Will It Be Different?

Jagmeet Singh now leads the New Democratic Party. All three of Canada's political parties are now firmly in the hands of millennials. Andrew Scheer and Singh are even younger than Justin Trudeau. So what does that mean? Campbell Clark believes that Singh will shake up Canadian politics:

Mr. Singh has the potential to disrupt the patterns of Canadian politics. His candidacy offered the NDP a ray of hope that they could move beyond union workers and urban lefties to appeal to new Canadians and fight for suburban ridings such as those in the Greater Toronto Area. The stalwarts didn't.

Still, that doesn't mean there will be another Orange Crush:

The party is dwindling into irrelevance in Quebec, which was supposed to be the new NDP base. Even a New Democratic MP, Pierre Nantel, questioned whether Quebeckers will accept a turbaned Sikh as a party leader. But Mr. Singh will be new and different, and speaks French well enough: On Sunday, he said he learned the language out of solidarity with people who had suffered the slights of a linguistic minority.

It will be interesting to see what Quebecers make of Mr. Singh. In the meantime, Singh has the potential to do well in the suburbs which surround Toronto. The NDP will look different under Singh. But the real question is this: Will it be different?

For the last forty years, all three parties have been firmly in the grip of neo-liberalism. The financial meltdown of 2008 should have spelled that ideology's doom. But it stubbornly hangs on. In the United States, it refuses to die and lives on in the body of a crazy old man.

Will Singh do more than just make his party look different?

Image: singhstation.net

The Last Assessment

 
Robyn Sears offers an assessment of three of the contenders for the NDP's leadership:

Charlie Angus has impeccable New Dem credentials: northern, working class, long-term Indigenous activist; informal but smart, folksy but policy sharp, self-deprecating, well-known to local party leaders from coast to coast. As comfortable as an old shoe for a wide swathe of traditional party members.

Singh is a mirror opposite: openly ambitious personally and for the party, cool under pressure but happy to be seen to wield a knife, proud and flaunting his cultural and personal difference. Willing to stare down public intolerance and crazy racist hecklers — but with grace and confidence. 

Despite Guy Caron’s recent gains, Quebec still lacks a powerful native son candidate. Can Singh appeal to enough urban progressive Quebecers to overcome the hesitations of older rural voters’ unease with his difference? Or does Angus convince with his claim that he can best appeal to working and middle class progressive Quebecers, who are no different than other Canadians in their struggle to defend their families and work to build a better community?

Curiously, he has nothing to say about Nikki Ashton. And he implies that the choice is between Angus and Singh. Perhaps he really knows what's going on in the party's inner sanctum. His contention that the race is between Angus and Singh is interesting.

This will be the my last rumination on the leadership until after the Dippers make their decision.

Image: thestar.com

What's the Diff?

 
When it comes to the NDP leadership race, Rick Salutin asks the most important question of all: What differentiates the NDP from other political parties? The difference used to be pretty clear:

At any point in the 50 years after its founding in 1932 (as the Cooperative Commonwealth Federation, or CCF: which contained the answer in its name, unlike ‘New Democratic Party’), that question would’ve been easily answered. “Unlike Liberals, we are democratic socialists, we’ll demolish or at least tame the scourge of capitalism” — a view grown mildly resonant again, after 2008.

The last of the party's democratic socialists was Ed Broadbent. But things really got confused when Jack Layton and Tom Mulcair were elected leaders:

Then came Jack. At the convention that chose him, venerable NDPers said embarrassing, dated (if faddish) things like: Jack thinks outside the box. As if that had anything to do with anything or, for that matter, were true.

In 2004, under Jack Layton, the NDP voted to kill a transformative national child-care program, which the Liberal government had enacted, but which died as a result, giving us nine years of Harper conservatism. The NDP has never apologized for that, which would at least show they remember what their principles once were.

Then in 2015, NDP leader Thomas Mulcair promised to run no deficits if elected, after the Liberals promised to do so, effectively swapping principles. Self-congrats are less in order here than self-criticism, if not self-loathing.

These days, Salutin writes, the answer to the question, "What differentiates you?" seems to be "We're morally superior."

You can't win an election if that's the chief plank in your platform.

Image: thestar.com

The Dippers' Choice

Yesterday, the NDP held its final leadership debate. Tim Harper gives a cogent evaluation of the four candidates:

Singh promises growth. Backers believe he will grow personally as he moves from provincial to federal politics. They also believe he will grow the party with fresh membership.

