Similarly, the Ontario leaders’ debate in 1990 led to a surge in support for Bob Rae’s New Democrats. A poll taken by Think HQ from April 26-28 put the NDP at 39%, Wild Rose at 27%, the PCs at 20% and the Liberals at 9%.
Between that date and the election, the PCs modestly rebounded from this level, but the NDP share held steady while the Wild Rose and Liberal vote shares continued to fall. The election-day result in the popular vote was NDP 40.6%, PC 27.8%, Wild Rose 24.2% and the Liberals 4.2%. Except for the NDP, all parties had a much smaller share of the vote than in the previous general election. Despite their decline in popular support, Wild Rose made a net gain of four seats because in Northern Alberta (outside of Edmonton) the PC share of the vote fell much more than theirs. Similarly, in Ontario, the PCs gained four seats from their 1987 total despite a decline in their share of the popular vote. In only four of the eighty-seven constituencies did the Wild Rose share of the overall vote increase compared to 2012. The result was thus not just a rejection of the PCs but also of Wild Rose.
From this chronology it is clear that the three fatal errors of the Prentice government were its failure to address the economic concerns of voters shaken by the precipitous decline in the price of oil, an over-reliance on the disarray of the party to their right, and their dismissal of the threat posed by the NDP. These errors led them to repeat the Peterson government’s strategic blunder of cynically calling an early election on the assumption that there was no viable alternative to their continued rule. The voters begged to differ and moved efficiently to give each province its first NDP government.
What are the lessons for the federal parties, particularly as Statistics Canada has just reported economic contraction in the first quarter? First, in times of economic uncertainty voters will value vigorous action to support growth and jobs more than balancing the budget. Second, relying on voters to react to economic uncertainty by re-electing a tested leader in preference to untested alternatives may prove a losing strategy when that leader ignores the popular mood. Third, the voters can be very efficient and ruthless in finding an alternative to a cynical government which seems more interested in manipulating them for partisan advantage than addressing their real needs and concerns.

“What happened to the Canadian advantage? For years after the great recession of 2008-09, Canadians comforted ourselves with the fact that our economy had survived the experience in better shape than most other countries, especially the United States. But the most recent survey of Canadian business leaders tells us that this sense of superiority is, decidedly, no longer the case. C suite executives see the American economy poised to dramatically outperform ours over the next 12 months.”
That was the lead paragraph of a March 30th story in the Globe and Mail’s Report on Business Section. The comments were based on the latest of the paper’s periodic surveys of the economic outlook of Canadian corporate executives. But the superiority of the USA over Canada in total and full-time job creation is not a prediction for the future, linked to the recent steep decline in the price of oil. It has been a glaring fact for the past two years.
Between February 2013 and February 2015 the number of jobs created in Canada rose by 1.3% compared to an increase of 3.4% in the United States. Full-time job creation in the USA over the same period rose by 4.5%, three times the increase of 1.5% recorded in Canada.
Yes, as difficult as it may be for ROB reporters, Canadian business executives and other apologists for the current government to believe, Stephen Harper and his team have, over the past two years generated only one-third the percentage growth in full-time jobs experienced by the USA under Barrack Obama and a dysfunctional Congress. Since 2009 the Harper government has spent millions of our tax dollars on advertisements crowing about their vaunted Economic Action Plan for jobs and growth and their skill as economic managers. You have to spend a lot of money to make that claim when your record doesn’t support it.

