Jagmeet Singh Is Finally Here to Save the NDP Leadership Race from Irrelevance

Jagmeet Singh is launching his leadership bid for the federal NDP this evening in Brampton, Ontario. (We think, anyway.)

This is very exciting. The leadership race for the New Democratic Party of Canada has been going on for a couple months now but nothing really interesting has been happening. Everyone involved seems pretty right on—Charlie Angus is scandalously funny off the cuff and Niki Ashton is indisputably the party's social justice warchief—but the whole thing hasn't been really interesting, you know?

That's all about to change, baby. Jagmeet Singh is here and his personal brand is on point. He is the kind of politician that delights both the vacuous pundit and superficially attentive casual citizen alike. It's all about the horse race here in the political content mines and, buddy, let me tell you: Jagmeet is a stallion.

In all honesty, I don't follow Ontario provincial politics that closely, so I don't know much about the guy's record. At a glance, it seems decent enough. As a criminal defence lawyer, Singh regularly offered pro bono legal counsel to individuals and groups in need. He is the first turban-wearing Sikh to sit as an Ontario MPP and he's regularly gone above and beyond for his community. He's a vocal opponent of police carding, and he was one of the few MPPs who vocally stood up for Boycott, Divest, and Sanction activists in Queen's Park last year. So there's a definite promise (and long-suffering hope) that he will bring some truly interesting and compelling policies to Canada's national life.

But most of what I know about Jagmeet Singh I learned from the national media breathlessly speculating about whether or not he would run for leader since Tom Mulcair's ouster last spring in Edmonton. I totally understand why they were so excited. This guy seems cool as shit.

Jagmeet Singh invented charisma. He has competed across North America in Brazilian jiu-jitsu, meaning he could probably beat up any number of politicians in a charity boxing match. He has repeatedly been recognized in and around Toronto as a style icon for obvious reasons—seriously, just look at this dude, no wonder he ended up in GQ.

Singh also briefly spent time growing up in my hometown of Grand Falls-Windsor, Newfoundland, so I am bound by a blood-oath to uncritically enthuse about him at all times. I will die before I disrespect a brother from the Dub.

So there's no question, really, that Singh has what it takes to electrify the NDP leadership race. He's got a seemingly effortless charm for which lesser politicians would sell their souls. His presence as NDP leader would shake up the dynamics of federal politics beyond the third party. As Adam Radwanski highlights in the Globe, the Liberals and NDP tend to fight over the same pool of voters. There is comparatively less switching between either of those parties and the federal Conservatives—odds are no one who doesn't already lean Tory is going to be feeling the Bernier, or whoever the party anoints later this month to carry Stephen Harper's torch.

It's been exhaustively detailed elsewhere that Justin Trudeau's main strength is his image as semi-sexualized progressive darling rather than anything his government has actually done—or, more accurately, not done. But if you put Justin head-to-head with Jagmeet on the brand game alone, it's hard to see how the prime minister necessarily comes out on top. Stephen Harper was like a bowl of oatmeal come to life and Thomas Mulcair seemed to have genuine difficulty processing what human beings call "emotions," so there was little contest with the earnest young aristocrat once JT picked up steam in the 2015 election. Jagmeet and Justin may have both made GQ, but only one of them did it before they were the leader of a G7 nation.

So if the NDP is looking to beat Trudeau at his own game, they may just have their man. Personally I'm hoping that's not as far as the thinking goes, though. The NDP have been trying to out-Liberal the Liberals since at least the 1980s with virtually no success (sorry, Jack) and it's not really clear why that would be any different this time. Again, I don't know much about Jagmeet Singh, but I really want him to be more than just a pretty face. I want him to bring serious and thoughtful and compelling ideas and policies to Canadian political life and give voice to the large swathes of people—particularly young, non-white, working Canadians—who are dissatisfied with having a charming empty suit do things like privatize major pieces of infrastructure for no reason and then paper over it with a delicately stage-managed photo-op and a platitude about how it is the current year. I really want Jagmeet Singh to actually be a real, actual, motivating leftist politician—not just a more attractive, more multicultural, cardboard cut-out "progressive" political brand.

That said, if and when he does break my heart like all the politicians before him, at least I can rest easy knowing that he'll be looking damn fine while he does it.

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