HEAD: May be too late for Dippers to Singh a different tune

Work in Progress By Ivan Morgan

Methinks Jagmeet Singh zigged when he should have zagged.

(Full disclosure: I don’t normally write about the NDP because I worked for them. I know many of the people who make up that party and I don’t think it’s fair to use that inside knowledge.)

I know Jagmeet Singh. Not well but I have hung out with him. When I worked for that party, I supported his bid for leadership. Also, for the record, I always found him to be a great guy.

That being said, here’s why I think he has committed political suicide.

He never sought my advice but if he had back in the day, I would have warned him about getting into bed with the federal Liberals.

I would have told him that they are not to be trusted, that whatever deal they made with him would be engineered to their advantage, and that he would be left holding the bag. They are about staying in power, which is why they have been in power so long. They are not about helping the NDP.

I know he made a pact with Trudeau to get part of the NDP agenda realized. Now he is trying to make the most of the half-baked watered-down programs the Liberals created to say they honoured their commitment.

Singh has supported the Trudeau Liberals for the past 30 months. In that time Trudeau has become one of the most disliked politicians in living memory. Singh now must wear some of that. The Tories have succeeded in making “the NDP Liberals” a common viewpoint for the electorate. The NDP is now widely viewed as part of the problem.

I have talked to a lot of people right across Canada in the last few weeks and very few think the NDP propping up the Liberals was a good idea. That includes NDP supporters. The truth is a lot of voters just hate Trudeau and the Liberals, and now, by extension, the NDP.

To me the point of the NDP has always been to provide a better alternative to left-leaning voters. The Liberals always rule from the centre – left when they have to, and right when they have to. The NDP was decidedly left.

Now Singh has torn up the agreement with the Liberals and is trying to convince voters they have only two choices – the NDP or the… gasp… Conservatives. He is positioning himself as the saviour of Canada. He states a party he has supported for years is now the problem. 

Right.

Why did Singh choose now to break with the Liberals?  Is it going to save him? What’s he doing?

Will he force a fall election?

Maybe he thinks his chances are better heading into a fall election with Trudeau at the head of the Liberals rather than supporting them while they try and replace Trudeau?

I worry that Mr. Singh has led the New Democrats into a bad place. The federal NDP will offer some excellent candidates, but truth be told I don’t fancy their chances. Which is too bad, but it is also politics.

Decades ago, with two small children in my arms, baby puke on my shirt, I offered my concerns to the well-dressed executive assistant of a prominent Tory politician. With an election looming I didn’t think then Prime Minister Kim Campbell was catching on with voters. People I talked to were more than fed up with the Tories. I worried for his boss’s seat.

What I got back was a bemused, condescending “we know what we are doing” speech. Weeks later I sat in front of my TV election night with a case of India and a big bag of Cheetos (politics is my sport) and watched the Tories going from 156 federal seats to two.  It was a massacre.

Turned out they didn’t know what they were doing. I am getting that feeling again, this time with the Liberal-NDP coalition.

Maybe I am wrong, but I don’t think so. Maybe I’ll get talked down to with grandchild puke on my shirt. Who knows?

Ivan Morgan can be reached at ivan.morgan@gmail.com