# NDP National Leadership



## Edward Campbell (8 Oct 2015)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> At the end of the 1st ballot the results in the NDP leadership race are:
> 
> Mulcair:  30.4%
> Topp:      21.4%
> ...



But, as _Election 2015 goes into the last 10 days_ we are asking this question:



			
				Altair said:
			
		

> Same goes for the NDP.
> 
> It's looking more and more like the NDP are going to get smacked hard on election day. I wonder who is best positioned to take a run at the ndp leadership after this. Because if Mulcair doesn't setup down on the night of October 19th or morning of Oct 20th the knives will be sharpened by the 21st.




My bet is on Brian Topp, again ...

     
	

	
	
		
		

		
			





He is, currently, chief of staff to Alberta Premier Rachel Notley, but I'm sure he's testing the waters of the NDP's leadership pool with a view to taking it back to the real left.


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## Altair (8 Oct 2015)

I hope Dewar has been working on his french.

He would be a respectable leader.


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## Edward Campbell (8 Oct 2015)

Altair said:
			
		

> I hope Dewar has been working on his french.
> 
> He would be a respectable leader.




I agree. I know him, slightly (we've attended a couple of seminars together, etc) and I like him. He's a good constituency MP and, _I think_, an effective critic of an important portfolio.


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## Colin Parkinson (9 Oct 2015)

interesting that factions in the party went out of their way to skewer the Muclair bus with the manifesto thing. Better to live nobly in poverty than rich in sin I suspect is their argument.


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## Ostrozac (9 Oct 2015)

This is the scenario I currently see playing out. Minority situation, Libs and PCs have roughly (+/- 5 seats) the same number of seats. NDP gets smacked hard. Mulcair has to move out of Stornaway, submits his resignation when he gets his Brookfield package for the move. Temporary leader of the NDP is appointed (an elder statesman type, maybe Jack Harris or Wayne Marston, somebody who's been around for a while but isn't going to run for the actual leadership). Temporary leader agrees to support a Conservative budget and government only until the NDP can have their convention, and the NDP will then lose confidence in the government.

PM Harper carries on, a new NDP leader is appointed, and then depending on how Harper sees the situation he has three choices -- run against the new NDP leader, resign and let another Conservative leader run against the new NDP leader, or approach the Libs and say either back me or we have another election, and isn't the Liberal party broke? Options are good things to have, and this scenario seems to favour the Conservatives.

Thoughts?


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## Altair (9 Oct 2015)

Ostrozac said:
			
		

> This is the scenario I currently see playing out. Minority situation, Libs and PCs have roughly (+/- 5 seats) the same number of seats. NDP gets smacked hard. Mulcair has to move out of Stornaway, submits his resignation when he gets his Brookfield package for the move. Temporary leader of the NDP is appointed (an elder statesman type, maybe Jack Harris or Wayne Marston, somebody who's been around for a while but isn't going to run for the actual leadership). Temporary leader agrees to support a Conservative budget and government only until the NDP can have their convention, and the NDP will then lose confidence in the government.
> 
> PM Harper carries on, a new NDP leader is appointed, and then depending on how Harper sees the situation he has three choices -- run against the new NDP leader, resign and let another Conservative leader run against the new NDP leader, or approach the Libs and say either back me or we have another election, and isn't the Liberal party broke? Options are good things to have, and this scenario seems to favour the Conservatives.
> 
> Thoughts?


http://www.cbc.ca/m/news/politics/co...tals-1.3057522

As of this may, party fundraising for Q1

CPC 6.3 million

LPC 3.8 million

NDP 2.3 million.

http://www.nationalpost.com/m/wp/blo...ndraising-race

Q2 results

CPC 7.4 million

NDP 4.5 million

LPC 4 million

Don't know if anyone knows the third quarter numbers, but as of the second quarter numbers, the NDP is just as broke as the liberals.

Advantage liberals thanks to them being the official opposition in your scenario.


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## Edward Campbell (21 Oct 2015)

Altair said:
			
		

> I hope Dewar has been working on his french.
> 
> He would be a respectable leader.




Paul Dewar lost his seat ... the NDP, like the CPC, has some time (thanks to a Liberal majority) to consider its options and its positions for the future.


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## ModlrMike (21 Oct 2015)

I think Mr Muclair has something of an uphill battle brewing. He was seen to campaign to the right of the Liberals, a position his "loony left" faction won't soon forgive. Will there be calls within the party for a leadership review? Perhaps. The NDP was on the cusp of victory. Some might feel a change is in order.


