Reform needs patience, not purity

Every reform movement eventually meets the man who would rather lose cleanly than win in company. In our movement that man is Boj Volansky, and in Decelska he took twenty per cent of the vote and handed the government its safest seat.

The lesson of the 2022 election is not that the Front compromised too little. It is that we grew when we governed with others and shrank when we demanded ideological receipts. The liberal vote is not a private endowment to be spent on a point of principle.

I will keep arguing for the courts bill, the accreditation rules and the formula that has starved the district schools. Each of those needs a majority, and a majority is not a purity test. It is arithmetic, and patience, and the company of people who agree with us about most things.