I haven’t written anything about the NDP leadership review, because I know some of my NDP friends are still hurting from their disastrous election result. And I didn’t want to re-open any wounds.
And also because I think Justin Trudeau is the best prime minister I have ever known, so it’s not that I’m unhappy at the way that election worked out.
But I did vote for the NDP, I care about the future of that party.
So I think it’s time to list some reasons why I think Tom Mulcair should go.
(1) He has taken the NDP to its lowest level of support in thirteen years.
“Little more than a week before NDP Leader Tom Mulcair is set to face his party in a leadership review, a new Ekos poll shows the New Democrats are polling at their lowest level in more than a decade.
“The poll, conducted by Ekos for iPolitics, shows the NDP is standing at 11.7 per cent support among Canadians – down eight percentage points since last October’s election.”
Which should speak for itself, and tell NDP members that something is terribly wrong.
(2) He ran the worst campaign I have ever seen.
“The New Democratic Party’s ‘Stop Harper’ focus in the 2015 election campaign and the lack of a strong, simple narrative that distinguished it from the Liberals as change agents of choice has left the party vulnerable, an internal party post-mortem has concluded.
“’The lack of a strong, simple narrative made it difficult to communicate our platform and positions, and as a result it became difficult for Canadians to distinguish us from the Liberals. We failed to represent the kind of change that Canadians desired. Instead, our campaign presented a choice for cautious change.’”
For while it’s true that he did take a massive hit for standing up for the right of a woman to wear a niqab, and for that he deserves enormous credit.
He took the party to the right of the Liberals, and deliberately made the NDP’s campaign as boring as possible. He made absolutely no attempt to reach out to young Canadians.
Despite the party’s claim to have a “Stop Harper” focus, Mulcair spent more time attacking Justin Trudeau than he did attacking that depraved dictator.
Which only made it look like he was working with the Cons, or was just out of it. And certainly not an agent of change. Even though change was what most Canadians desperately wanted.
And that helped decimate his party and cost it some of its best MPs, including some who were the future of the NDP.
And any post-mortem that doesn’t mention Mulcair’s role in that debacle.
“The analysis, which doesn’t mention NDP Leader Tom Mulcair by name, comes a week ahead of a party convention in Edmonton at which he will face a leadership review.”
Is, in my humble opinion, not worth the paper it’s written on.
(3) This is absolutely pathetic.
“NDP Leader Tom Mulcair condemned Republican presidential front-runner Donald Trump as a ‘fascist’ and criticized Prime Minister Justin Trudeau for not denouncing the billionaire business mogul.”
When Trudeau has made it abundantly clear how he feels about Donald Trump’s politics of division. It’s not the role of a Canadian Prime Minister to intervene more directly in an American election.
And judging by the looks on the faces of those listening to him attack Trudeau…
They were as impressed by Mulcair as I was.
Now at this point I need to say that I thought Tom did an excellent job as leader of the opposition, by grilling Stephen Harper like a prosecutor would…
And treating that monster like the criminal he was…
For which I, and I’m sure many other Canadians, will be eternally grateful. For it did help bring him down, and did cheer us up during the darkest days of the Con regime.
But by continuing to attack Justin Trudeau as if he was the same or worse than Harper he is missing the mark. For Justin is both a much nicer person, and a far better leader.
And the way Mulcair screws up his face with contempt when he goes after Trudeau couldn’t be more ugly or disgusting…
And is only making the NDP look like a party of bitter losers drowning in their own bile.
When the NDP has a valuable role to play in the political life of this country, and should be a party of exciting new progressive ideas that can appeal and inspire a new generation of Canadians as Justin Trudeau is doing.
And help us all to push for real change.
Which it will NEVER be able to do as long as Tom Mulcair is its leader.
You know, I hate to be so harsh on a member of our progressive family, which as anyone who reads this blog knows is something I never do.
But the NDP deserves better, and for the sake of its future.
The time has come, when Mulcair should go…
