Intellectual Tom gives way to Everyman Tom
Is Tom Mulcair down for the count? Judging from every recent poll, you might imagine so. But you’d be wrong. Six months ahead of the scheduled October vote, the NDP leader’s advisers are feeling good about his positioning and prospects. They have reason to feel that way.
It’s easy to make too much of the handful of recent surveys showing a slight uptick in NDP support, to 23 per cent or so, as measured by aggregator ThreeHundredEight.com. Some have drawn a connection to the opposition leader’s relentlessly sunny disposition in recent appearances. His highvoltage grin blazes out from every campaign image. Others point to his Main Street-friendly overtures to voters in the Greater Toronto Area, which began in earnest in mid-March.
I suspect there’s something deeper at work, which is simply this: consistency. For more than a year, Mulcair has been consistent in the positions he’s taken, with no equivocation. And the two policy areas in which such firmness might have done him major harm have effectively been taken off the table.
Heard anyone on the federal scene talking much about the Keystone XL pipeline recently? Dutch disease? No. Reason: The locus of debate has moved past whether this or that pipeline plan is preferable, to whether any can fly politically in the current climate. And the price of oil has collapsed. As a result, both Liberals and Conservatives have lost a powerful cudgel with which they might previously have beaten Mulcair about the head and neck.
His second Achilles heel, outside Quebec, has been his party’s Sherbrooke Declaration, which asserts 50 per cent-plus-one in a referendum would constitute a sufficient threshold for the Quebec separation. It’s a ludicrous position for a national party to take. The Supreme Court’s decision in 1998, requiring a clear majority on a clear question before negotiations on separation can begin (with the clarity of the question to be judged by Parliament), obviously indicates a threshold above 50-plus-one, by using the adjective “clear.” This defines a “majority” as something beyond the simple; ergo, 50-plus-one is not enough.
But again, except in the fevered imaginations of those given to constitutional chatter, this is not a flashpoint now, because Quebec Premier Philippe Couillard was kind enough to send the Parti Quebecois packing in last April’s election.
On the plus side of policy debate, meantime, the NDP leader has his opposition to Bill C-51, the federal anti-terror bill, which is riddled with problems the Conservatives have refused to address (and which has caused a big headache for the Liberals, who’ve pledged to vote for it, holding their noses); his opposition to the bombing campaign against ISIL which, agree or disagree on principle, few could fail to understand; and his deliberate hewing to middle-class values in pitching his economic policies, with the refrain that a Mulcair-led government would neither raise personal income taxes nor run deficits.
The NDP’s plan to abolish the Senate is almost certainly impossible, given the constitutional constraints, again imposed by the Supreme Court of Canada. But this does not much lessen its rhetorical appeal in the Summer of Duff, with Red Chamber excesses on unlovely display and a probe of Senate spending by auditor general Michael Ferguson still to land.
Lost in all the coalition talk, as polls show either the Conservatives or Liberals are within reach of forming a minority, is that in either case Mulcair stands to hold the balance of power. It isn’t inconceivable he could leverage major social-democratic concessions ( proportional representation, anyone?) out of a Harper minority government, in exchange for his temporary backing. Because only Nixon could go to China, the Dippers might actually be in a better political position to shore up a Tory minority than would be the Trudeau Liberals.
Last, there’s the wild card of televised debate. The NDP leader’s gravitas as a speaker is recognized in Ottawa, less so beyond it. In televised combat such recognition can come in the space of a few minutes, as Alberta NDP Leader Rachel Notley showed Friday in handing a shell-shocked Premier Jim Prentice his hat and raincoat, too. Consistent policy positioning and some luck have bought Mulcair his ante; a debate sweep by him, or a serious flub by Trudeau or Harper, could change the game.
The greatest risk the NDP leader faces now, oddly for someone running in distant third, is over-confidence and the perception of arrogance. And this is why, between now and October, we can expect to see a lot more images of him hobnobbing at sporting events, such as last Wednesday’s Sens-Habs matchup, and sipping beer in pubs. Intellectual Tom is to become Everyman Tom; and the race becomes one of three, not two.