Canada: After Mulcair's victory, build a mass left wing to save the NDP

Thomas Mulcair, the former Quebec Liberal and so-called “modernizer”, has been elected leader of the federal New Democratic Party. He gained 57% of the vote on the fourth and final ballot, defeating six other candidates in the process. Many in the party fear that he will take the same route as former British Labour leader Tony Blair. However, this will not be easy for him. There is little enthusiasm for Mulcair in the party and only 50% of the membership found a reason to vote for any of the candidates. The reality is that there were very few ideas discussed in the campaign and Mulcair’s victory was no way inevitable. A genuinely left-wing candidate could have galvanized the rank-and-file and defeated this turn to the right.

The NDP’s electoral breakthrough in 2011 marked a real advance for working-class people in the fight against the coming capitalist austerity. It also represented a real threat to the capitalists and was recognized as such in the corporate media. To be clear, it was not the party’s platform that was a threat — Jack Layton admitted that his program was not significantly different from that of the Liberals. The threat came from the millions of workers that put their support behind the party. There will be mass opposition to austerity and, as the Official Opposition, for the first time the NDP was ideally placed to be the conduit for this opposition. Coming to victory on the backs of a mass movement would have put immense pressure on the leadership and the party as a whole. This situation was unacceptable for the ruling class.

With the untimely death of Jack Layton, who played a balancing role between the different wings of the party, corporate Canada seized the opportunity. With massive rhetorical support from the bourgeois press and significant financial support from Bay Street, they worked to get their man into the head of Canada’s labour party. People were told, endlessly, that only Mulcair could hold on to the NDP’s gains in Quebec. This ignores the fact that none of these mouthpieces, the Globe and Mail, the National Post, the Toronto Star, et. al., ever predicted or supported the NDP’s “Orange Wave” in 2011.  People were told, also endlessly, that the key to winning elections is by appealing to the “centre”, despite the fact that the Liberals, the party of the so-called centre, were crushed in the last election. Noted representatives of the corporate elite gave thousands to Mulcair, including Anthony Munk of Barrick Gold, Gerry Schwartz of Onex, and John Sherrington of Scotia Capital, to name a few. They also brought along numerous members of their boards of directors.

Unfortunately, this right-wing takeover was successful at the party’s Toronto leadership convention. Assisted by the atomizing nature of the “one-member-one-vote” leadership process, the media barrage convinced the majority of NDP members that the only way to gain power and defeat the hated Conservatives was to further water down the party’s program and message. Everything from the past was deemed “1950s boilerplate”. Mulcair critiqued the language and past policy choices of the NDP while refusing to outline what precisely he would do differently. When accused of moving the party to the centre, he used the vague language that he wanted to move the centre to the NDP.

The irony of Mulcair’s victory is that it comes at the same time as the Occupy movement against inequality, the Arab revolutions, and the greatest capitalist crisis since the 1930s. How could so-called “Blairite” ideas come forward at a time like this? Ideas do not exist in a vacuum and you have to look at the alternatives on offer. The main opponents to Mulcair were party strategist Brian Topp and former Canadian Autoworkers negotiator Peggy Nash. However, neither of these candidates represented a real alternative to Mulcair.

Nash had the background closest to the pro-union grassroots of the NDP, but her campaign was almost entirely content-free. She probably thought that if she said very little, she could sail up the middle as a compromise candidate. Nash even went so far as to say there were no real political differences between the candidates. Rather than garnering support, this approach had the opposite effect. The inability of Nash to outline a clear left-wing platform made her irrelevant to the final discussion and she got a disappointing 12% after the first ballot.

According to Mulcair, his internal polling had Nash as his main competitor until the final few weeks of the race. This coincides with the intervention of former party leader and Brian Topp supporter, Ed Broadbent, into the campaign when he warned NDP members against Thomas Mulcair. Broadbent said that Mulcair was unclear on the inequality issue, would move the party to the centre, and does not have a commitment to social democracy. Topp’s surprisingly strong second-place finish with 43% on the last ballot shows that this last-minute intervention polarized the debate and made Topp the main anti-Mulcair candidate. This is also ironic given Brian Topp’s history.

Despite not having a seat in the House of Commons, Topp started off the campaign as the main candidate of the party bureaucracy. Previously he had spent his time advising the notably right-wing Saskatchewan NDP under Roy Romanow before moving to Jack Layton’s war room and coordinating the coalition discussions with the Liberals. He even wrote an op-ed supporting the Greek austerity of PASOK’s George Papandreou. Left credentials these are not! For a period it even looked like the corporate press would come behind his candidacy. However, they abandoned him when he started making left-ish noises about increasing corporate taxes and creating a new tax bracket for those earning more than $250,000. Unfortunately for Topp and his backers, the man who had never run for public office immediately came off as cold and aloof in front of the cameras. This allowed Nash to initially gain support on the left based on her history, while Mulcair dominated the right.

