The orange afterglow

Where, oh where, has the NDP gone? Not so long ago, they were the official Opposition. And in the run- up to the last election, they appeared for a moment to have a real chance of unseating Stephen Harper’s Conservatives and forming the next government.

Alas, for the New Democratic Party, that was but a glimmer of hope, as Canadians soon awoke to the glories and glamour of Justin Trudeau. He and his Liberals roared to power with 39 per cent of the popular vote. after the election, the NDP dropped back to its historic position as Canada’s thirdplace party, a mere footnote in the history books of most federal elections, and party members fell into a funk.

Then the Dippers held a convention in Edmonton and adopted the Leap Manifesto — a document with the rigour of early Nostradamus and the appeal of a mass root canal — the brainchild of socialist nomad Avi Lewis and his equally itinerant spouse, Naomi Klein. At the same gathering of political pall bearers, the party delivered to its leader, Thomas Mulcair, the thorny bouquet of a lacklustre leadership review, which, under the circumstances, wasn’t so much a rebuke, as a public grinding of the axe before calling poor Mulcair to the executioner’s block.

Since then, we have heard little about the Leap Manifesto. But the Klein- Lewis intervention, combined with the scathing vote against his leadership, drained Mulcair of his standing and depleted the party of most of its reason. Ever since, Mulcair has played the political hermit, out of sight and unreported, more lonely than Crusoe before Friday.

The party’s thorough rebuke of Mulcair and his values ( he did much work to push the party toward the centre of the political spectrum) put him in an impossible position — keeping him as leader, while amputating his ability to lead. No wonder he’s stayed in the shadows while his party continues to drift, rudderless.

In the meantime, Trudeau has with great relish ab- sorbed the progressive edge that was always the NDP’s mainstay and remade the Liberal party in his image. How can Mulcair, the serious and thoughtful forensic stalwart of question period, possibly compete with the interminable photo-montage of Trudeau’s first year in office?

Trudeau has the gift of turning truisms into liferafts. Who else could find political buoyancy in the puckish outburst of “i t’s 2015.” Or the amusingly Liberal self- regarding “Canada is back.” Or the zesty gush of “it’s not who we are as Canadians.” The prime minister’s mind is a hospice for terminally exhausted platitudes and clichés on life- support. These and similar nuggets of Trudeauian wisdom give glibness a bad name.

Nonetheless, such cheery blurts of greeting- card sagacity, and even the occasional Zen- riddle of non- thought (“there is no core identity, no mainstream in Canada”) coming from so youthful and beaming a prime minister, act like a charm to young voters, once also a more fertile ground for the NDP.

The truth is that Trudeau has annexed most of the NDP’s tone and attitude, and fitted its preoccupations in new dress, giving it that much- wished- for modern edge. And for what it’s worth, he’s done much the same to the boycott, divest and sanctions-infected Green party.

Mulcair has nei t her the temperament, or, one guesses, the desire, to challenge this style of politics. His party has, effectively left him, not the reverse. And the dynamic elements of it, such as they were, belong now to Trudeau.

Mulcair ’ s withdrawal from the public eye should thus not come as a surprise. It’s both logical and, from his perspective, justifiable. We could wish for a better exit for a man whose talents are abundant, but who has had the misfortune of living in a time when his bland style was overshadowed by the new- age political artist that is Trudeau. But, alas, it would appear that a graceful exit from the political stage was never in the cards for Mulcair.

LAURIER NEVER LOST HIS FAITH IN CANADA AND HER PEOPLES. — HARPER NO WONDER MULCAIR HAS STAYED IN THE SHADOWS.