Even with a new leader, the NDP can’t defeat the Tories alone

I just can’t get excited about the NDP leadership race, which ends March 24 in Toronto, because irrespective of who wins, it’s hard to see it leading to a positive outcome for progressive politics in this country.

Will Thomas Mulcair, the party outsider who reportedly flirted with the Tories prior to joining the NDP, win? Or will it be NDP insider Brian Topp, with the blessing of party elders such as former leader Ed Broadbent? Or will B.C.’s Nathan Cullen or Ontario’s Peggy Nash sneak up the middle as a compromise? Will the new leader turn left or tack toward the centre in an attempt to gain power?

I might be in a dark mood (I’m writing this on my birthday, and I’m getting less and less fond of growing older as years pass), but will it really matter?

It seems to me that in the short term, Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Tories will likely benefit from an official Opposition whose new leader will be learning the ropes while at the same time working to unify his or her party.

In the longer term, a surging NDP and a near-total collapse of the Liberal party would work to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s advantage as he seeks to move Canada’s political culture even more to the right while further polarizing federal electoral politics.

This is not good news, unless you’re a fan of the political cultures in such places as the United States and British Columbia, where electoral politics are divisive and sharply splintered along left-right lines.

It’s also not good news for progressives, because as long as the Liberals are still breathing but weak, a divided left means Tory governments for the foreseeable future. And even if the NDP were to wipe out the Liberals within two election cycles (which is unlikely), it could take much longer than that for a leader of a party that has never governed at the federal level to convince enough Canadians in enough ridings to give it a chance to take the reins of power.

Even then, after four decades of pro-business lobbying that has shifted politics in all western democracies inexorably to the right,  it would need to do so by showing it’s a “credible” economic manager that can be trusted with the levers of power by people who are inherently wary of it. But unlike the Liberal party, which historically has had deep ties to business and legal circles, the NDP would be trying to gain this trust with MPs and a leadership drawn from “unfamiliar” power circles, such as organized labour and grassroots social movements.

In other words, with ex-teachers and social workers, not Bay Street lawyers. But while other points of view might be refreshing, lawyers win elections.

As such, the NDP would be very vulnerable to pro-business sandbagging of the sort seen in 1990 when it won power in Ontario. Who can forget those hilariously over-the-top billboards comparing rookie premier Bob Rae to Marx and Stalin, or to a mousetrap?

It’s no secret that Harper wants to remake Canada in his own image and turn his Conservatives into Canada’s natural governing party, as the Liberals were in the 20th century. Stopping him should be priority No. 1 for progressives.

He’s decided that crushing the Liberals as a centrist political force is crucial to his goal. He’s even launched a negative ad campaign against Bob Rae, the interim Liberal leader who at the moment isn’t even allowed to run for his party’s top job. Harper is trying to make sure Rae doesn’t make it to the next election campaign in four years by launching the kind of (successful) hatchet job he sprung on previous Liberal leader Michael Ignatieff.

Harper would like to see the NDP supplant the Liberals as Canada’s left-of-centre party, to the extent that the Liberals actually are or were left-of-centre. (It’s an arguable contention, in that they sway with the prevailing political winds, and given that, as Stephen Clarkson argues, centrism is a relatively new, post-World War II phenomenon in Canada.)

The Liberals’ collapse was well underway before Harper became prime minister in 2006. The disintegration of the Liberals’ Quebec- and Ontario-based coalition over the past 40 years was masked in the 1990s by the demise of Brian Mulroney’s own western- and Quebec-nationalist-based coalition. This led to a fracturing of Canada’s right wing and a run of Liberal governments, despite the gradual erosion of the Liberals’ voting bloc.

Since 2003, Harper has managed to knit together a new Conservative coalition consisting of traditionalist immigrants, plus Alberta and other western interests, along with chunks of rural and suburban Ontario. Last May, he achieved a 163-seat bare majority, but he did it with only 39.6 per cent of the popular vote and without very much support in Quebec and relatively few seats in Toronto proper, or in the large urban centres of Montreal, Vancouver and Ottawa.

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Meanwhile, the NDP’s surge last May came as a result of its 59-seat breakthrough in Quebec. That result was largely due to Jack Layton’s popularity in the province, but the late leader’s personal appeal also led the party to a late-campaign surge elsewhere.

Now that Layton is gone, a new leader will have to spend a great deal of time shoring up the NDP’s support in Quebec, which has dropped from a post-election high that exceeded 50 per cent to between 27 and 32 per cent in recent polls, including one that put the Bloc Québécois ahead of them. (The NDP’s support in Quebec came largely at the expense of the Bloc, which saw its seat total drop from 47 to 4 and its leader defeated.)

That job might be easier for Mulcair, but a Quebec leader who is seen as beholden to that province might be a tough sell elsewhere in Canada. And the prospects for any other NDP leadership hopeful in Quebec are daunting, meaning the party’s Quebec breakthrough could be temporary, or as much of a long-term curse as it is a blessing. And it also means Quebec is now the tail that wags the NDP dog, for better or worse.

Layton’s death, in other words, has left the party adrift.

Aside from achieving his Quebec breakthrough, Layton’s late-career genius also lay in his ability to look for pragmatic, non-ideological compromises and communication strategies. He personally managed to earn the trust and respect of many Canadians elsewhere in the country in a way that other national NDP leaders haven’t been able to do in a long time. And having been leader since 2003 and having already fought a number of elections as chief, he might have earned the trust of Canadians more quickly than a a rookie leader would.

Although Layton was helped by facing two mediocre Liberal leaders in a row, without him, the party’s prospects are not nearly as good. It needed another election with him at the helm to either win or come close to power while showing off its supporting players, who have been thrust into the spotlight way too early.

Meanwhile, Harper has been rather gentle on the NDP while he sets his sights on destroying the Liberal brand. (He was a real mensch in offering to give Layton a state funeral, although the cynic in me wonders if it was part of his plan to build up the NDP at the expense of the Liberals.) Harper seems to believe the NDP isn’t strong enough to help his cause by itself, so he’s trying to strengthen the party by going after the Liberals.

Yet Harper clearly believes he would win a pure Tory-NDP showdown, and it would be wise not to underestimate the strategic skills of someone who managed to unite Canadian conservatives under a hard-right banner.

Paradoxically, a resurgent Liberal party, with its historical ties to relatively left-of-centre business and legal interests in Toronto and other urban centres, as well as its roots in immigrant communities (such as the Jewish community) may be the best way to prevent Harper’s Tories from solidifying and growing their electoral coalition, even if this means vote-splitting and electoral defeats for left-of-centre forces in the next few elections.

It could also mean that if the Liberals revive themselves, they could wind up back in their traditional position as the senior partner among Canada’s centre-left parties, with the NDP reverting to its traditional role of being the country’s conscience.

But progressives need to ask themselves if it’s better to wield power for its own sake through the NDP or to stop Harper from painting the country blue permanently. Also, its worth remembering Rae’s experience as an NDP premier of Ontario, when business and budgetary pressures revealed the limits of power for a social democratic party, and that pressuring the Liberals from the left has brought the NDP many policy successes.

Meanwhile, as a resurgent Rae is proving in his role as interim leader of a third party, the Liberals, unlike the NDP, still have experienced parliamentarians who can play hardball with the Tories.

It’s not too late to slow Harper’s march. If he can’t increase the Tories’ majority or expand its voter base in the next election, his obsessive partisanship might spur more scandals such as Robocon and In and Out, thereby wearing out his party’s welcome with Canadians and splintering his coalition.

It’s hard for left-wingers to swallow, but the Liberals need to survive and thrive if Harper is to be stopped.