Last week Israeli Prime Minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, spoke to the United States Congress at the invitation of the Speaker of the House of Representatives, John Boehner. In the context of reports that the United States, in concert with the other permanent members of the United Nations Security Council and other major powers, was about to come to an agreement with Iran restricting its capacity to develop and deploy nuclear weapons, Mr. Netanyahu’s advice to those negotiating with Iran was simple. Walk away, step up sanctions against Iran and they will come back offering better terms.
Just under fifteen years ago at the Camp David Summit Yasar Arafat, then the leader of the Palestine Liberation Organization, was in a position similar to that faced by the USA today. Israeli Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, with the support of the USA , had offered him an independent Palestinian state consisting of the entire Gaza Strip and 73% (rising to 91% over the next 10-25 years) of the West Bank including pockets of East Jerusalem.
Playing the part of Netanyahu, Hamas and PLO hardliners pressured Arafat to refuse the offer and to launch new attacks against Israel, confidently predicting that the Israelis would soon come back with a better offer. We all know how well that strategy worked out for the Palestinians.
Fortunately, President Obama does not seem willing to repeat Arafat’s mistake.
Walking away from the negotiating table and putting additional pressure on your adversaries in the belief that will that they will come back with a better offer is just what it appears to be: a high stakes gamble based on wishful thinking.

The recent New Brunswick election is likely to be the last provincial campaign before the next federal campaign. On the surface, the New Brunswick results –a majority Liberal government – fall into the pattern of the recent elections in Nova Scotia, Quebec and Ontario. However, New Brunswick is the first province where an incumbent Progressive Conservative government was defeated.

So what is the significance of the New Brunswick results for the federal parties? Do the results presage a victory for the federal Liberal party? What lessons/warnings can federal parties take from this recent contest? Answering these questions requires a closer examination of how the New Brunswick campaign evolved and of the final results.

What Happened

Polls taken shortly after the election call on August 21seemed to promise a sweeping Liberal victory. Had the shifts in the overall popular vote from 2010 reflected in the polls taken in late August by Forum and Corporate Research Associates been applied uniformly to each of the 49 constituencies, the Liberals would have won between 39 and 41 seats. Applying a similar methodology to the polls taken in mid-September would have produced a narrower but still comfortable Liberal victory with 33 seats to 16 for the Progressive Conservatives.

Yet, the actual result was a much narrower Liberal majority of 27 seats compared to 21 for the PCs and 1 for the Green Party. Indeed, had the Liberals not won six of the seven most closely-contested seats in the province by margins equal to or less than 2.5% of the vote, David Alward’s government would have been re-elected with 27 seats despite losing the overall popular vote by just over 8 percentage points. Recounts have been requested in all seven of these seats.

The Liberal success in the popular vote was built on overwhelming support among francophone voters, a demographic that traditionally supports this party when it has a francophone leader. Of the twenty seats with substantial francophone populations, the Liberals won 19 compared to the seven they captured in 2010. In these francophone seats the Liberals won 54.9% of the popular vote, almost double the PC share of 27.7%.

In the rest of the province, the PCs won the popular vote over the Liberals by 40.0% to 33.4% and took 20 of the 29 remaining seats, compared to eight for the Liberals and one seat for the Greens in Fredericton South, a riding that includes the main University of New Brunswick campus. This marks the first time the Greens have won a seat in New Brunswick; electing their leader, David Coon, with 30.7% of the vote in a four-way race. Clearly, putting effort into a strategic riding paid off.

Not only did the Liberals do better in the francophone constituencies than the PCs did in the anglophone constituencies, they also did a better job of turning out voters in those seats. The turnout in the 20 francophone seats was 68.9% compared to 62.4% in the 29 anglophone seats.

Significance and Lessons for the Federal Parties

For the Liberals, what happened in New Brunswick shows that campaigns matter. The Liberals clearly lost ground during the campaign after party leader Brian Gallant displayed confusion about key elements of his party’s fiscal platform. In contrast, the PCs gained ground by putting forth a coherent economic plan, promoting development of the province’s shale gas and forest resources. The Alward government was also helped by a positive report early in September showing a large decrease in the province’s stubbornly high unemployment rate. The first lesson might therefore be that Justin Trudeau, with a much smaller lead in the polls than the New Brunswick Liberals, has no room for “rookie errors” and must be on his guard against complacency. Having a new, young, bilingual leader with little political experience was an advantage for the Liberals among New Brunswick francophones, but the party was left vulnerable in the rest of the province when Mr. Gallant showed himself to be ill-prepared on economic issues.