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## jollyjacktar (21 Oct 2015)

Meh, the natural order of things have been rebalanced, circle of life and all that.  The Dippers are back to third party status where they belong.  Upstarts...  And seeing as it's the 21st of October 2015, we're Back to the Future with a Trudeau as PM.


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## Colin Parkinson (21 Oct 2015)

Muclair I suspect is toast, he was stabbed in the back by the party faithful and will likely leave in disgust I suspect he did far better with what he had then anyone expected (self included). I anticipate Nathan Cullen as a potential leadership candidate.


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## Brad Sallows (21 Oct 2015)

The NDP has a couple of problems.

Firstly, I hypothesize that the left needs and favours charismatic leaders more than the right.  Crudely, progressive politics is the politics of style; conservative politics is the politics of substance.  Hence the success of a Pierre, a Jack!, or a Justin; and the failure of an earnest but dull Broadbent or Dion.  Only in conservative politics can a Clark or a Harper have a shot at leadership and government.

Secondly, the NDP can't mute the extremist sub-factions the same way the CPC can.  I think this is beyond the capability of the NDP to address, because I think it is deeply influenced by their ideology.  It is in the nature of progressives to be activists, nearly incapable of not speaking their mind, because ultimately their purposes drive them to seek to involve themselves in the lives of others.  Conservatives can also be activists, but most are content to mind their own business.


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## a_majoor (22 Oct 2015)

I am curious as to who, exactly the NDP faithful see as their leader. While I might not like what Mr Mulcair stands for, I do respect his performance as opposition leader and even on the campaign trail; he certainly seemed to be a man of far more substance than even Jack Layton, and I suspect would have made a reasonable Prime Minister (so long as he was able to keep the loony left in check, although as Brad points out, this is seemingly encoded in Progressive DNA).

My limited knowledge of the current personalities in the NDP universe makes it difficult to see many potential effective replacements for Mr Mulcair.


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## Altair (22 Oct 2015)

Would have said paul Dewar,  he was a respectable MP and great to have on Power and politics and power play.


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## Edward Campbell (24 Oct 2015)

In this column, which is reproduced under the Fair Dealing provisions of the Copyright Act from the _Globe and Mail_, a sympathetic Jeffrey Simpson gets at two problems (my _emphasis_ added) which the NDP leader, M Mulcair or another, must address:

http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/politics/globe-politics-insider/jeffrey-simpson-getting-to-the-core-of-ndp-disappointment/article26943330/


> Getting to the core of NDP disappointment
> 
> SUBSCRIBERS ONLY
> 
> ...




There it is: the NDP must grow its base. It cannot depend on having _"le bon Jack"_ every time. And, in my opinion, the NDP has to have better provincial examples than Tommy Douglas in the 1960s and a better, more _professional_ platform, to demonstrate that it can govern well.


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## Brad Sallows (24 Oct 2015)

I doubt the NDP can grow its base above 20%, just as I doubt the CPC can grow its base above 30% or the LPC grow theirs above 20% (where it was for the 2011 election; I don't think the LPC base is 30%).  That would mean about 70% of voters are spoken for.

I think Layton could have beat Trudeau, but only to achieve a minority.  It would have been Style vs Style.  This is the age of Daily Show politics - the politics of snark and LCF are what the under-40 crowd in particular favour.


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## Altair (24 Oct 2015)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> I doubt the NDP can grow its base above 20%, just as I doubt the CPC can grow its base above 30% or the LPC grow theirs above 20% (where it was for the 2011 election; I don't think the LPC base is 30%).  That would mean about 70% of voters are spoken for.
> 
> I think Layton could have beat Trudeau, but only to achieve a minority.  It would have been Style vs Style.  This is the age of Daily Show politics - the politics of snark and LCF are what the under-40 crowd in particular favour.


which is why this electoral reform is going to be huge.

I doubt trudeau goes for PR, he knows he will never be able to get another majority. 

I do think he goes for ranked ballots, which may cripple the CPC. The entire CPC machine is about optimizing the 40 percent of voters they can potentially get.

I wonder how many outside of the 40 percent they target will have Tories as their second choice.


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## YZT580 (24 Oct 2015)

He may not get another majority but the people behind him who pull the strings will not allow him to mess with a good thing.  Majority wins guarantees a liberal majority or liberal dominated minority at least 50% of the time.  No other system can guarantee those kinds of results.  And for the liberals, it is all about winning. In fairness, the same applies to the conservatives and they are not about to relinquish control to either the NDP or the greens by going for proportional representation.


