One of the last times I saw my grandparents was my birthday weekend in 2012, the weekend I turned 15. The trip was difficult, as the combination of health issues and familial tensions made it a trip more of obligation than any particular happiness, but it did lead to one of the stupidest things I’ve ever been a part of - a dramatic process of flattening out their living room rug.
The reason it was dramatic was my grandmother was being psycho, insisting we weren’t doing it right - and then loudly insisting we put the furniture right back into the grooves of the carpet it had created before, completely destroying any progress we had achieved. (Our efforts to patiently explain this to her were rebuffed, and got us screamed at.) It was one of the weirdest 30 minutes I’ve ever been a part of, because of the high tension, the emotions, the yelling, and the complete and utter lack of any stakes. It was just weird, and weird for its complete lack of importance but the intensity of her feeling.
That’s how I feel about the NDP a lot of the time - it’s a party that has lots of loud fury about shit but never actually does anything, and puts the proverbial furniture right where it was. It’s a deeply unserious party, as Don Davies proved again Friday, saying the loss of official party status was an outcome “no one really foresaw.” Yes, that’s a real quote, and yes it’s precisely as stupid as it sounds. No one really foresaw it, except for … I don’t know, literally everyone who didn’t have their heads up their asses? Unless you just arbitrarily decided the polls didn’t matter because of some nonsense about the Ontario NDP that we knew at the time wasn’t analogous or relevant, it was obvious.
This isn’t even what I want to get pissed at Davies about, but it’s a symptom of the larger NDP crisis - they’re an institutionally stupid party at this point, at least at the senior staff and MP level. If “no one” (in your echo chamber) saw this coming then your echo chamber is a huge fucking problem. The fact that Davies called me a “partisan Liberal pundit” when I corrected him that Angus Reid is not, in fact, a Liberal push pollster, as opposed to engaging with the poll he claimed was spreading disinformation might be accurate, is a problem. The fact that the NDP were surprised by the most obvious outcome - losing working class seats to the CPC and not getting any credit for the government’s successes from urban, progressive voters - is evidence of their intellectual rot.
But what is most emblematic of the NDP’s patheticness is their plea for official party status anyways. The entitlement of the NDP is actually audacious - you lost, deal with the consequences - but also worth remembering in the context of what the NDP have said about the Liberals in the last four years.
Jagmeet Singh declared the Liberals “too weak, too selfish, and too beholden to corporate interest to fight for people.” He declared the Liberals “will always cave to corporate greed.” He declared them “greedy” and “anti-worker” at various times. He did all of this while voting for the government on the floor, by the way - a fun fact that treated voters like they were morons because he was flat out lying to them about actually opposing the Liberals - and then he ripped up a deal for purely political reasons. So, given that, why should the Liberals reward the NDP?
There are two arguments for why the Liberals should give the NDP party status anyways - one moral, and one strategic. The moral argument is that it’s the right thing to do to help the NDP represent the voters who voted for them. The problem is the NDP at this election got less share of the vote than the Greens did in 2019, and there was no benevolent cry from Jagmeet Singh to give the Greens funding then. Hypocrisy doesn’t make a moral argument, and the NDP are fucking hypocrites.
The other argument is that this is great for Carney, because he can trade party status for stability in this Parliament and kill the risk of an election for at least two years. Well, respectfully, that’s already true because of the state of the NDP. Carney already doesn’t have to worry about an election because the NDP are about to embark on a long leadership race and then a process of rebuilding under the new leader. Throw in the little issue of the Quebec election next year and the fact that every organizer, staffer, and donor dollar in separatist Quebec politics will be flowing to the PQ for the next 17 months is another reason Carney will get his budgets passed.
It’s also insane to suggest that it’s tactically smart to bail out the NDP when the leader they’re negotiating with now won’t be here to enforce the deal. Let’s say Davies agreed to attack the CPC relentlessly, focus on winning back working class voters and abandon any other focus in exchange for party status - Davies can’t guarantee that for much more than months! He isn’t the leader! We also know the NDP’s word is worthless, given they ripped up the last deal we did with them.
Oh, and the money the NDP would be getting would enable them to attack us more vigorously, pay staff out of Parliamentary dollars and not party ones (meaning they’d reload their warchest faster), and generally increase the likelihood they recover in the polls. I get being chivalrous but we’re not obligated to give you the run to shoot us with.
But more than any moral point or strategic one, the NDP doesn’t get to treat the Liberal Party like its punching bag until they need us. They don’t get to lie to progressive voters that we are anti-worker and greedy or that we cave to corporate greed and then our goodwill. They don’t get to say whatever they want without consequences. As a party, the idea of being taken seriously is anathema to them, but they played a big game and definitely talked one throughout 2024. That they kept a toxic incompetent leader who fucked them isn’t our fault, it’s theirs.
The NDP have to stop embracing the worst notions of both powerlessness and entitlement - treating themselves as both so essential to the political process we must bail them out while also handwaving away the fact that they are in fact responsible for needing bailing out. They act like things happen to them, as bystanders in a process, and not actors within it. The fact that we’re two weeks out nearly from the election and the best thinking on how the NDP can move forward has been done on this site and not from any NDP elected, current or former, is a disgrace.
The NDP got 6% of the vote in April because they are not an essential party of Canadian politics. They are a party that has to work every day to make clear why they exist in the political environment of this country, and they act like they’re above it. It’s an arrogance that I know well as an Ontario Liberal, and one that is as hazardous to our prospects as it has been to the NDP.
What the NDP need to do is not focus on getting bailed out by Carney but acknowledge reality and their complicity in the outcome. They don’t deserve party status because they didn’t earn it, and they don’t deserve good will from Liberals after trashing us with blatant lies. There’s no deal to be done with them because they don’t honour their deals. And until anybody in the NDP repents for their dishonesty, their lack of integrity, and acknowledges their failures were entirely self-inflicted, they can and will languish in the pit of despair of Canadian politics.
But they’re not interested in being a better party, they just want to waste a lot of time, blow a lot of smoke, and then put all the furniture right back where it was anyways. And that’s why the Canadian public will have no interest in reviving them any time soon.
Alberta NDPer here. I agree 100% with this assessment. I despised how Singh made outrageous personal attacks against PM Trudeau but then voted to prop up the government. I support the Alberta NDP but the Federal Liberals. I do not just mean I mark an X on election day. I am a generous donor and provincially work for the NDP at election time!
Evan, you vote Red and I voted Blue.
Having said that, I absolutely agree that the NDP should not be treated to party status. Simply put, they are totally irrelevant - according to the voters! - to the Parliament that we have. There has for many years been a threshold of twelve seats for a party to be recognized in Parliament; there should be no waiving of that rule.
Put differently, if you waive for the NDP, why not waive for the Greens? [Shudder, shake in horror!] Why not waive for a party that did not win any seats? The threshold has existed for a number of decades. To waive that rule which is truly well known is an insult to the voters.