Road ahead for NDP

Editorial

When Thomas Mulcair ascended the stage at the New Democratic Party convention late last Saturday night to accept the leadership, it was a turning point in a great number of ways. Probably the most significant factor in Mulcair’s election – and in its meaning to Canadian politics – is that he is the first NDP leader from Quebec.

But this understates the significance. Mulcair won, to some extent, because he was the late Jack Layton’s Quebec lieutenant and, as such, was the on-the-ground fixer who helped Layton lead the NDP to historic successes in Quebec and the rest of Canada. Until last May, the NDP had never held more than a single seat at a time in Quebec. It barely existed there. Now, the NDP holds 59 of the province’s 75 seats.

Many in the party voted to make Mulcair leader in the hope that he could hold that historic breakthrough, permanently reversing the party’s decades of dismal fortunes in the province. But there were other reasons. Mulcair is an experienced politician and has served in government before.

Prior to winning the Montreal federal riding of Outremont in a 2007 byelection, Mulcair was a provincial cabinet minister in the Liberal government of Jean Charest. (Which means – try to keep up – a former Liberal cabinet minister is now head of the federal NDP, while the federal Liberal party is headed, temporarily perhaps, by the former NDP premier of Ontario. Just for fun, let’s remember as well that the Liberal premier Charest is the former leader of the federal Conservatives.)

But, while Mulcair has executive experience, the campaign’s real tug-of-war (such as it was in a very genial contest) centred on the ideological struggle that has driven NDP politics for generations – is it a movement seeking social change or a political party seeking to form government? Having risen to Official Opposition for the first time in history last May, party regulars realized that, for the first time, there is a realistic chance they could form government in this lifetime. More to the point, party non-regulars – newcomers, especially in Quebec, people across Canada who were inspired by Layton and those who want to take the party to the next level – jumped on board. With his experience, smoothness and, in what may be a double-edged sword, his reputation as a scrapper, Mulcair convinced enough party members that he was the one to take them into power.

With a few exceptions, the NDP leadership race was not very entertaining in the blood-sport sense of political theatre; nothing at all to compare with the bloodbath consuming the American Republican party right now, for instance. One issue that might have created more fireworks, but didn’t, was foreign policy. The party is fairly united on issues such as the Canadian mission in Afghanistan, but it has been a long time since the NDP had a leader who would probably proudly call himself a Zionist.

If you Google Mulcair’s name and the word Israel, you get a sense of the radical left’s take on his unabashedly pro-Israel positions. In a party that has included some of Canada’s most outspoken anti-Israel figures, Mulcair’s leadership on this issue is going to have an impact.

It was notable that, as Mulcair ascended the stage to accept the leadership late Saturday night, he was met by Vancouver-East MP Libby Davies who, until Mulcair resigned to run for leader, shared with Mulcair the job of co-deputy leader. Mulcair affirmed Sunday that Davies will remain in that role.

This is undoubtedly a sign of the party uniting after a leadership race. The two deputies had a very public spat two years ago, when Mulcair described Davies’ position on Israel as “grossly unacceptable.” It’s a contentious issue and it will emerge again. Although Mulcair was not elected on a Zionist platform, this may well be a turning point in the Canadian dialogue on this subject.

The NDP may never return to the deeply Zionist roots from whence it came. The party will almost certainly never adopt the highly activist Zionism of the current government. But it may be that the NDP will return to a somewhat middle-of-the-road position, which recognizes that Israel is not the devil and both sides in the conflict have the right to live in peace within secure borders.

Of course, middle-of-the-road can have a pejorative connotation in some circles. Wishy-washy is a less generous line used by some to describe such moderate positions. But this is Canada, after all, and, with very few exceptions, middle-of-the-road has won elections for generations.

So, noting again that Israel-Palestine did not play much of a role as an issue in Mulcair’s campaign, it may nonetheless come to symbolize the moderating of that party’s rough edges and bring them a step closer to the dream, which is likely why most New Democrats chose Mulcair in the end.

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