Spare a thought, this morning, for Tom Mulcair.
Later today, the NDP faithful decide his fate at their weekend gathering in Edmonton. Whatever the outcome, this much is beyond dispute: the NDP face a choice that is the worst of both possibilities.
If the assembled Dippers summarily dismiss Mulcair, they collectively face the prospect of a leadership race that will be divisive (at a time when they clearly need to unite) and expensive (at a time when the bottom has fully fallen out of their fundraising efforts). They would be left leaderless, and they have no obvious successor to Mulcair.
If, on the other hand, the NDP decide to keep Mulcair around, he will no longer be Angry Tom, he will be Wounded Tom, bleeding all over the place, like in Polanski’s Macbeth. The mutineers will continue their mutiny and the media will delightedly document the ongoing rebellion – because those of us in the media see our role as coming down from the hills to shoot the wounded.
Either way, it won’t be pretty. Flush him, and end up leaderless, penniless and directionless. Keep him around, and it’s Mulcair as Julius Caesar – with Peggy Nash, the Canadian Labour Congress and some young Quebec New Democrats swapping the role of Brutus.
Having been through a decade or so of Liberal Party leadership wars, with scars to show for it, let me offer my socialist pals three sage pieces of advice. Here goes.
One, Tom Mulcair made some mistakes, sure. He embraced the losing electoral strategy of Ontario NDP leader Andrea Horwath and Toronto mayoral candidate Olivia Chow and moved to the ideological right. On deficits, on defence, on virtually any issue, the New Democrat leader didn’t sound like a traditional New Democrat. In his mad dash to get to the centre, he left behind his bewildered NDP voters, who wandered over to the more-progressive Trudeau Liberals.
You NDP caucus, candidates and core enthusiastically applauded all that, every step of the way. You didn’t say a word – not a single word – objecting to any of it when you could have. You, like Mulcair, had witnessed Rachel Notley’s rush to the centre, and her resulting historic victory. And you figured you could do the same thing federally. You figured wrong.
So, did Tom Mulcair snatch defeat from the proverbial jaws of victory? For sure. But so did you, Team Orange. Your fingerprints are all over the crime scene, too.
Second piece of advice: As Ralph Waldo Emerson reminds us, when you strike at the King, you must kill him.
To succeed, half-measures won’t do. You can’t do what Nash and the CLC are doing, which is try and nibble their beleaguered leader to death, like a gaggle of geese. If you decide to execute the monarch, get everyone onside, then swiftly march the King out to the village square and straight to the gallows. Don’t prevaricate.
Make sure you do the job right the first time.
Jean Chretien, who I proudly served (and arguably still do), is one tough SOB. Get in his way, and you’ll get the Shawinigan Handshake. Way back when the Martin mutineers were gathering out at shabby hotels near Toronto’s airport, secretly plotting to replace the man who millions of Canadians had just handed a big majority, they forgot one key fact: Jean Chretien doesn’t respond well to threats.
If the Martinettes had been respectful, and given my boss the time he deserved to make an exit on his own terms, he would have departed sooner than later. But, instead, they disrespected him. Their leadership reviews and Gomery Commission and anonymous leaks came to naught. Chretien took much longer to leave than he’d planned, and the Martin-led Liberal Party would promptly commence a decade in the wilderness.
And therein lies the third piece of advice, Dipper friends: When you start down this path – with the recriminations, and the bitterness and the finger-pointing and blame-shifting – you usually end up with a plateful of cold ashes and bad memories. Generally, all this infighting leaves voters asking one simple and salient question: If they can’t manage their own affairs, how can I trust them to manage the country?
As he contemplates his future this morning spare a thought, then, for Tom Mulcair.
Whatever the outcome of the vote in Edmonton, he will lose. And the New Democrat mutineers will lose, too.
Warren Kinsella is a Canadian journalist, political adviser and commentator.
The views, opinions and positions expressed by columnists and contributors are the author’s alone. They do not inherently or expressly reflect the views, opinions and/or positions of our publication.