The federal Conservatives are unlikely to be able to narrowly miss taking a majority of the seats while trailing by eight percentage points in the popular vote as the New Brunswick PCs did. But they can take heart from the fact that a party that entered the election well behind in the polls fell just short of re-election when the votes were counted. The lower voter turnout in the traditionally PC, anglophone ridings of New Brunswick underlines for their federal counterparts the importance of getting your vote to the polls.

What about the NDP and the Greens? Both slightly increased their share of the popular vote over 2010 (from 10.4% to 13.0% for the NDP and from 4.5% to 6.6% for the Greens) but, for the most part those who wanted a change in government coalesced behind the Liberals who increased their share of the vote from 34.4% to 42.7 %. At the federal level, the NDP and Green parties will have to work hard to avoid a similar outcome.

That coalescing of the anti-government vote behind the Liberals, despite the less- than-impressive performance of their new leader in the campaign, is probably the most hopeful sign for the federal Liberals and the most discouraging for the federal NDP.

To sum up, the New Brunswick results provide lessons of both encouragement and warning to the federal Liberals and Conservatives, while offering little comfort for the NDP and a reminder to the Greens of the potential of focusing their efforts on winnable constituencies.

An Explanation for Kathleen Wynne’s Surprising Majority
And other Observations on the 2014 Ontario General Election
Understandably, most of the attention immediately following the June 12th Ontario election was focused on the surprising achievement of a majority by the Liberals, a result predicted to my knowledge only by Frank Graves of the EKOS polling organization. A close examination of the final results released later in June reveals how that result occurred and some other interesting features of the election.
The anti-PC vote coalesces behind the Liberals in most parts of Ontario, but the NDP builds on its by-election gains in Southwest Ontario and Niagara Falls
The election was a stunning setback for Tim Hudak’s Progressive Conservatives. Their share of the popular vote fell 4.1 percentage points to its lowest level since 1990 (31.3%). They lost 9 of the 37 seats they held at dissolution: 8 to the Liberals, and Oshawa to the NDP. They increased their share of the vote in only 17 of the 107 constituencies, and in only nine of these did they come closer to winning than in 2011. Most of the constituencies where their share of the vote improved were in Scarborough and in south and west Toronto where they remained far behind the winning candidates.
The woes of the PC’s were compounded by a remarkably efficient coalescing of the non-PC vote. Although both the Liberals and the NDP share of the vote province-wide increased only by 1% compared to the 2011 election, the Liberals made a net gain of five seats and the NDP a net gain of four. While Graves correctly predicted the Liberal majority, he mistakenly believed it would occur as a result of a province-wide collapse in NDP support.
The Liberal seat gains were mainly in Central Ontario and in downtown South Toronto, where their share of the vote rose by 6.1 percentage points and by 4.3 percentage points respectively enabling them to capture four seats from the PCs in the former region and three seats from the NDP in the latter. They also won Halton, Burlington and Cambridge from the PCs. The NDP share of the vote declined in all the constituencies won by the Liberals from the PCs except Durham and fell sharply (by 8.7 percentage points) in downtown south Toronto. The Liberals also recaptured Etobicoke Lakeshore from the PCs which they had lost in an August 2013 by-election.
The NDP held their by-election gains in Kitchener-Waterloo (from the PCs) and in Niagara Falls, London West and Windsor Tecumseh (from the Liberals). In addition they picked up Oshawa from the PCs and Sudbury and Windsor West from the Liberals to offset their losses to the Liberals in downtown Toronto. Their share of the vote rose sharply in Southwest Ontario (from 27.6% to 40.1%) while the Liberal share collapsed (falling from 33.8% to 22.9%). They narrowly avoided being completely shut out in the region by barely hanging on in London North Centre.
In short, in key individual seats and regions there was a decisive rallying of the non-PC vote behind either the Liberals or the NDP leading to an exchange of seats between the two parties in some areas and PC losses in others.