Mention the NDP leadership race to those of us who do not live in the political world, and you get a lot of blank stares. Those same people, however, know Singh.

His opponents believe if he cannot win on the first ballot, he cannot grow.

Angus has worked assiduously to court second-choice support. Caron’s team believes he can finish third, stay on the ballot and grow his support because the Quebec MP has run a strong campaign. Ashton, the only one of the four making a second bid at leadership, has run the most unabashedly leftist campaign and has built perhaps the youngest core of supporters. She has also won union support and is a much more formidable campaigner than the Ashton of 2012.

She could surprise. If she is the first to drop off the ballot, however, her backers are expected to split three ways.

It really is hard to predict who will win. But Harper is also spot on in his analysis of how far the party has fallen:

It needs to find that relevancy in Quebec again and this is a tough road for any of the four, not just the turbaned Singh.

The party sold 124,000 memberships during this race, but a mere 4,907 of them were sold in Quebec, about half the total sold during the 2012 race.

It allowed itself to be outmanoeuvred by Trudeau on traditional left-of-centre issues and has largely been rudderless for 16 months.

However, some of the shine has worn off Justin. There is an opportunity for the NDP -- if they choose the right leader. 

Image:thestar.com

It's Not Easy

In the era of Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbin, Tim Harper writes that the NDP is going to have to take a hard left turn. The template for their platform already exists in British Columbia:

If one wants to see what the federal New Democrats will likely put on the table for voters in 2019, the template is in British Columbia.

It will pledge real electoral change.

It will work toward Indigenous decolonization and real reconciliation, not the symbolic reconciliation so far favoured by Trudeau.

It will take a much tougher line on pipelines and climate change.

It will aggressively tax the rich and impose tough levies on real estate speculators.

It will pledge to overturn economic inequality and pledge solutions to precarious employment, rejecting Finance Minister Bill’s Morneau acceptance of it as a fait accompli.

There will no longer be talk of balanced budgets. There will be no more kid gloves with corporate taxes. They will likely push to lower the voting age to 16.

But, at the moment, nobody is paying attention to the Dippers' leadership race. And, across the country, several provincial parties have worries of their own:

New Democrats in British Columbia have no time to focus on this race. They are on the cusp of government in an ongoing political drama on the West Coast.

That saga is also drawing all the attention of Alberta New Democrats who are consumed with what an NDP-Green alliance in B.C. will do about a major pipeline expansion that has federal approval.

Manitoba New Democrats are focused on choosing Ojibwa Wab Kinew, a rapper, broadcaster and author, as its next leader.

These days, it's not easy being Orange. 

Image: Maclean's

We'll Have To Wait And See

There are deep divisions in the New Democratic Party. It's is not the first time the party has faced the problem. Robin Sears writes:

In 1939, M.J. Coldwell risked splitting the CCF over his support for the Second World War, while his pacifist leader, J.S. Woodworth, was opposed. Except that the two men worked out an agreement that permitted party members to agree to disagree. Woodsworth maintained his honour and kept his leadership, although most party members were deeply committed to the fight against fascism.

In 1981, when the NDP struggled with one premier who supported the Charter of Rights and one who vehemently did not, with similar divisions across the party, Ed Broadbent and Allan Blakeney worked hard to prevent the disagreement from splitting the party. A vigorous convention battle ensued, but one that left no blood on the floor.

This time the issue is pipelines. B.C.'s Dippers are opposed to them. Rachel Notley's government favours them.  What's to be done? Sears doesn't offer a prescription. But he does give Dippers some free advice. In the past,

New Democratic Party leaders and activists . . . worked hard to ensure it did not happen,  smacked hard those who would use deep party differences for personal career gain, and  understood the restraint and caution that moments like these must entail.

Does it take courage for a Vancouver MP to grandstand at the expense of party unity in a leadership race about a controversial project deeply unpopular to his own base?

Is it wise, if you’re the only woman candidate, to fling epithets at the supporters of one of Canada’s — and one of the party’s — most admirable woman leaders.

Does it demonstrate leadership to deride a competing candidate seeking to find the balance a federal party’s leader must necessarily strike on internally divisive issues?

The questions answer themselves.

We live in a time where unbridled ego seems to trump party. We'll have to wait and see what happens with the Dippers.

Image: ceasefire.ca