Mulcair doesn’t deserve all the blame for 2015 loss
Tom Mulcair is taking the heat for his New Democratic Party’s disastrous showing in the October federal election.
Some New Democrats, including members of the party’s small but vocal socialist caucus, are publicly calling for Mulcair’s outright removal as party leader.
Others, including most recently three defeated Quebec MPs, are more circumspect — saying only that the party under Mulcair has lost its bearings.
Party president Rebecca Blaikie, who was tasked with finding out what went wrong, has said the campaign team’s decision to focus on “cautious” rather than “real” change allowed Justin Trudeau’s Liberals to outflank the NDP from the left.
She singled out Mulcair’s pledge to balance the federal budget regardless of circumstance.
But is it fair to blame Mulcair alone for the rout that saw the NDP relegated from official Opposition to third-party status?
True, the campaign was a disaster. In hindsight, it is clear that Mulcair and those about him consistently underestimated Trudeau.
The NDP leader’s unrelenting focus on balancing the books was, indeed, singularly out of touch with the public mood.
But Mulcair didn’t invent any of these out-of-touch policies. He inherited them.
For years, as part of its effort to replace the Liberals as Canada’s main non-conservative party, the NDP has been moving to the right.
Each generation of NDP politicians has played a role. But the shift accelerated during Jack Layton’s tenure as party leader.
As someone with a record on the party’s left, Layton was uniquely positioned to drag the NDP rightward — which he did with great skill.
Longtime policies that had little resonance with voters, such as one calling for Canada to pull out of NATO, were quietly jettisoned.
On the symbolic side, Layton set in motion the process that would finally expunge any reference to “social ownership” from the party’s constitution.
More to the point, he and his team of bright, modern politicos refocused the party on winning seats. Target demographics were identified and policies created to appeal to them.
Balancing the budget (except during severe economic downturns) was enshrined as part of official NDP policy. As Mulcair would do later, Layton hewed religiously to fiscal conservatism.
During the 2008 election campaign, even as the world economy was collapsing and government revenues with it, Layton’s NDP — like the Liberals and Conservatives — promised a balanced budget.
In Layton’s NDP, as in Mulcair’s, there was no talk of making the rich pay. Income tax hikes for the wealthy were out of bounds. Under the NDP, only corporations would pay more.
During Layton’s 2011 campaign, the NDP’s unrequited love affair with small business accelerated. Gone were references to state enterprise. Instead, small-business tax breaks would be an NDP government’s main vehicle for job creation.
All of this was the new NDP orthodoxy. And it was in place well before Mulcair became party leader.
Indeed, Mulcair’s 2015 platform — with its call for a national child-care program and a national pharmacare plan — was arguably bolder than anything the NDP under Layton had ever pledged.
In electoral terms, the new orthodoxy had mixed results across Canada.
Federally, the NDP under Layton gradually increased its seat share, culminating in the remarkable showing of 2011 when it won official Opposition status.
In Nova Scotia, a provincial NDP committed to Layton-style caution won the 2009 election but was decimated four years later.
In 2013, British Columbia’s New Democrats tried the cautious-change approach and lost. But two years later, Alberta’s equally cautious NDP followed a similar strategy and won.
In Ontario, the decision by Andrea Horwath’s New Democrats to follow the Layton playbook produced a draw. The NDP picked up three new seats in the 2014 provincial election but lost three old ones. Next month in Edmonton, New Democrats will have a chance to judge Mulcair in a mandatory leadership review. I expect many who are now holding their peace will vote to ditch him.
But was the NDP’s 2015 debacle really Mulcair’s fault? It seems to me that this apostle of cautious change was exactly the kind of leader the new New Democrats wanted. If the party is dissatisfied, it may want to re-examine itself. Thomas Walkom’s column appears Wednesday, Thursday and Sunday.