Why Singh says he won’t work with the Tories
To hear Jagmeet Singh’s critics tell it, the NDP leader has just thrown the election. With his declaration on Aug. 22 that his party would not support a Conservative government in a minority Parliament, Singh has done what no NDP leader has done in any recent election: conceded, from the outset, that he does not expect to win it. The statement, detractors say, smacks of defeatism, the kind that demoralizes volunteers and saps the party’s credibility.
To hear Singh tell it, he was simply taking a stand on principle. A video had just been released showing the Conservative leader, Andrew Scheer, speaking against gay marriage in Parliament — in 2005. The “news” of Scheer’s publicly stated position of 14 years ago — a position shared by many progressives at the time, which he has since recanted — had so shaken Singh that he could not in good conscience be responsible for propping up the Conservatives in power.
Uh huh. Let me gently suggest what else might be behind Singh’s move. Rather than a tactical blunder or a moral line in the sand, it may simply be an attempt to position the party to advantage in the pre-election jockeying for strategic voters — aimed, specifically, at the NDP’s mortal rivals on the left, the Greens.
Why might this be so? Consider, first, the current state of play in the polls: a tight race between the Conservatives and the Liberals, with no more than a percentage point between them on average, both in the low 30s. The most likely outcome, if this holds: a minority Parliament of some kind, with neither party capable of governing on its own.
Next, consider the likely strategies of the two major parties in response. The Liberals will do what they nearly always do: paint the Conservatives as racists, Nazis and worse, the better to frighten NDP and Green supporters into voting Grit as the only way to “stop the Tories.”
The Conservatives, for their part, will respond with a timetested fear campaign of their own, this one aimed at centrist voters. In a minority parliament, they will say, the alternative to the Conservatives is not the Liberals, but the Liberals propped up by the NDP (boo!) and/or the Greens (yikes!). Only a Tory majority, the party will insist, can avert this dreaded scenario.
You can see this strategy at work in news reports of unnamed Conservative insiders privately “admitting” their party cannot form a minority government, for lack of support from the other parties. This may or may not be true, but it is certainly in the party’s interest to persuade target voters it is. The message: a minority Parliament means government hostage to radicals.
Now let’s look at things from the perspective of the two left-wing parties. If, first, you are the Greens, how do you respond? The party is riding high (relatively speaking) in the polls, within hugging distance of the NDP. Experience teaches, however, that many people who say they will vote Green fail to do so on election day — in part, for fear of splitting the vote (see Liberal strategy, above); in part, for fear of wasting it.
The self-fulfilling prophecy that the Greens can’t win any seats, or would have little influence if they could, is one of the major obstacles to the party holding onto its vote, let alone expanding it. In a hung Parliament, however, all is in flux: even a couple of seats might be enough to give the Greens the balance of power — with which, perhaps, to demand a shift to proportional representation, and a larger place for the Greens in Parliament.
So the Greens have two objectives. The first is to avoid being caught in the Liberal fear campaign — if not to suggest that the Conservatives are not that bad, then at least that the Liberals are not that much better. The second is to avoid giving oxygen to the Conservative fear campaign, that the only alternative to a Liberal minority is a Conservative majority. For the Green strategy to succeed, the Tory strategy must fail.
What does all that spell? You only have to listen to what party leader Elizabeth May has been saying of late. Earlier in the year she had seemed to rule out supporting the Conservatives in a minority. But since the summer she has taken to saying she could support either party, so long as it had a credible plan for dealing with climate change. Whether either party does, at present, at least to the Greens’ satisfaction, is another matter: May is holding out hope that each might be persuaded to adopt one, in exchange for power.
Further confirmation might be found in May’s remarkable statement at last week’s “emergency” meeting of the Commons ethics committee, in response to the federal ethics commissioner’s report on the SNC-Lavalin affair. “The prime minister,” she said, “is guilty of the kind of offence for which resignation is appropriate.”
May has been accused of being too friendly with the Liberals in general, and the prime minister in particular.
Her recent rhetoric implies not just that she might be willing to hold her nose and support the Conservatives, but that she would have to hold her nose to support either party.
That’s smart strategy, I think. By leaving open the possibility of propping up a Conservative government, May actually takes some of the air out of the Tories’ “majority or bust” strategy. But it does leave an opening for the increasingly desperate NDP. And that is to present themselves as the “real” voice of the left, pure and uncompromising where the Greens are wishy-washy and opportunistic, steady and experienced where the Greens are drunk on their newfound popularity.
Hence Singh’s Aug. 22 statement. The message, amplified in subsequent statements by NDP MPs: perhaps the Greens might be willing to do deals with the hated Tories, but the NDP is not.