IF JAGMEET SINGH CAN WIN A FEDERAL SEAT NEXT MONTH, IT’S POSSIBLE HE CAN GROW INTO THE LEADERSHIP JOB. BUT IT’S ALSO POSSIBLE THAT THE NDP IN 2019 IS A BUSTED FLUSH NO MATTER WHO’S LEADING IT.
Party keeps on lurching to replace Layton
More and more New Democrats seem concerned that Jagmeet Singh mightn’t have been the best choice for leader, let alone deserving of a whopping 54-per-cent first ballot victory. His various alleged crimes include rendering himself invisible for months, imposing draconian punishments on popular MPs, and going on TV to suggest we stop importing Saudi oil and get it from other countries instead — at a time when Alberta’s NDP government is fighting both for pipelines and for its continued existence. Singh’s latest poor performance involves Canada’s fight with Beijing over Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou’s arrest in Vancouver, and the apparently retaliatory action against various Canadians now detained in China. In a remarkable philippic in The Hill Times last week, Chinese ambassador Lu Shaye accused Canada of imposing a judicial “doublestandard” born of “Western egotism and white supremacy.”
How, CTV’s Evan Solomon inquired on Sunday, would “prime minister Singh” react to such a suggestion? “Sorry, who accused who of white supremacy?” he first responded. When Solomon explained it to him again, he said he didn’t “know that there’s any evidence” the ambassador had said what Solomon was telling him he said. He hadn’t been briefed. Not the end of the world. He’s a busy man, or he bloody well better be: If he loses the Feb. 25 byelection in Burnaby, he’ll face political oblivion. But he made it worse by attempting damage control, telling the Toronto Star he hadn’t heard Solomon’s question. Twice? Why didn’t he say so, then? Amateur hour.
Tom Mulcair was a pro. Dumping him appears to be the dumbest thing the NDP ever did. Still, if Singh wins his seat, there is reason to hope he might grow into the job. To skeptics he evinces a distinctly Trudeauvian brand of superficiality, and a similar gift for quotes that land well but fall to pieces if you actually read them back. That hasn’t hurt Trudeau, though — not much and not yet. Singh, a criminal lawyer, certainly boasts a more impressive resumé outside of politics. And goodness knows there are more than enough avenues for any NDP leader to attack a Liberal government that promised us the moon but left us conspicuously earthbound.
If Singh is an anchor on NDP fortunes, it doesn’t seem to be massively heavy one. Nanos Research has them at 15.4 per cent, as of last week — not good at all, but well within recovery distance of their 19.7 per cent performance in the 2015 election. Pre-campaign polls are generally held to be meaningless. Again assuming Singh wins his seat, he has plenty of time to introduce himself and his vision for the NDP.
It’s also possible, though, that the federal NDP in 2019 is a busted flush no matter who’s leading it. The combination of personal charisma and political circumstance that propelled it to Official Opposition status in 2011 might just be throttling back down toward cruising speed. We shouldn’t overestimate just how improbable Jack Layton’s achievements were. He dragged the NDP to the political centre, where the votes are, marginalizing various breeds of crackpots along the way, while keeping the famously restive portside of the party relatively content. Then he stole a huge chunk of the Quebec nationalist vote in the dead of night.
You need a hell of a politician to pull it off, and even he’d need a lot of luck. And within minutes of the historic 2011 results, you could see New Democrats grappling with very mixed emotions. More than any other partisans, to their credit, New Democrats struggle with the notion of compromising principles to win power. Now here they were, Canada’s Official Opposition for the first time — their historic “victory” — and for what? They had less power than they did the day before, and Stephen Beelzebub Harper had a majority government. At the Toronto Convention Centre that night, it was like talking to people who had won the lottery 30 seconds after their granddad died.
Had Layton lived, he would have had a heck of a time keeping everyone happy for four years. When it came time to replace him, there was no one on offer with a quarter of his charm or guile. Mulcair was the right choice, but leftists who were willing to tolerate Layton’s move to the centre were instantly unwilling to tolerate Mulcair inhabiting the same ideological space. He was blamed for not maintaining the party’s gains in Quebec, as if all those seats hadn’t come from incredibly specific and non-replicable circumstances. And now they have Jagmeet Singh, for reasons some partisans are struggling to recall.
The NDP has always been a party of contradictions — not so much a big tent as a tent city. It’s supposed to be a party of both champagne socialists and farmers, of both autoworkers and environmentalists, of both staunch multiculturalists and Quebec nationalists, and above all else it’s supposed to be the party that sticks up for its principles. Layton managed to weave that all together into an unlikely but compelling package. No one else has come anywhere close. Maybe no one else ever will.