The NDP's Annus Horibilis

On Sunday at the NDP convention in Edmonton New Democrat delegates will give their verdict on Thomas Mulcair. Whatever way they go a split in the Party seems the probable outcome.  By digging in and announcing he expects to campaign against a new Tory leader and Justin Trudeau in 2019 Mulcair has engineered that split-either you stand with the leader or you stand against. A simple mantra and one if Jack Layton was around you or I may defer to. Layton transformed the Party, brought it within a close shave of governing ended up as Official Opposition-their best ever performance! Layton transformed the Party from also-ran to a competitor even main challenger for Government. But Layton built upon the solid foundations of his predecessors in particular, the most overlooked of recent New Democrat leaders, Alexa McDonough.

Alexa McDonough brought the Party from 9 seats and a dismal 7% popular vote to 21 seats and 11% of the vote-she gained roughly 500,000 votes and helped transform the fortunes of the NDP especially in the Maritimes where for the first time the NDP became a political force. The full effect of McDonough's efforts on NDP fortunes manifested in 2009 when Darrell Dexter and the Nova Scotia NDP formed a majority government and continued under Layton when the Atlantic delivered 6 M.P.s toward the federal caucus of 103 in 2011. Today the polls put the NDP in third place in the Atlantic close on the heals of the beleaguered Tories but, far outmatched if not outclassed by the Trudeau Liberals whose support nears super-majority status.

Hence why Mulcair must go. Mulcair didn't just lose on October 19th, he re-set the paradigm he turned back the clock to a time before Alexa McDonough when the NDP was solidly third and politics was a Tory-Grit affair in Atlantic Canada, when socialism even the democratic variety was best left to populists and the lunatic fringe, of great men and characters like Paul MacEwan and the Cape Breton Labour Party.

You don't recover from a loss like the NDP suffered on October 19th, you rebuild, sometimes slowly, one-member-at-a-time. This isn't the prosecutorial politics of which Mulcair is so good but, the glad-handing and baby kissing of which a man with a beard just looks creepy (Hipsters excepted).  The crisis is made worse by the cause of the NDP's defeat and the existential problem the NDP always faces:  to be a party of power foregoing some principled stances or merely being principled and only ever an influence on power and Government-a mere conscience of Parliament.  Mulcair's stance on the Niqab while principled went against 80% of the Quebec electorate and ended any hope the NDP could form a Government.  New Democrats must ask themselves was the trade-off worth it? after 82 years was it right to stand up for minority rights at the cost of governing? Is principle of value even if it is only a diminished influence or does governing hold greater rewards?