Why were the “social democrats” unable to defeat the “modernizers”? The reality is that when Broadbent and Topp opposed the rightward shift of Mulcair they were forced to do so using traditional left-wing language. Topp said, “I think if there are two Liberal parties before the people of Canada in the next election, people will vote for the real one.” This line could have been lifted from any one of numerous editorials in Fightback magazine against the rightward drift of the party bureaucracy with Topp as a central actor. The top brass had no credibility to make such statements, and the Mulcair faction just repeated the same lines the “social democrats” used to put down the socialist wing of the party. Once you set on a rightward path of “moderation” and coalitions with Liberals, it is very difficult to slam on the brakes if you think it has gone too far. Mulcair could credibly reply that he was merely continuing the process begun under Layton (and Topp). The social democrats used to present themselves as the moderates against the socialists in the party — now they too find themselves regarded as the far left against the modernizers. This is where opportunism leads you.

When there are no real or credible political differences people have no option but to focus on personality. In this very narrow beauty pageant, Mulcair was always going to win. But it is important to realize that the right-wing’s victory was not inevitable. If any of the candidates, especially Peggy Nash or Niki Ashton, had come out with a clear left-wing platform they could have defeated the “modernizers”. There is a real reason why 50% did not vote — none of the candidates spoke to the real issues concerning youth and workers. The wildcat walkout of Air Canada ground crew on the opening day of convention garnered zero comment from any of the candidates! The largest student demonstration in the history of Canada the day before, with 300,000 on the streets, was hardly mentioned! These movements and their demands for free education and workers’ rights should have been the central themes of the campaign, not just mentioned in passing. These movements with their mass support could have electrified the campaign.

In addition to the low turnout, none of the campaigns managed to get more than about 2,000 people to actually donate to them. This is a pitifully low level of support with no campaign getting the active engagement of more than 2% of the membership. Despite what the media say, Mulcair has no genuine mandate to move the party rightwards. His two speeches before and after his victory both fell flat and completely failed to enthuse the delegates or the wider party membership.

Despite our criticisms of Mulcair, we have to be aware that many people supported the man out of a genuine desire to defeat the Conservatives. With a lack of alternatives, they picked the candidate with the best skills at retail politics. We don’t write these members off. We believe that these members have made a mistake that will become increasingly apparent. People were told that Mulcair does not represent a turn to the right, it is just a change of language. The very next day the Toronto Star opined, “Mulcair and the NDP will have to make some tough choices. Simply updating the packaging on long-standing NDP policy positions won’t be enough.” The pressure from these people will be endless and has a logic of its own. Nothing short of a complete transformation into a Liberal party, removing the union link and any commitment to fighting austerity, will make the corporate media happy. Even though Mulcair appears to be attempting to make cosmetic moves towards party unity, such as keeping Libby Davies on the front bench, in the long run the policy direction is clear. Increasingly people will realize their mistake, just like they did about Tony Blair in Britain or Carole James in BC.

The struggle of the working class against capitalist austerity represents a huge groundswell of energy just looking for an outlet. Occupy, the Quebec student struggle, and growing wildcat strikes all show that the discontent is there in massive proportions. The electoral breakthrough of the NDP made it possible that the party would have been an outlet for discontent on the federal plane. The election of Mulcair may make this option less available, channeling the movement onto the industrial front, or even spontaneous eruptions, for a period. However, there is a long way to go before the avenue is blocked. If we believe that workers are capable of changing society then changing their organizations is a much easier step. Any changes on the union front also inevitably have their reflections within Canada’s mass party of labour. No individual, especially not Thomas Mulcair, is stronger than these mass movements and if he gets in their way they will not hesitate to sweep him aside. While the election of Mulcair represents a setback, it is vital that socialists do not abandon the struggle within the mass organizations, including the NDP. When workers enter these organizations seeking change, they will need all the assistance they can get.

Brian Topp was correct when he pointed out that the NDP will never win if it becomes a Liberal party. In addition to voting for the “real” Liberals, there will be massive abstention from workers, youth, immigrants, and any other section that would benefit from a real redistribution of wealth. This abstention is what led to the defeat of Blair’s Labour Party. If working-class Canadians find no reason to vote, then the Conservatives will always be able to win. Therefore, for the sake of the NDP, and more importantly for the sake of the downtrodden who desperately need a mass political expression, we ask those who raised concerns about Mulcair to now put their money where their mouths are. People like Niki Ashton, Ed Broadbent, Libby Davies, Sid Ryan, and many others in prominent positions, must put themselves forward to build a mass NDP left wing to stop any Blairite shift within the party. This is not disloyalty or breaking party unity — this is a movement to save the party from defeat and liquidation. Mulcair has said he intends to continue the attempt to purge all references of socialism in the party constitution and opposition to this could form the first fight to save the party. Such a mass Left could stop the rightward drift and help the party reach out to mass movements and actually defeat the Conservatives. The leadership election is not the end of the debate — it is just the beginning.