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## Altair (24 Oct 2015)

YZT580 said:
			
		

> He may not get another majority but the people behind him who pull the strings will not allow him to mess with a good thing.  Majority wins guarantees a liberal majority or liberal dominated minority at least 50% of the time.  No other system can guarantee those kinds of results.  And for the liberals, it is all about winning. In fairness, the same applies to the conservatives and they are not about to relinquish control to either the NDP or the greens by going for proportional representation.


Ranked ballots wouldn't rock the boat too much.


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## Brad Sallows (24 Oct 2015)

>I wonder how many outside of the 40 percent they target will have Tories as their second choice.

Concern-troll all you want.  This election proves the Conservative base is about 30+% and the NDP base is 20%-.  Based on election results and polls over the past decade, the Liberal base is somewhere around 20%.


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## Altair (24 Oct 2015)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> >I wonder how many outside of the 40 percent they target will have Tories as their second choice.
> 
> Concern-troll all you want.  This election proves the Conservative base is about 30+% and the NDP base is 20%-.  Based on election results and polls over the past decade, the Liberal base is somewhere around 20%.


I'm a strategist. While I back one side, I can look objectively at the strategies implemented by all sides.

I would have LPC support a tad higher than ndp support, around 25, based on brand loyalty, CPC a tad higher at 32, but other than that I agree with your numbers. 

Looking forward, if the LPC switches to ranked ballots like I think they will, I believe that would change the way the conservatives operate moving forward, maybe even who is leader.

Under first past the post, a bounce back isn't too hard. If it goes to ranked ballots or god forbid PR, things get really interesting from the CPC point of view.


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## Edward Campbell (27 Nov 2015)

Anthony Furey, writing in the _Toronto Sun_, says that: "It’s going to be a tough few years for the NDP as it sits on the sidelines and watches the Liberals claim to be the most progressive party.

     Holding down the fort as third party isn’t fun, especially after you’ve been used to having the limelight as the official Opposition. But it’s even less so when other people are stealing your remaining thunder.

     In the days leading up to the election, Justin Trudeau claimed “the most progressive platform is the Liberal platform.”

     The week before the campaign, the party released quotes from former NDP politicians, candidates and supporters who had gone Liberal.

     It was obviously a ploy to make the anti-Stephen Harper vote rally behind Trudeau. And it worked."

My perception is that first Jack Layton and now Thomas Mulcair tried to emulate Prime Minister Stephen Harper in a way, and drag their _left wing_ party into the political _centre_. As, long as Prime Minister Harper's Conservatives were the main (only real) enemy it was a good strategy. But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's Liberals _outflanked_ the NDP on the left while, still, holding on to its own centrist base.

Now the NDP must watch as, it appears, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will keep many of the left_ish_ promises that brought so many NDP supporters into the Liberal fold.

That may be the biggest threat to Mr Mulcair's leadership.


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## dapaterson (27 Nov 2015)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> Now the NDP must watch as, it appears, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will keep many of the left_ish_ promises that brought so many NDP supporters into the Liberal fold.
> 
> That may be the biggest threat to Mr Mulcair's leadership.



Angry Santa is good for one more election.  If he stalls out at the current level, he'll be gone.

Or, for the statistics geeks out there, you can view the last election's results for the NDP as a regression to the mean...


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## ModlrMike (27 Nov 2015)

Much is being made of Mr Trudeau's defeat of Stephen Harper. Personally, I think the real victory was the defeat of Thomas Mulcair. The fact that the Liberals won the whole thing was secondary.


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## Edward Campbell (27 Nov 2015)

David Akin reports in his blog, _On The Hill_ that the NDP's national director (boss of the party "machine") "Anne McGrath will leave Ottawa and head to Edmonton at the end of the year" to become deputy chief of staff to Premier Rachel Notley, working with (for) Brian Topp.

This is either (your choice) bad news for the NDP ~ almost a "stab in the back" for Mr Mulcair, or just what the party needs ~ a chance for some new ideas.


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## Brad Sallows (28 Nov 2015)

I don't know why they did so, but to me it looks like Mulcair and the party establishment failed to successfully execute the strategy Layton had established: to squeeze the LPC out of existence and replace it as the primary alternative on the left.  "Job 1" for the NDP in the recent election should have been to destroy the Liberals, even if it meant allowing a CPC government to return as a minority or even as a majority.  They missed their one golden chance in a half-century.

