THE NEW DEMOCRATS HAVE BEEN IN LIMBO SINCE THEY UNCEREMONIOUSLY BOOTED OUT TOM MULCAIR. BUT THE RACE FOR THE LEADERSHIP IS ABOUT TO HEAT UP, REPORTS JOHN IVISON.
“He was trapped in a haircut he no longer believed in.”
The words are by English songwriter Billy Bragg.
But thoughts turn, not unreasonably, to Canada’s NDP — a party trapped within a policy framework it no longer believes in.
The New Democrats have been in limbo since they booted leader Tom Mulcair, without ceremony, 15 months ago. He has done his duty by remaining the public face of the party but has increasingly become a Banquo’s ghost-type figure, drifting around the House of Commons reminding members of their treachery and the tantalizing sense of what might have been.
The party under Mulcair was so desperate to re-assure voters it would not blow up the economy, it resembled an old-fashioned merry-goround — offering a sense of motion, without the danger — just as Justin Trudeau turned the Liberal Party into Insanity: The Ride.
Since then, the NDP has been engaged, almost unnoticed, in a slow burn leadership race.
But things are about to heat up. There is just one month to go until sales of new memberships are cut off. There have been few public polls but one by Mainstreet Research last week suggested MP Charlie Angus has the support of nearly one quarter of existing members, compared to nearly one in five for his caucus colleague Niki Ashton and one in 10 for Quebec MP Guy Caron.
Jagmeet Singh, the Ontario MPP who is positioning himself as the candidate who can grow party memberships among minority voters in the suburbs, trailed all three of his rivals. There remains a large undecided vote, but Singh is so far behind, he needs to sell a lot of new memberships in the next month. A lot.
He received a welcome boost Monday by picking up the endorsement from the party’s well-respected foreign affairs critic, Hélène Laverdiere. The backing of a Quebec MP is important for Singh, given doubts expressed that a turbanwearing Sikh could ever win mass support in a province so resolutely secular.
Laverdiere addressed the issue directly, comparing Singh with the late Jack Layton in terms of his leadership style.
The NDP race, like the Conservative one, is a preferential ranked ballot, which means it pays to play nice with rivals whose supporters you might need.
But there is a rupture in the party over pipelines that acts as a kind of ink blot test for many wider issues.
All the candidates have pledged to transition the economy away from fossil fuels to a green economy but Angus, while he opposes Kinder Morgan’s Trans Mountain line, sounds more favourably disposed toward development.
“We don’t throw a generation of workers under the bus to make a political point,” he said.
Angus is the classic bluecollar NDP candidate, focused on helping the working class navigate life in the new economy.
“The middle class has become the new working class — an endless cycle of shortterm contract work, without benefits, without pensions, burdened by student debt and unable to buy homes in the communities they love,” he says in his platform.
He will do well in northern Ontario, Hamilton and blue-collar B.C. but critics point to his tentative French as a limitation in Quebec.
There are also doubts about whether Angus could take the party from its current 15 per cent support to the 30 per cent won by Layton in 2011 — growth that would likely require a breakthrough with the suburban minivan-driving voters who flocked to Trudeau in 2015.
Ashton’s message is targeted at millennials, activists, women and Indigenous populations. She talks of reversing privatizations, opposing trade deals, fighting racial discrimination and rejecting pipelines. Her website focuses on ending gender violence, economic justice, opposing the Trans Mountain pipeline and securing a “just peace” in the Middle East. But there is very little hard policy, beyond a commitment to somehow generate $40 billion in new revenues to spend on free tuition, pharmacare and universal dental care.
Rivals say the message resonates in downtown pockets of the big cities, but as one party veteran put it: “She’s just got one speed — there’s no nuance.”
Caron also pledges to raise tens of billions in new revenue but he, at least, is specific about how — notably from a wealth tax on the richest 10 per cent. He would use the proceeds to introduce a basic income for Canadians who fall below the low income cutoff threshold.
On pipelines, Singh has attempted to straddle the divide, urging the party not to “pit workers against environmentalists.”
This flexible approach means he appears to be on all sides of every argument, including some the NDP would traditionally disavow, such as his suggestion the Senate could become an elected chamber (NDP policy has been to abolish the upper house).
It has allowed Angus to portray him as a Liberal, infuriating Singh’s supporters, who counter that his tax plan is more redistributive than any of the candidates.
Singh is, as Laverdiere pointed out, a “new voice and a new image on the federal scene who will generate a lot of enthusiasm, especially among youth.”
Like Lisa Raitt in the Conservative race, his personal story is compelling and would be a good foil to Trudeau’s more illustrious patrimony.
In keeping with the Prime Minister, he has that X-factor: people know when he is in a room. It helped get him elected as a New Democrat in Brampton, where he has since built a political machine that he is seeking to recreate in the lower mainland of B.C., Calgary and Winnipeg.
But his potential to grow the party will count for nothing unless he can win the leadership.
He needs to sign up thousands (perhaps tens of thousands) of new members before next month’s cutoff or the NDP appears destined to make the safe, perhaps sensible, choice of electing Angus leader.
If Trudeau continues to upset progressives, that might prove inspired.
In an era of fake news and equivocal politicians, no one could ever accuse Charlie Angus of sporting a haircut he didn’t believe in.