During the campaign for the election that affirmed her leadership of the People's National Party (PNP), Mrs Portia Simpson announced as her platform something she dubbed as the party's progressive agenda.

Up to now, though, there has been no clear articulation of this agenda, except for some vague notion of something to do with poor people, or perhaps delivering equity in the age of globalisation. But we are guessing, trying to pull together disparate strands and attempting to make sense of them.

Mrs Simpson Miller's shadow Cabinet has not been of much help either. In the weeks since its formation, after Mrs Simpson Miller's defeat of the challenge by Dr Peter Phillips, the shadow government has lacked coherence; its offerings have been tiny and mostly inconsequential.

Party adrift

It is not that the shadow ministers have been quiet. They are far from that. They issue, through the party's secretariat, plenty of statements. But these are mostly obligatory responses to actions of, or perceived misconduct or indiscretions on the part of the Government. They are mostly under-researched and lacking in thought or of big ideas.

To put it bluntly, there is a sense of the PNP being a party adrift, absent of philosophical moorings, or, dare we say it, ideological foundation. It is as if the PNP sees its path back to power as either via self-inflicted blunders by the Golding administration, with help, perhaps, from the global financial crisis.

Such a hope might not be far-fetched, but we would hope for more from an opposition party that would be the Government. Jamaica deserves more - and better. That is why we urge that the PNP get on with the job of formulating this 'progressive agenda' so that Jamaicans can have something, hopefully substantive, to assess.

Indeed, Mrs Simpson Miller has suggested that her progressive agenda will develop in a sort of diffused fashion, via a series of meetings or group sessions chaired, we suppose, by spokesmen or, maybe, regional leaders.

There is no clarity as to how it, whatever it is, is to be synthesised and be brought into an authentic, substantive whole of a progressive agenda. It all remains rather ephemeral.

Debating ideas

In this regard, we are sure that Mrs Simpson Miller would not mind if we draw to her attention a suggestion from Canada, where the Liberals, once thought of as the natural party of government, is like her own, similarly adrift. The Liberals just lost the general election and its leader, Stephane Dion, has stepped down.

But some Canadian commentators have taken to reminding the Liberals of a time, nearly half a century ago, when it was in a similar position and John Diefenbaker's Conservatives held sway.

In 1960, the Liberal leader, Lester Pearson, organised a major conference of national problems, at which were participants who were non-party people.

During that two-day session in Kingston, Ontario, experts and party members debated great issues and ideas, and out of that cerebral encounter flowed the Liberal Party's 'progressive agenda' and a new optimism.

By the way, it was those ideas that paved the way for later emergence of leaders such as Pierre Trudeau, of whom the old PNP would have known.

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