How To Save The NDP

On The Crossroads Before Them

A Modest Proposal To Save The NDP

If the NDP is to restore itself, it will need to re-establish a vision for the future. The end of Jagmeet Singh’s leadership, and the disastrous performance in the election, represents a chance to reframe the party closer to the ideals it was founded on, and to position itself as a genuinely useful anti-Conservative force, as opposed to the sanctimonious left flank of the Liberal Party. The NDP needs to remember what its purpose is, abandon the campus progressivism, reframe the social activism, and become a worker’s party once again - a party that stands for economic and class solidarity without concern for the moral righteousness or otherwise of those workers.

The NDP’s great crisis has been well documented in these pages, but there is no longer any doubt of its crisis. The NDP have been reduced to 7 seats, destroyed in many heartland areas, and need to recommit to being the worker’s party they need to be. This doesn’t mean casually throwing marginalized communities under the bus - nobody will believe Leah Gazan or Heather MacPherson suddenly pretending to hold the views of TERFs tomorrow. What can work, and what they need to do, is radically deemphasize the social progressivism and the foreign policy issues.

The NDP have never taken particularly culturally conservative views, but under Layton they were able to appeal to gay people and allies in Toronto and those less progressive on gay rights in rural and regional Canada. Nobody was under the impression that Layton was ever a social conservative, but the party focused on economic issues that could unite Timmins and Toronto.

The NDP needs policy renewal, having gotten Dental and Pharma in this last Parliament. They are currently without a raison d’être, having had their policy lunch eaten on housing by Nate Erskine-Smith and generally sucking on the issue under Singh, and having had nothing interesting to say about the environment since Mulcair. And the reasons for their failures on policy come back to trying to be a party for both Parkdale and Powell River. The environmental policy that’ll fly in Spadina will never fly in Skeena, and that’s why they’re stuck.

The virtue of understanding who you’re attempting to be is simple - you’ll be able to finally create a policy suite that adds up. It won’t be what many very online leftists want, but properly understanding you’re going after Cowichan and Nanaimo and Windsor and Skeena and Campbell River and London for your political revival, and not Danforth, Davenport, and Parkdale, changes the mix. The party can more forcefully come out for changes that play well in smaller towns and cities without needing them to be nationally relevant. Right now, with a 6% vote share and 7 seats, they’re not a national party.

The answer isn’t to attempt to create some Bernie-esque national movement, it’s to double down on a path that can actually achieve outcomes. Focusing on some form of actual viable path forward will make their policy strategy much more sensible and coherent. Done properly, yes, the return to a working class message about worker protection in a time of automation and AI, money for retraining and further education at later ages, better wages and conditions, and diversifying the western economy away from oil and gas can also work with workers across the country, but let’s be real - the NDP doesn’t really exist east of Schwartz’s so who fucking cares.

The NDP needs to double their seat count in 2024, and almost all their best targets are Conservative held seats. Skeena, Cowichan, North Island-Powell River, Griesbach, Transcona are 5 Tory held seats where the NDP are in somewhat good shape, and can be won next time with a less shitty leader and a new focus on working class issues, and that would be party status. It’s a start, at least.

Any strategy for those five seats can focus on Poilievre’s policies sounding nice, but being regressive and more helpful to the richest. It would take cutting dumb and bad NDP ideas around removing GST off things, and using the money and firepower for targeted credits for the poor and working class. Populist ideas should be the name of the game, but a slightly less insanely stupid populism. Instead of “take the GST off Canadian cars”, a nonsensical Poilievre idea that saves rich fucks buying top of the line models more than the average Joe buying the cheapest car they can, make your populist pitches reasonable and focused on real issues.

Why not incentives for companies that hire Canadian youth, at a time when Youth Unemployment is shockingly high? Why not lead a national campaign to unify worker’s safety standards across the country at the most stringent safety rules, shaming (mostly Conservative) provinces for lax regulations and inadequate protection? On economics, Poilievre’s working class credentials are nonexistent. His actual ideas were gifts to the rich, but the NDP last time wasn’t able to take advantage. They need to be able to do so this time.

Obviously, an NDP more focused on workers and less on social issues will be one whose gains come from the Conservatives. And yes, that means the NDP would in theory be less threatening to the Liberals. But I also think that is in the short term interest of both parties. The combined Liberal/NDP seat count in this Parliament is 176, which is 9 down on 2021 and 5 down on 2019, despite 5 more seats in Parliament. It is in both our interests to see that number rise at the next election, and in seats where the NDP are the best choice to defeat Conservatives the Liberals should facilitate that.

I have advocated for decoupling the national spending limit from the number of candidates run, and I think there’s every reason to allow good NDP candidates in solid Orange-Blue seats to run unopposed by a Liberal in the next election, assuming the NDP give us reciprocity in Red-Blue targets. Even with all of my animosity towards Jagmeet, if I were in Griesbach or Cowichan or any number of Orange-Blue seats I’d have voted NDP because I think the NDP are a value to our country. But not as the sanctimonious wing of the Liberals. Trust me, as an unofficial leader of the sanctimonious wing of the LPC, there’s plenty of us here to do that job, we don’t need help.

We need an NDP that isn’t scared to piss off Rosedale and Parkdale by proposing top rate tax rises. We need an NDP that is more focused on winning back regional seats held by the CPC. We need a NDP that is properly different than the Liberals, and not just a vestibule for people annoyed the Liberal leader isn’t good enough in vague, esoteric ways.

The honest truth is the Liberals have eaten your lunch anyways in Liberal-NDP battlegrounds. Matt Green and Peter Julien are the only two NDP candidates who came within 10% of winning in an LPC seat, and if you define the range of “competitive” to be 20%, all you add is Niki Ashton. On the other hand, there are 4 seats within 10% and another 3 within 14% where the NDP are attacking the CPC. Respectfully, the NDP’s offensive targets from the Liberals don’t exist. Their only path forward is economic populism that plays in the rural and regional towns and cities they used to win.

Betting on getting another Jack, or another whoever, isn’t the answer. Banking on cults of personality mean that when you inevitably don’t get a star leader, or that leader stagnates, you’re fucked. The NDP need a more sustainable model of party building that builds from first principles - worker’s rights, better wages, reduced economic and material inequality, and making the case for government as a source of good - and doesn’t rely on saviour leaders. Done properly, the NDP can win back seats, help stop bad Conservative governance, and rebuild an identity and a brand.