Jagmeet’s Pathetic Star Failure Will Haunt The NDP

On Idiotic Comments

“While we could have won lots of seats, it would have meant a Pierre Poilievre majority Conservative government, and I could not stomach that.”

Why is Jagmeet Singh a New Democrat?

Like, I’m not trying to just indulge terrible anti-NDP rhetoric here, but the above is Singh’s answer to the Star on why he didn’t bring down Justin Trudeau in the fall of last year. Now, when my guy Mark Ramzy asked Singh about that quote today, and whether it will make people think the only purpose of the NDP is to stop the Conservatives and help elect Liberals, Singh rejected the premise. But it’s fundamentally true, and Singh admits it himself, albeit obliquely, in his answer today.

He refers to “incredibly dangerous” Conservative proposals, says that Poilievre wants “to divide our country in ways … that are really troublesome”, and says again that he couldn’t “stomach” a Conservative majority. So, again, what is the purpose of the NDP if you decide that stopping a Conservative government is more important than the advancement of your own party?

Now, I believe that the stopping of bad Conservative governance is more important than the specifics of any Liberal or NDP platform at any given moment, which is why I’ve voted for the ONDP in 2018 and the Ontario Liberals after that. If I lived in Fanshawe or Griesbach or Skeena I’d vote NDP, despite hating Singh. But the difference between Singh and I is that I haven’t been elected Leader of the fucking NDP, whose job is to advocate for and strengthen the fucking NDP.

There isn’t a special secret clause in the NDP constitution that says that the leader gets to throw their party under the bus if they just care enough. The whole proposition of the NDP is that it doesn’t think the Liberals are worthy of office. Whether people actually believe it, that is the foundational belief going back to the Progressive Party, let alone of the CCF and then the NDP. I don’t mean this as a bad thing, but membership in the NDP is inherently built around the idea that the Liberals are insufficiently progressive and unworthy of government - because, plainly, if they were sufficiently progressive and worthy of government, the NDP wouldn’t need to exist.

Now, Singh is free to have had a Damascene Conversion that actually the NDP are a worthless party that merely serves to elect Conservatives, but he doesn’t get to hold that position and stay on as NDP leader. The problem for Singh is that he fucked up by not accepting a ranked ballot in Confidence And Supply talks, because if there was ranked ballots right now the NDP would be fine, or at least strengthened. A lot of people currently voting Liberal to stop Poilievre would have been able to vote NDP 1, which would have left the NDP in much stronger positions while also making it easier to prosecute arguments against Yasir Naqvi and whoever the Liberal is in Parkdale replacing Virani.

I’m often described as a hater of Singh’s, and I am, because he is a man worthy of hatred. He is a nonsensical person leading of our greatest institutions off a fucking cliff. And he’s doing it in a way that calls into question the institution’s very purpose, and making it nearly impossible for the next leader to save it. Because of Singh, the next time there is any sort of circumstance where the NDP might have any amount of power, the press will be able to quote Jagmeet and say “is it still your position that stopping the Conservatives is more important than winning NDP seats?”, and no matter what answer Heather MacPherson or Matt Green gives they are fucked.

If they say that stopping the Conservatives is the priority, they’re de facto endorsing the Liberals. If they say that electing New Democrats is the priority even if it means giving the Conservatives a term in office, then they will continue to be neatly sorted into their silos, a functionally dead party that’s more a loose band of Independents in all but name than a true National party. All because Singh needed to fucking make himself feel better about his catastrophically terrible leadership.

The scale of this fuckup mustn’t be understated, but nor should the utter predictability of the NDP’s current state. I have been ranting and raving about the fact that the decision to let him stay as leader was a disaster since the night of the 2021 election and at every turn I have been told that I didn’t understand. No, I always fucking understood better than most New Democrats, and the party wanted to live with its head firmly planted up its ass as opposed to living in reality.

If the Liberals win on Monday, I won’t take a massive victory lap. I won’t be crowing about my genius, because I didn’t see it coming. I didn’t think Carney was the right choice until it was him versus Freeland, and until Freeland hired Fraud Allison. And there were a lot of overconfident predictions from 2022 and 2023 that still don’t perfectly hold up even with a 2035 Liberal win as the lens you look back at them through. But the one thing I’ll never be able to shut up about? I was right about Singh. I was right that his leadership was going to end with us here.

I can’t even imagine being an NDP MP or candidate right now, being told that your leader thinks it’s fine you’re going to lose because it’s for the greater good. I cannot fucking believe he actually said any of this out loud. The day the NDP are liberated from Jagmeet’s fucking bullshit will be the day Canada can finally start to heal from the trauma of his 7+ years in federal public life. Until then, go fuck yourself and fuck off.

Bonus: Carleton Watch Alive And Well?

I wrote about Carleton yesterday and I still stand by what I’ve said, but there are two facts since I published that piece that are relevant. The first is that Poilievre is going to the riding for a final event of the campaign on Sunday, and the second is that Liberal canvassers were sent - and got shockingly good responses at the doors - in Greely.

Not Stittsville. Not places that culturally identify as Kanata still despite being moved to Carleton. Fucking Greely. I am not trying to get hopes up unduly, but I do have three words to say:

Game fucking on.