Good News for Women
The number of female candidates elected rose from 32 in 2011 to 38 in 2014 as Kathleen Wynne became the first elected woman Premier of Ontario. Women now account for 35.5% of the members of the Ontario legislature- up from 29.9% in 2011. This was welcome news for advancement of women in Canadian politics following a bad recent stretch. Just a year ago there were five female Premiers in Canada, but with the defeat of Pauline Marois in the Quebec election and the forced resignations of Allison Redford in Alberta and Kathy Dunderdale in Newfoundland and Labrador only two now remain: Wynne and Christy Clark in British Columbia.
Good News for Citizen Engagement
After falling to an all-time low of 48.0% in 2011 many were predicting that voter turnout in Ontario would decline again for the sixth consecutive election on June 12. However, while a bare majority of eligible voters cast valid ballots, turnout surprisingly rose to 52.1% province-wide, the highest rate since 2003, and in 104 of the 107 constituencies. The only exceptions were Essex, Timmins-James Bay and Windsor Tecumseh, won by the NDP with landslide margins.
A Modest Revival for the Greens
After seeing their share of the vote fall to a derisory 2.9% in 2011 the Green Party staged a modest revival, polling 4.8% in 2014. They finished third in three constituencies (compared to one in 2011) and received more than 15% of the vote in all three- a threshold they were unable to cross in 2011. Specifically, they polled 19.3% of the vote in both Guelph and Parry-Sound Muskoka and 16.6% of the vote in Dufferin- Caledon.

Memories of Spadina By-Elections Past

Watching the results come in from the Trinity-Spadina federal by-election on June 30th (one of four federal by-elections held that day) brought back memories of another summer federal by-election in the old Spadina riding thirty-three years ago in August 1981.
In an attempt to get his principal secretary, Jim Coutts, into the House of Commons then Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau had appointed the sitting Liberal member, Peter Stollery to the Senate. The Progressive Conservative candidate was noted journalist, Laura Sabia. The NDP candidate was municipal councillor, Dan Heap. There were also a scattering of minor party and independent candidates.
Although Statistics Canada had not yet confirmed it , the country had just entered the severe recession of 1981-82 which would ultimately bring down the Liberals and pave the way for the Mulroney PC sweep of 1984. I was then working in the federal Progressive Conservative caucus research office and was not directly involved in the campaign, but was kept apprised of developments by several friends who were.
With a strong candidate in Laura Sabia, it became clear early in the campaign that for the first time in several years the PCs were competitive in the riding and that, contrary to all expectations, the election would not be a coronation for Jim Coutts. So, on election night my friends hopefully gathered at Laura’s election headquarters to await the results. They were initially thrilled to find that the race indeed was a three-way nail biter. However, as the evening wore on, it became apparent that a PC victory was not going to happen and that Jim Coutts was the probable winner. A pall of disappointment fell over the headquarters. Then word arrived that Dan Heap had been elected on the strength of late-reporting polls south of Bloor Street. The PC headquarters erupted with cheering and campaign workers embraced each other as moral victory was snatched from the jaws of defeat. As a friend who was there told me on his return to Ottawa, uninformed observers would have assumed they were in NDP, not PC headquarters.
It would be hard to imagine a similar response in Conservative headquarters on June 30th had Joe Cressy defeated Adam Vaughan, the candidate of the son of Prime Minister Trudeau, and held on to the successor constituency of Trinity-Spadina for the NDP. It was the same place, but another time and a very different and non-Progressive Conservative party.

John Lennon’s Imagine- Beautiful Tune, Problematic Message

There is no doubt about the popularity of John Lennon’s 1971 song, Imagine.[i] Rolling Stone, ranked it number 3 on their list of “The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time.” Canadian listeners to the 2005 CBC program, 50 Tracks, ranked it the number one “most essential song in pop music history.” It was played at the close of the 2012 London Summer Olympics. Former USA President, Jimmy Carter has said that “in many countries around the world- my wife and I have visited about 125 countries- you hear John Lennon’s song Imagine used almost equally with national anthems.”

