For many years some people have thought that the sign outside New Democratic Party headquarters in Ottawa should have included the line: ‘E. Broadbent, prop.’ It will be an end to Ed Broadbent’s era later this month when his hopes for the party will be destroyed by democracy. Control of the party will be wrested from him.
For good or bad, the next leader of the NDP will not be Ed Broadbent’s creation. Mind you, he has had a heck of a run since being chosen leader of the party to succeed David Lewis in 1975. Some people know when to quit.
Probably Broadbent’s worst fear is that Thomas Mulcair from Quebec will win the NDP’s first truly democratic leadership convention. Mulcair is the demon from the unknown. He is no social democrat. He is barely a blue liberal.
And he is not Ed Broadbent’s boyo! Broadbent made it clear from day one of this interminable NDP campaign that he was fore-square behind Brian Topp. It was made perfectly clear that Brian Topp was the establishment candidate. That endorsement and Topp’s seeming to have all the personality of a sack of potatoes, did him little good.
With the current consensus that Thomas Mulcair is in the lead, Broadbent has much to answer for among the titular leaders of the NDP. It seems the boy can sell memberships. Quebec has never had so many New Democrats as it has today.
But, by no stretch, has Mulcair won the leadership. If he has a going in position of 25 per cent of the vote, that is formidable. His only problem will be how to turn 25 per cent into 51 per cent. For that, you have to have more people thinking you are second best than thinking you are number one. That is not as likely.
And we know that Brian Topp is no compromise. Paul Dewar is nobody’s second choice. Nathan Cullen from B.C. would be an interesting compromise but nobody knows him. And that leaves the darling of the NDP, everybody’s second choice: Ms. Peggy Nash.
And why not? She will make nice with Ed Broadbent and send him off like an aged parent to a seniors’ residence. She will keep the fiction of Jack Layton’s social democrats alive by not pandering to the unions in public. She will be tougher than previous women leaders of the party. She will still watch her inflated caucus numbers in Quebec recede. She will be back in third party status after the next election. Without a rapprochement with the liberal left across Canada, she is taking the NDP nowhere.
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Copyright 2012 © Peter Lowry
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