Jagmeet Singh is the leader the NDP needs
You can't deny that the NDP likes to make history by shattering old anachronistic traditions. It began way back in the early seventies in British Columbia when Rosemary Brown became the first black woman to be elected to a provincial legislature. It continued when the party chose Audrey McLaughlin as the first woman to lead a national political party in Canada.
Then, only two months ago, Wab Kinew was elected leader of the Manitoba NDP. Mr. Kinew has a real chance of being not only the first Indigenous leader of a party, but becoming the first Indigenous premier of one of the 10 provinces.
Now, the federal NDP has gone and done it again. In Jagmeet Singh, the party becomes the first party in Canada to put its diversity money where its mouth is.
Mr. Singh brings to the NDP qualities it has desperately needed since the debacle of the 2015 election: self-confidence, pride, ambition and a clear sense of social-justice goals based on egalitarian principles. The media loves him and he reciprocates. This is no small foundation on which Mr. Singh intends to build.
With his overwhelming victory, Mr. Singh now owns the orphan NDP. But he can't move far forward alone. Fortunately for him, he begins with an impressive team to flesh out his ambitions, beginning with his three leadership competitors. It's evident that of the four, Mr. Singh alone had the royal jelly, the ability to make his listeners soar to new heights. But each of his opponents brought real front-bench strength to the process. I take for granted that he called them first thing to ask them to be part of his new opposition front bench, and I take for granted they all agreed.
Niki Ashton is the beacon for activist youth. Guy Caron is the solid policy man, grounded in the kind of progressive economics that have always been the NDP's Achilles heel. Charlie Angus is the NDP everyman, a guy just like the rest of us except for his deep ties and commitment to Indigenous peoples. With Mr. Singh not in the House of Commons, these three will have their time to shine.
Still, there's a vast gap between confidence and cockiness. Smart New Democrats are never overconfident about their prospects. As the leadership candidates were repeatedly reminded, doing well in Quebec above all remains an elusive goal. I must confess to personal frustration here, that Quebec progressives seem so perversely inflexible on questions of secularism and politics. Believing that one's headdress should be more important than one's humanity seems to me bizarre and perverse. Maybe you can't understand it unless you're there, or from there. But it's a huge challenge for Mr. Singh and his team.
Otherwise, Mr. Singh begins with something like a tabula rasa when it comes to the NDP. Few Canadians could tell you what the party stands for, at least not in any detail. Sure, it's the party of the people. It's on the side of "hard-working Canadians." But who's not these days? What does the NDP stand for? Where are the fresh, new, creative policies that were once the NDP's stock-in-trade, that other parties rushed to steal? How would an NDP government drive the economy?
On the other hand, the Singh NDP finds itself blessed. As we've already seen, the freshness of the new leader promises media attention that's largely been lacking since the 2015 election. The Trudeau government has lost its early glow. It has, arguably, nowhere to go but down. A strong opposition could wound it, maybe even mortally. The Conservative Party has already demonstrated that it can't blow the Liberal house down. Its new leader – sorry, I can never seem to recall his name – is mostly memorable for being so forgettable.
Whatever else is true, we can be confident this will not be Mr. Singh's fate. This is not a man easily forgotten, as he has just demonstrated. He has overwhelmingly won over a party that mostly knew nothing about him until he belatedly threw his hat in the ring. But as we have seen, once met, he stays in the mind. He is a remarkable character, and Canadians will not ignore him easily. He does not, he asserts persuasively, back down from a challenge. Don't expect him to back down from this one.
This man has "winner" written all over him.
http://rabble.ca/columnists/2017/10/jagmeet-singh-leader-ndp-needs
Meet Jagmeet Singh: NDP leader talks Trans Mountain, housing following Burnaby campaign announcement
On housing: "We’ve got the province and the city now stepping up. We need the federal government to step up, and that’s the big gap that’s missing here.”
https://www.burnabynow.com/news/meet-jagmeet-singh-ndp-leader-talks-tran...
on American war criminal John McCain
https://twitter.com/theJagmeetSingh/status/1033878954661371904
"Senator John McCain had the courage not to stoop to divisive politics. He showed us that we can disagree in a way that creates dialogue and discussion, not fear and division. Rest in Peace."