Like many others, I find its melody serene and beautifully hypnotic, but the words are something else again. In essence, its message is that we can all live in a world of universal peace and harmony if we simply get rid of religion, countries and private property. In a later interview, Lennon said he did not mean a world “without religion “but one ‘with no denominations of religion’…without this my God-is-bigger-than-your-God thing”. How we could have no denominations of religion and still have religion is left unexplained, but the lyrics clearly ask us to “imagine there’s no heaven…and no religion too.”

Lennon also once stated the message of the song was “virtually the Communist Manifesto even though I’m not particularly a Communist and I do not belong to any movement.” In one of his final interviews he summed up its message as “anti-religious, anti-nationalistic, anti-capitalistic, but because it is sugar-coated it is accepted.” Lennon’s political stance was always that of an agitator , but an agitator mischievously trying to slip one by conservative and conventional people, rather than one who forthrightly stood up for what he believed and worked tirelessly to achieve it.

I have two objections to the song’s message. First, as one who believes that Christianity and patriotism, (rightly interpreted) and the ambition to provide for oneself economically are three of the main forces offering hope for making the world a better place and ourselves better people, Lennon is calling for a world without the things most worth striving for and living for. Worse, I believe, it would open the door to dystopia rather than utopia.

George Orwell, certainly no apologist for organized religion, in an April 1940 review of Malcolm Muggeridge’s, The Thirties, written in the heyday of Hitler, Stalin and Mussolini, pointed out that the successful effort since the Enlightenment to undermine belief in God and the human soul, however justified by the evils done in the name of religion, had produced results quite different than those anticipated. “For two hundred years we had sawed and sawed at the branch we were sitting on. And in the end, much more suddenly than anyone had foreseen, our efforts were rewarded and down we came. But unfortunately there had been a little mistake. The thing at the bottom was not a bed of roses after all; it was a cesspool full of barbed wire. It is as though in the space of ten years we had slid back into the Stone Age. Human types supposedly extinct for centuries, the dancing dervish, the robber chieftain, the Grand Inquisitor, have suddenly reappeared, not as inmates of lunatic asylums, but as the masters of the world.”

Second, even if you find the vision of a world without religion, countries and private property attractive, the words of Imagine are still objectionable. Why?  Because Lennon tells us implicitly that all we need to do to achieve it is to wish for it. ‘’Imagine no more heaven,” he tells us, “It’s easy if you try.” “Imagine there’s no countries. It isn’t hard to do.” Just join me and others in imagining this brave new world, he concludes, “And the world will live as one.”

The attraction of Lennon’s vision, even for those who do not share his rejection of religion, patriotism and possessions is that it is so undemanding. “Imagine a brotherhood of man”, he assures us, and it will appear. That is an irresponsible lie. “There are simple answers”, Ronald Reagan said in supporting Barry Goldwater for President in 1964…”but there are no easy answers.” Imagine is so appealing and has proved, despite its popularity, to be so ineffective in leading us closer to its vision precisely because it ignores that distinction.

The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., like Lennon, had a dream of universal freedom and brotherhood. However, it differed from Lennon’s in two important ways. It was inspired by, rather than rejecting, Christianity. And those it appealed to had been shown by King’s example that it had to be worked for and sacrificed for, not just dreamed of. Not surprisingly, it is King’s dream which has inspired action towards its realization, while Lennon’s dream remains a fantasy set to a lovely melody we can listen to and sing when we want to lull ourselves with its comforting message that all we need to do to get a better world is to “imagine” it.

[i] The full lyrics of Imagine are:

Imagine there’s no heaven It’s easy if you try No hell below us Above us only sky Imagine all the people living for today Imagine there’s no countries It isn’t hard to do Nothing to kill or die for And no religion too Imagine all the people living life in peace You, you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one I hope someday you’ll join us And the world will be as one Imagine no possessions I wonder if you can No need for greed or hunger A brotherhood of man Imagine all the people sharing all the world You, you may say I’m a dreamer, but I’m not the only one I hope someday you’ll join us And the world will live as one