Never say "never", Mr Mulcair.
by Clyde Sanger
In his first CBC interview after being elected leader of the New Democrats, Thomas Mulcair flatly ruled out working with the Liberals in the next election. "It's absolutely not in the cards," he told Peter Mansbridge. "In order to win the next election, our party must reach beyond its traditional base and unite all progressive forces under the NDP's banner."
Here we go again! Prime Minister Stephen Harper will be delighted to have another three years of a divided opposition.
The reasons for Mulcair's vehemence are clear. Throughout the leadership campaign his main rival, Brian Topp, implied he was a Liberal in NDP clothes. Ed Broadbent bombarded him with sharp doubts about the direction he would take the party. And for two days at the convention, the other six candidates wove their speeches out of social-democratic yarn.
All these remonstrations hit home. In his victory speech, Mulcair prominently highlighted the importance of community work and attention to the grassroots. His 13 years as a Liberal member of the Quebec national assembly are in the mists of the past; his four years as an NDP member of parliament in Ottawa are what count today.
Two other candidates more than hinted at the huge task ahead. In a sparkling speech, Paul Dewar promised to go campaigning across Canada to win those 70 extra seats the New Democrats need to gain power, and (to win over Albertans) threw in the idea of a Lethbridge Declaration on climate change and much else. Nathan Cullen stuck to his argument of cooperation with the Liberals through joint nominations to fight Tory incumbents in vulnerable ridings.
Besides the 103 seats NDPers won last May, they placed second in another 121 seats.
Cullen is the more realistic, as any analysis of the last two elections shows. Besides the amazing total of 103 seats won last May, New Democrats pointed to 121 seats in which they placed second. But in only nine of those 121 seats did the NDP candidate come with striking distance (say, within 3,500 votes) of the Conservative winner. There are another four seats where they came within that margin behind a Liberal winner.
As Professor Nelson Wiseman pointed out, outside Quebec the Orange Wave gained the NDP only eight more seats in 2011 — while the Conservatives won 28 more, on top of the 24 they gained in 2008. Most of the new Conservative seats were in Ontario, won from the Liberals. In only a few of these ridings (Peter Kent's Thornhill, for example) does the Conservative MP even now have a majority. Does all this history make a case for NDP-Liberal-Green cooperation, at least to the point of joint nominations? There's an obvious reason that Bob Rae has turned his back on that tactic: most of these lost seats were held by Liberals. He has given a neat push to his party's revival in his year as Interim Leader, but the party has a distance to go. In another year — and once confirmed in the leadership — Rae could be in a position to level with the New Democrats in any bargaining.
So what is Mulcair to do this coming year? Fight Rae to keep the Liberals down? Work even harder to measure up against the prime opponent, Stephen Harper? Or both? And what will the grassroots — the presidents of Liberal and NDP riding associations, tired of losing because they are divided — do about cooperating to unseat their Tory member? Will Mulcair listen to his grassroots?
There are three years to run until the next election. Time to change minds, and make limited alliances. Never say 'Never', Mr. Mulcair.
About Clyde Sanger
Clyde Sanger is author of a dozen books, an international journalist, and former Canadian correspondent for The Economist. He worked for forty years as a journalist in Britain, Africa, and North America. He has served as director of communications with the North-South Institute and as an adjunct professor of journalism at Carleton University.
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