Huh!? Doesn't know or doesn't care?
Starting a thread with a 10 month old article?
Arguably one of Gerry Caplan's least insightful, and least prescient, articles to date.
Jagmeet Singh hardly "won over" the party. Rather he swarmed it by signing up tens of thousands of his co-religionists in a couple of urban centres. A triumph of ethnic bloc voting on a national scale. Accordingly, his election was more a cause for consternation than for celebration. Rank-and-file New Democrats--the ones who renew their membership annually and volunteer on campaigns--still don't know what hit them.
1) He had the support of the party bureaucracy, the insiders who wanted to make sure the end of the Mulcair era didn't lead to any actual changes in the party, especially the introduction of internal party democracy;
2) He was able to present himself as a figure of personal charisma who would be good on television.
There is no excuse for people of the left or even the "center-left" ever indulging in accusations of ethnic/religious conspiracy. Whatever anyone might think of Singh, Sihks do not have a political "hivemind" (there have been Sikh MPs in most federal or provincial parties) and they aren't driven solely by tribal loyalties to other Sikhs.
And it's not like there aren't 2 or 3 threads on the subject. But not to worry. He'll probably change the threat title once or twice.
Any politician is going to seek support from people who share the same values and interests. That's not a conspiracy, it's just basic organizing. As an Ontario MPP Singh was an outspoken advocate for Sikh interests both inside and outside Ontario. It's completely normal that he would seek support from Sikhs in his leadership campaign, just as Niki Ashton would seek support from feminists or what have you.
Another long-time NDP MP is chosing to retire instead of running again under leader Jagmeet Singh.
https://ipolitics.ca/2018/08/27/longtime-ndp-mp-irene-mathyssen-retiring/
The writing is on the wall, the party is going down in flames in the next election, and the MP's know it.
Beginning to look that way.
Quote & Link:
The Kinder Morgan protesters who dog Trudeau when he visits B.C. leave a false impression that he is unpopular and under siege. He’s not, and when contrasted with Conservative leader Andrew Scheer and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh, he looks even better.
Scheer has a somewhat bland and uncharismatic style, which is safe but perhaps not good enough to grow his party’s support. Singh is largely unknown and seems to be unable to connect with the electorate.
While Singh has to be considered the slight favorite to win the Burnaby South byelection whenever it is held, it’s hard to see much success for him or his party other than that.
https://www.burnabynow.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-bernier-s-new-part...
1) He had the support of the party bureaucracy, the insiders who wanted to make sure the end of the Mulcair era didn't lead to any actual changes in the party, especially the introduction of internal party democracy;
2) He was able to present himself as a figure of personal charisma who would be good on television.
Neither of those points comes close to explaining Singh's improbable ascent to the party leadership. None of the candidates, with the possible exception of Ashton, posed a serious threat to the established structure of the NDP. Indeed, that has been the case in all NDP leadership races except for the obvious case of Jim Laxer's candidacy in 1971 and, perhaps, Svend Robinson's in 1995. In other words, the prospect of a win by Charlie Angus or Guy Caron would not have given the party establishment cause to worry.
As for Singh's alleged appeal on TV, that was almost entirely an invention of the corporate media, which in turn appears to have influenced the thinking of some MPs and rank-and-file members. But very few veteran members of my acquaintance bought it. Nor, evidently, did most NDP supporters, much less the general public.
As to the relevance of ethnic bloc voting, and the unwillingness of too many NDPers to acknowledge it, I base my comments on personal experience with bulk sign-ups in the BC Lower Mainland, and on the observations of political scientists, such as Prof. Shinder Purewal:
https://vancouversun.com/opinion/columnists/douglas-todd-why-sikhs-are-s...
I concede that we need a careful, scholarly study of the 2017 leadership vote. But I am sure it would confirm what Purewal and others have already surmised.