Goodbye Jack

A giant wave of bummerdom spread across Canada yesterday at the news that Jack Layton, the last great socialist of Canada and the latest leader of our Official Opposition Party, had tragically died, a victim of cancer. There was also a second wave that quickly followed: the sound of millions of people simultaneously going “Oh fuck.”

For us Canadians, like the Brits last spring, we’re faced with the ghastly visage of a new neo-con reality and a traumatic shift rightward. In our three party system we always relied on the Liberal Party, our traditional governing faction, to keep us nice and left leaning with Conservatives not far behind and the NDP led by Layton to argue the moral compass. In a historic upset this last election, the Conservative Party won a majority and Layton’s NDP snatched the number two spot for the first time ever while the Liberal Party of Canada disintegrated into parliamentary obscurity at the hand of their limp-dicked leader Michael Ignatieff who did an amazing job alienating pretty much everyone in the country. Layton was all that was left standing in the way of the dominant bat-shit Harperites we voted in during an apparent national acid-trip. There’s been a lot of talk recently on the mobilization of the new Canadian conservative state led by the newly minted majority of Steven Harper. Typically Canadians like universal healthcare, regulating firearms, and sometimes smoking a lot of weed. Kiss that shit goodbye, because Harper loves fighter jets and has a creepy fascination with cats, which, come to think of it, we can sort of get behind.

Layton was the opposite. Unlike most politicians (besides the fact he was a raging dreamboat- hunk), he genuinely gave a shit about all Canadians and to the confusion of most Conservative Party lackeys he made a habit of championing causes for First Nations people, the environment, inner city youth, and the gays. From his seat on the Toronto City Council back in the 80’s, when most politicians wore gas masks around HIV-positive patients he headed a crusade bent on educating the public on the true nature of the virus, giving out free condoms, and advocating for a world bounteous in safe sex for all. Since then he’s been seen proudly shaking his moustache atop of floats at Toronto’s Pride Parade.

He was as passionate about battling for the plight of the homeless and disenfranchised as he was about Star Trek and just like any true Canuck, getting shitfaced and watching hockey. To the average Canadian he represented a leader of familiarity, one who both championed blue collar workers and upheld the defining social aspects of our political system. Judging by his epic success in Quebec during the election, where the unthinkable occurred–the French loved him–he became the unlikely Anglophone giant slayer of the Bloc Quebecois, the Separatist rebels who are always whining about having their own sovereign nation detached from the rest of Canada.

For the NDP his death could signal an atmospheric descent from the historic gains of 2011 especially in regards to their leadership, which is basically going to be occupied by rookie Members of Parliament and lunatics like Thomas Mulcair who think Osama’s assassination was a hoax and some girl who spent her campaign time on a Vegas vacay. Ostensibly, if the NDP are the last credible liberal presence in the Canadian parliament their downturn could lead to the upswing of conservatism. And it’s not like the Liberals can do anything about it, they’re dwindling in political purgatory, fracturing rapidly, with barely any seats and the obsolete Bob Rae as their interim leader, meaning they have no direction or a serious organization. If Harper’s right wing boner jam budget gets passed in the House of Commons and it looks anything like what he campaigned on, then Canada is looking at a serious facelift. We could wake up in a distinctly American landscape fitted with mega prisons, mandatory minimum sentences, tax cuts favouring the rich, and the continued and unsustainable oil production making us unhealthily rich quick.
Then again, Harper had a majority before Layton’s death and still does after, which basically means he can do whatever the fuck he wants anyway, he just won’t have to answer to anyone. And it’s no secret without an established face like Layton’s the left will suffer losses in support within Canada.
During the spring election Layton attained something rare: the true fear of his Conservative opponents. Suddenly he and his brand of socialism were a genuine threat to Harper’s crew. Hobbling on one leg with his trusty crutch talking vociferous shit to Harper, fighting off cancer, and as the legend goes, continuing the election campaign for the NDP against doctors’ orders, Layton fought for the masses. Without Layton as the de facto centurion of socialism in Canada, something we’ve suddenly forgotten that we did really fucking well, the world may have just lost that benign voice of reason on the international scene. After all, if not Canada who’s going to have that one sobering inferiority complex at the G20 or G8?
His passing is just another sinister harbinger and a clear metaphor for the potential oncoming death of western liberalism in favour of global conservatism everywhere. Cameron, Berlusconi, Sarkozy, Medvedev, Merkel are just some of the same characters Harper is among. And Obama might just be on the way out. If Layton had been healthy maybe some Conservative gaffes in the next four years, perhaps destroying our economy with Bushonomics or a Harper sex scandal with a tranny, maybe the NDP could’ve swept in. In short, Layton, our tragic nerd hero could have been the greatest Prime Minister we never had.