Next NDP leader must offer a positive vision
In what turned into a bit of an exit interview Thursday, outgoing NDP Leader Ryan Meili was asked what advice he had for his successor.
Don't be your own attack dog on every issue, Meili essentially told reporters in his last scrum at the legislature as Opposition leader. Leave it to others to carry the attack and present your broader, more positive vision as to where your party is going.
It was sage counsel for either Carla Beck or Kaitlyn Harvey, vying to become the next NDP leader of what is now a 12-member opposition rump.
It also pretty much sums up most — if not all — of the problems of not only Meili's leadership but what's ailed the Saskatchewan NDP for the past decade and a half.
For an NDP leader who frequently demonstrated self-awareness and introspection during his four years at the helm of the Opposition, it was an applied political-life lesson that came too late. Perhaps it's not too late for the next NDP leader ... presuming she adopts a new direction immediately.
Strategically speaking, it's never good for an opposition leader to be sullied by the dirty business of always raising unpleasant issues and criticizing rather than offering that broader, positive vision.
The success of former premiers Brad Wall and Roy Romanow was partly due to having others to serve as attack dogs in opposition. (In Romanow's case in the late 1980s, he had an entire rabid pack.)
That current Premier
Scott Moe never served in opposition is perhaps one reason why he struggles with those who are struggling and often seems convinced his job is trips, sod turnings and playing opposition leader to the federal government. But that's a column for another day.
The reality for Meili is that he chose an unproductive strategy in which he would single-handedly charge the Saskatchewan Party government head-on with long, hectoring preambles in question period about what he saw as the problem of day.
Much to his frustration and chagrin, the Sask. Party would invariably turn the attack on him as a leader out of touch with the real meat-and-potato issues of the province.
Perhaps it was because Meili's small caucus had no one willing or capable of serving the attack dog role. It wasn't as if Meili had many in his caucus undyingly devoted to him in his March 2018 leadership campaign ... or perhaps, after.
But while Meili struggled as Saskatchewan NDP leader, he has hardly been the only one.
For most of the past 15 years, the NDP has been a cat chasing a laser pointer: confused, yet hopeful in its obliviousness that other forces control that red dot. Meili was just the latest cat chasing the dot rather than figuring out the source of the issue.
One gets that it was in Meili's nature as a left-wing doctor to focus on the disadvantaged, which included First Nations, northern residents, working poor, women, the elderly and others who weren't doing as well in today's Saskatchewan and were dealing with health, economic and social concerns.
However, his attack strategy — centred around the problem of the day and, invariably, daily demands to deal with such injustices — weren't always relatable to a majority simply wanting a good job and to get ahead.
Lost were the political riches offered by issues like the Global Transportation Hub, the Regina bypass or the plethora of poor budgetary and policy issues that simply demonstrated how some in the province were getting ahead at the expense of the majority paying for it with their tax dollars.
When such negative issues were raised, they were often raised by Meili, himself, who quickly became the guy with a lot of reasons to complain but few good ideas on how to do better by growing the economy or even fixing what was wrong.
If the NDP is to go anywhere, it needs a leader offering that broader vision who will leave most of the complaining to someone else.