With the next Parliament looking like a mirror image of the last one, pundits and politicians from across the partisan spectrum have taken to calling the recent federal election a waste of money. But if you think the $600 million taxpayers spent on it was bad, wait until you find out how much it cost the NDP to end up back where it started.
After spending upwards of $10 million in 2019 to win 24 seats and 16 per cent of the national vote, Jagmeet Singh’s party more than doubled its campaign budget this time around to a reported $24 million. As NDP national director Anne McGrath told the Toronto Star, “We are spending more on advertising in this campaign than we spent on the entire campaign last time — so that’s pretty significant.”
But those extra millions only resulted in one additional seat and an extra 1.7 per cent of the national vote, with both totals coming in well short of what Thomas Mulcair managed in 2015. TikTok ads aren’t cheap, apparently.
This was the second straight campaign where Singh rated as the most popular leader in Canada, only to wind up leading his party to a fourth-place finish. But despite this underwhelming track record and his predecessor getting the boot after just one (vastly more successful) election, Singh’s position at the top of the federal NDP’s pecking order seems safe for now.
That doesn’t add up for David Herle, a former Liberal strategist and the host of The Herle Burly. “If this party had a winning instinct in it,” he said on his Curse of Politics podcast, “they would be crushed by this result, because this should have been a realignment election for them — or at least the possibility of it. They have a super popular leader, they’ve got a fully funded campaign, and their progressive opposition is vulnerable.”
It’s not just Liberals who are critical of Singh’s performance, either. As political analyst (and NDP supporter) Evan Scrimshaw wrote in his recap of the election, “My real ire is for Jagmeet Singh, who has run a deeply unserious campaign and blew a genuinely good chance at making advances. The party’s seat haul is deeply disappointing, and even if it improves slightly, to be as low as they are, after being told the NDP were a serious party, is pathetic. Jagmeet should resign for the good of the party, because it is clear he cannot run a campaign good enough to convert good vibes into seats.”
And for all the money spent on the leader’s tour, which saw the party charter a plane and send Singh to 51 ridings, it doesn’t seem to have delivered much in the way of ROI. As former NDP candidate for York-Simcoe Jessa McLean tweeted, “NDP federal council took the rebates from the local ridings and poured it all into @theJagmeetSingh’s image and campaign… We’re not a movement. We’re an ad campaign.”
The question the federal NDP faces now is the same one it has struggled to answer ever since the passing of Jack Layton: What, exactly, does it want to accomplish? Is it a movement that seeks to move the Overton window on key public policy issues, or does it want to win elections, form a national government and implement change? If it’s the latter, it needs to lean far more heavily on the experience of its provincial wings in Alberta and British Columbia, where the combination of a personable leader and more pragmatic policies has proven a winning combination. If it’s the former, it needs to do better on defining issues like climate change, where its plan was widely panned by both economists and climate scientists as being aggressively unserious.
It also needs to decide whether it’s going to start heeding its former leader’s call to be “loving, hopeful and optimistic.”
In the recent election, Singh campaigned far more like Stephen Harper than Layton, attacking Justin Trudeau at every available opportunity and trading in misinformation about everything from student loan interest payments to the eight child-care deals with the provinces and territories that had already been struck. Avi Lewis, his star candidate in West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country, launched a personal attack on University of Calgary professor Jennifer Winter — one that was reminiscent of his 2018 broadside against then-premier Rachel Notley when he described her as “the new patron saint of the corporate welfare bums.”
Based on his first post-election press conference, where he effectively blamed the prime minister for low voter turnout, that seems unlikely to change any time soon. “I think there’s a lot of cynicism,” Singh told reporters. “And I think that cynicism has been fed by people like Mr. Trudeau.”
At some point, the NDP faithful are going to have to decide if this approach deserves a third kick at the electoral can, or whether it’s time for a new leader who can actually give voice to Layton’s spirit of optimism and hope. At the very least, they might want to find one who can deliver a better return on their investment.
Comments
Silly? In this deeply divided time, why pretend we can indulge ourselves by flirting with "we shoulds" or "we need to's" when orcs abound and are at the door? These differences between progressive viewpoints AREN'T small under the current circumstances? We are BARELY holding onto power; as in the States, progressives are the majority which means that regressives have to double down to win, and so ARE, and with social media platforms they've won the jackpot. Look at the States, mentor for the cons here. Look how many voted for a complete idiot. Most people don't even FOLLOW politics, just submit to the messages of which there are many and they are now in a silo, so they respond emotionally to basic tribal shit or the equally irrelevant cult of personality. That's the reality. Low-information voters are US, the abiding Achilles heel of any democracy. So you truly have to be more objective and utilitarian really. Politics ARE the art of the possible. There ARE two kinds of people in the world---open and closed. In such a polatized reality, this is the stark choice before us at this time.
