The NDP is always wrong. That’s almost impressive
Pierre Poilievre spent last weekend at the Conservative convention offering Canadians hope for a better and more affordable country after Justin Trudeau’s time as prime minister ends. Meanwhile, Trudeau’s Liberals are taking a well-deserved public opinion thrashing — the inevitable backlash against their failed policies and unwavering insistence that the miserable outcomes they have produced are in fact splendid results. The Liberal caucus is said to be frustrated, discouraged, angry and disillusioned.
The NDP, largely irrelevant, sits squarely on the sidelines, so its mood is harder to diagnose. For Canadians outside that party, however, here are two appropriate emotions: amusement that the NDP remains so low in the polls and bemusement that it seems so content to be so low.
These days, the federal NDP is most notable for how weak it is. That it has any real plan, any intellectual coherence, any economic sanity, any vision for improving the country, or that it deserves any electoral success, no serious person can believe. Its criticisms of the federal government’s failures are wholly ineffective: the government survives only because of the NDP’S support. Party leader Jagmeet Singh often blames inequality, unaffordability or other outcomes he laments on bad Liberal and Conservative policies. He is evidently oblivious to the fact that it his party, not the Conservatives, that is propping up the Liberal government.
The public is not fooled: as long as the NDP allows the Liberal agenda to continue it must share the blame. Whatever credibility the party had it surrendered by supporting the government,
and whatever hope it has of restoring its credibility is frustrated by its leader’s singular inauthenticity. The term “champagne socialist” was coined to describe those who express political solidarity with the poor while themselves enjoying a luxurious lifestyle; Jagmeet Singh’s fondness for luxury watches and tailored suits has inspired the coining of the new term “Rolex socialist.”
More than any previous NDP leader, Singh has made a name for himself by denouncing the creation of prosperity. Whatever song is playing, he belts out a constant, off-key note: the rich,
the rich are to blame. One does not actually have to be “rich” to be castigated by the NDP, however: that someone owns a business earning profits or a property generating income is sufficient evidence they are greedy and oppressive — though his attempts to paint property investors as the scourge of the earth are undermined by the fact his wife owns a rental property in British Columbia. There is, of course, nothing wrong with wearing fancy clothes or being a landlord. It is the hypocrisy that is off-putting.
On policy, the NDP has a long history of error. But its being so spectacularly and consistently wrong is a relatively new development. Singh’s immediate predecessor, Thomas Mulcair, got a few things right, including his opposition to raising top marginal income tax rates higher than 50 per cent. Even Alexandria Ocasio-cortez, the socialist Congressional representative from New York, recently landed on the right side of an important issue by pushing back against the Food and Drug Administration’s over-regulation of sunscreens, which leave Americans with products that provide worse protection against sunburn and skin cancer than European sunscreens. But Singh has yet to be on the right side of a policy debate.
Things that worsen economic problems, Singh unfailingly insists must be expanded. Things that are not problems at all, he can be relied on to denounce as ruinous. Increased government spending is the antidote for inflation; the way to tackle housing affordability is to redistribute money to property owners; though grocery store costs are too high, grocery store wages are too low; and so on. Under Singh’s leadership, the NDP’S extraordinary consistency in making errors is almost impressive: even a stopped clock is right twice a day; to be always in error requires serious effort. We may soon have to conclude that Singh carefully works out the correct policy solutions to the country’s economic problems (possibly by reading this page), then deliberately takes the opposite view. But there are objections to that theory, too. Whatever the reason, the NDP’S being so impotent — and so satisfied with being so impotent — should amuse and bemuse everyone not in that party.