"ABC" - or any campaign which promotes "strategic voting" to prevent election of candidates of the right-most party - inevitably benefits the Liberals.  The NDP cannot play that game.  If the NDP is serious about wanting to govern federally, they need to take at least 15 percentage points of the Liberal "base" away (permanently) and be able to acquire 5 to 10 percentage points from the middle.  I will assume that is not going to happen unless the faction currently in control is thrown out and replaced by people who were close advisors of Layton.


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## cavalryman (28 Nov 2015)

Unless the NDP manages to shed its loony left and silver spoon socialist element (recall the Leap Manifesto, signed by folks with no understanding of Main Street Canada), it'll never win over enough of the mushy middle.  Since the loons have no other home than the NDP, I'd say the Layton singularity has been extinguished and the political universe is once more in its proper balance.


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## Kirkhill (28 Nov 2015)

E.R. Campbell said:
			
		

> David Akin reports in his blog, _On The Hill_ that the NDP's national director (boss of the party "machine") "Anne McGrath will leave Ottawa and head to Edmonton at the end of the year" to become deputy chief of staff to Premier Rachel Notley, working with (for) Brian Topp.
> 
> This is either (your choice) bad news for the NDP ~ almost a "stab in the back" for Mr Mulcair, or just what the party needs ~ a chance for some new ideas.



To heck with the NDP.  It's bad news for Alberta.  

This, together with the movements from Wynne's "team" to Trudeau's "team" suggest that there are a couple of mobs of over-achievers that move from one jurisdiction to another, as the electoral winds blow, and suck off the public teat while playing their social engineering parlour games.

Not another socialist government in Alberta.  Never Again.


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## Altair (28 Nov 2015)

Brad Sallows said:
			
		

> I don't know why they did so, but to me it looks like Mulcair and the party establishment failed to successfully execute the strategy Layton had established: to squeeze the LPC out of existence and replace it as the primary alternative on the left.  "Job 1" for the NDP in the recent election should have been to destroy the Liberals, even if it meant allowing a CPC government to return as a minority or even as a majority.  They missed their one golden chance in a half-century.
> 
> "ABC" - or any campaign which promotes "strategic voting" to prevent election of candidates of the right-most party - inevitably benefits the Liberals.  The NDP cannot play that game.  If the NDP is serious about wanting to govern federally, they need to take at least 15 percentage points of the Liberal "base" away (permanently) and be able to acquire 5 to 10 percentage points from the middle.  I will assume that is not going to happen unless the faction currently in control is thrown out and replaced by people who were close advisors of Layton.


Lord man, they tried.

This was the closest to the center the party has been in their history (as far back as I can remember)

They went to balanced budgets and not tax hikes on the rich, really, I don't see how they could have gone much more to the center other than to kidnap Peter MacKay and make him party leader.

The only reason the NDP are where they are is because they tries to pander to the quebec nationalists that gave them their big breakthrough and then tossed away that support by supporting the niqab.

An all together confusing and clumsy campaign, but I wouldn't say they lost because they didn't try to capture the center. If anything, going to the center cost them when the liberals swung hard left.


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## Altair (28 Nov 2015)

Chris Pook said:
			
		

> To heck with the NDP.  It's bad news for Alberta.
> 
> This, together with the movements from Wynne's "team" to Trudeau's "team" suggest that there are a couple of mobs of over-achievers that move from one jurisdiction to another, as the electoral winds blow, and suck off the public teat while playing their social engineering parlour games.
> 
> Not another socialist government in Alberta.  Never Again.


Well, until the right gets their house in order in Alberta. ..


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## jollyjacktar (28 Nov 2015)

Altair said:
			
		

> Well, until the right gets their house in order in Canada



FTFY


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## Brad Sallows (28 Nov 2015)

>Lord man, they tried.

I don't think they tried hard enough.  They went along with the ABC/strategic voting game.  They wasted time attacking the Conservatives when they should have been attacking - and counter-attacking - the Liberals.  In essence, they failed to maintain the aim.


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## larry Strong (18 Mar 2016)

And the knives sharpen.........

http://www.ctvnews.ca/politics/mulcair-loses-support-of-labour-group-ahead-of-leadership-vote-1.2822362



Cheers
Larry


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## jollyjacktar (18 Mar 2016)

He deserves every one that he'll get in the back for sinking the victory win they had sewn up.  His mouth cost them the election.


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## PuckChaser (18 Mar 2016)

Harper succeeded in killing a party, just not the right one. NDP will go back to its socialist, pre-Layton roots, and sink further into irrelevance. Especially true if Trudeau keeps outflanking them with the "progressive" rhetoric.


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