The main difference with the Liberals is that they have critical, attackable mass, having actually BEEN in governance, are actually the naturally governing party by virtue of simply being at the helm of the capitalist system that has determined this country's entire economic direction. There is definitely arrogance there, personified by Pierre Trudeau, but not found in Lester B. Pearson for example. They brought in the Charter, patriated the constitution, created the flag, established our impeccable reputation abroad. And always worked with corporations that have indisputably played a huge part in our relative wealth. That's a reality, so just dismissing them out of hand is just ridiculous. It's called "working in harness" and it's what the NDP or the Greens or any party would be faced with once they step into the traces of the system that is in place. So blaming the Liberals for that structure is like blaming individuals for burning natural gas to heat their homes right now. The NDP could provide the "Leap" factor, as well as embodying the idealism afforded anyone at a remove. Remember how in 2008 the Democrats bailed out the banks? That was because that represented the salient SYSTEM underpinning their whole economy. A structure that is not easily changed by any ideology, no matter how compelling. Mark Carney has the right idea, he's approaching change from within the reality of the world's financial systems, which are the very heart of power. He supports the Liberals and may well be next up.
I would say you're the one obsessing about tribalism. For you, the important thing is "orcs", a vicious uneducated social group.
Here's the thing: I am a leftist. I believe that politics is for the most part about class struggle. I'm on the side of the poorer up through middle--workers and so forth. The Liberal party is ultimately on the side of the people who own companies, not the people who work for them. They are on the OPPOSITE SIDE of the class struggle from me. They try to camouflage this by being nice. I'm glad they're nice, but they're still on the side of the downtreaders and I'm still on the side of the downtrodden.
So no matter how much the same my TRIBE might be with a Liberal, no matter if we went to the same university and have the same taste in lattes or whatever, we are on opposite sides in politics and joining up with them would be political suicide.
The Quebec vote plays a significant part in all of this. Why do we have a leader in this election and all the others who insists on ensuring that he represents his own nation (Quebec)? What a nutty country this is. Singh is caught in the overall struggle of strategic voting wherein a large portion of the voting public vote "against" some party. Would it not be far more to the point to consider that TRUDEAU garnished the votes of somewhere in the neighborhood of three in every ten votes. Hardly a popular mandate(?) at all. Maybe he or his party should consider the price paid for such a humble performance? They will after all be dependent upon Singh if they want to get anything done. Not that they demonstrate much of "getting something done" very often.
As a long time NDP member (since 1973), I get the impression that the NDP has lost its base. I know little about most riding associations but in my area there seems to be none at all, or, if they exist there is little activity. Respect of the membership by the NDP hierarchy seems to be gone as members are seen essentially as donors. Try to contact the national office, try to get clarity on donations, try to get simple support or information...basically impossible. And where is the grassroot involvement in developing policy and priorities? I sent 3 resolutions to my riding association annual meeting 3 years ago...they were adopted and I can't get any information for anyone as to what happened to them! And, partly because of COVID, party meetings, even at the local level seem no longer exist, never mind the fiasco of the last national conference. How can it be expected that the NDP will make gains at the ballot box when there are so few active associations and so little participation? A leader is very important, but a numerous, active and enthusiastic base is even more important!
It should be, anyway. Look at how a "numerous, active and enthusiastic" base aka the Tea Party took over the Republican party in the states. A lot of it was though primarying incumbents -- threatening them with an even further right candidate for the nomination in the party's primary elections. Our nomination process doesn't work like that, so where are the comparable pressure points?
The frustration I feel is the waste of money on negative advertising such as the CBC radio ads in about the last 10 days of the campaign. I heard them every day. It was all about attacking Trudeau. Not one word on a positive vision of the future, of the transition we need to be in, nothing about climate - when that was the issue on a great many voters minds, and the most urgent time for action is this next few years. I was very disappointed. There were some fabulous local candidates who were very positive, very committed, and named climate change on their web pages, and in their videos - such as Paul Taylor and Alejandra Bravo. They had to hold up this positive energy all on their own - and almost made it. It would have helped if the national campaign supported this vision.
With three parties that are centre-left and First Past the Post, it's hard for the Greens or NDP to get traction. The Liberals will say, "Vote for us, or else you'll get those scary Conservatives," and people do vote strategically for the Liberals when they might prefer to vote NDP or Green. Oddly, the author did not talk about ROI for Conservative or Liberal spending which was stratospheric compared to NDP. It was a lot of money wasted for not much gained for all parties.
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