A List of People Most Likely to Stab Thomas Mulcair in the Back

Thomas Mulcair really screwed up the last election.

I mean, he really fumbled that ball.

If Mulcair were the coach of the Montreal Canadiens, he would have been fired before the end of the second period. (Alternatively, if he were the coach of the Leafs, he would have been given a two-year contract extension.)

But somehow, Mulcair is still in the job, despite halving his caucus and losing more than a million votes over the NDP's breakthrough 2011 election, even though he started the election leading the polls.

His campaign was marred by a confounding lack of vision or substance, lacklustre performance debates, oddly out-of-character smiling, and general inability to understand or counter why people may have been flocking to Trudeau. Whatever reasons existed to support Mulcair appeared to evaporate by Labour Day.

I can't stress enough how bad that went for him.

Next year, he'll be facing a leadership review at his party's convention. We might like to think of the NDP as those happy-go-lucky granola socialists, but murmurs about the knives being unsheathed are already audible.

But the party faithful won't oust the bearded blunderer without an instigator at the helm of the mob.

So here's your primer on the Brutuses who are looking to end Mulcair's reign.

Who?
The guy who pops up if you Google "white dude."

Why?
Because he's generally considered one of the more left-leaning politicians in the NDP caucus and he's generally pretty well liked.

Campaign slogan
"I am Peter Julian."

What will come of this mutiny?
NDP members will bore quickly of this insurrection.

Treachery score
One Peter Julian

Who?
Nathan Cullen is to politics what They Might Be Giants are to music—weird, earnest, old-school, and painfully innocent. Cullen brings a barrel of do-gooderism to politics, mixes in a healthy dose of left-wing sanctimony, then wraps it in an unnerving veneer of non-partisanship.

Why?
Because last time, he ran on cooperating with the Liberals. So now that the Liberals are in power, he might take the position that the NDP needs to be a useful sidekick.

Likely campaign slogan
"Please! Thank you!"

What will come of this mutiny?
His happy-go-lucky kumbaya shit doesn't really go well with rebellion. And, besides, now that's Stephen Harper is gone, there's not a room for Cullen's plan to hold hands with the Liberals.

Treachery Score
Three Tinky Winkys

Who?
The leader of the party from 1979 to 1985, Broadbent put the "curmudgeon" in "curmudgeonry old union dude who keeps yelling about NAFTA." He's the guy responsible for winning a bunch of seats for the NDP in 1988, which was the party's best result prior to 2011.

Why?
Because he's going to fix this shit himself, if he has to.

Campaign slogan
"I'm going to fix this shit myself, if I have to."

Treachery Score
Two union baseball bats, used to threaten scab workers

Who?
This wacky inflatable flailing arm advertising man.

Why?
Because, unlike Mulcair, his painted-on smile seems genuine.

Campaign slogan
The soft whirr of a fan.

What will come of this mutiny?
Somebody trips over the cord that's plugging him in and he dies.

Treachery score
Zero. It is a wacky inflatable flailing arm tube man.

Who?
The 33-year-old Northern Manitoba political badger is one of the fiercest members of the NDP cabinet. She ran in the 2012 race with an endorsement from the party's socialist caucus, which is a collection of Trotskyite nutjobs and probably the only wing of the party that still has any sense of conviction or purpose. She's also the daughter of Steve Ashton, a Manitoba MLA who ran an unsuccessful mutiny against Premier Greg Selinger last year.

Why?
Because the NDP just ran itself into the ground by fielding a lacklustre, centrist, uninspiring, painfully crappy campaign that took a significant first-place and squandered it into a mediocre third. Also, she's the logical conclusion to the sentence: "Oh, you want an ideological, inexperienced, brash 30-something leader, do you? Well I got your scion right here…"

What will come of this mutiny?
She could probably become leader, if she wants it to. She's exactly what the NDP needs right now: someone who can take on Trudeau from the left, not from the undefined middle.

Campaign slogan
The entirety of Queen Latifah's All Hail the Queen.

Treachery Score
Three Marcus Brutusses and a Trotsky

Who?
This 800-odd-page opus from the syphilis-ridden father of modern communism has long been a staple of leftist thought, though it's fallen out of fashion in recent years thanks to a resurgence of neo-liberal hand-wringers.

Why?
Because the Marxist-Leninist and the Communist Parties have split the vote for too long and it's time to give them a proper home.

What will come of this mutiny?
Evidently there is some appetite in the NDP to tilt back leftward and follow the lead of leftist European movements like Greece's Syriza, France's Front de Gauche, or Spain's Podemos. Given that nobody in the NDP seems interested in recognizing that, the membership may as well elect a hundred year-old book.

Campaign slogan
"In reality, the laborer belongs to capital before he has sold himself to capital. His economic bondage is both brought about and concealed by the periodic sale of himself, by his change of masters, and by the oscillation in the market price of labor power. Capitalist production, therefore, under its aspect of a continuous connected process, of a process of reproduction, produces not only commodities, not only surplus value, but it also produces and reproduces the capitalist relation; on the one side the capitalist, on the other the wage-laborer."

Treachery Score
Four hammer and sickles.

Who?
The Palestinian-loving maybe-separatist who could change the NDP from the spineless party that nobody wants to vote for back into it's original form: the weirdly activist party that everyone is afraid to vote for.

Why?
Because we need more bae in politics.

What will come of this mutiny?
If Boulerice wanted to unseat Mulcair, he probably could. He's popular in the Quebec wing of the party, and he's a fiery public speaker. He would scare the shit out of every Albertan, though.

Campaign slogan
"Solidarity forever."

Treachery score
Three carrés rouges.

Who?
The firebrand Baptist preacher who was elected premier of Saskatchewan, and the man who later helped set up the NDP. He's notable for bringing universal medicare to Canada, being the only leader to oppose the War Measures Act, and (less favourably) supporting eugenics, as was a la mode at the time.

Why?
He can't cross over until he address some unfinished business.

What will come of this mutiny?
The NDP faithful will finally see the error of their ways, coming to the realization that Canada does not need two neo-liberal self-styled progressive parties, and that there is ample room in the Canadian political sphere to have a left-wing, grassroots, populist party.

Campaign slogan
This. Keifer Sutherland and all.

Treachery score
Five ghosts

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