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Politics

Jagmeet Singh Needs to Spend the Weekend at Bernie’s

As the NDP convention kicks off, the party will be hearing from advisors to Bernie Sanders on how to start the revolution.
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Are you still in the mood for some Valentine’s magic? Then you may enjoy the extremely Toronto Life profile of New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh in this week’s Toronto Life. It’s a compelling look at Singh’s humble origins and his deeply-felt commitment to social justice and equitable representation in civic life. He’s an intensely charismatic figure who is still largely an unknown quantity in federal politics.

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His post-Trudeauvian dreaminess plays well in the pages of lifestyle magazines, but we have yet to see him at work on the factory floor. Conveniently, there’s a party convention this weekend in Ottawa where we’ll get to see him strut his stuff.

In some ways, things have changed quite a bit since the NDP last met in Edmonton in April 2016. The seismic political upheavals of the last two years have transformed the discursive landscape. Full-blooded democratic socialism is blossoming in Britain and America, and the party’s left flank is invigorated. That didn’t quite pan out in last year’s leadership race, but it’s easier to sell people on changing party policy than their human figurehead. Advisors to both Bernie Sanders and Jeremy Corbyn are in town to coach the more militant grassroots on how to jumpstart the revolution.

In many more ways, though, not much as changed at all. The central torsions of the party exposed in Edmonton—establishment vs grassroots, Leap vs. oil workers, socialists vs social democrats vs left-liberals, Quebec vs everybody else—remain largely unresolved.

Those abstract concepts feel more concrete these days as the party meets now in the shadow of an interprovincial trade war between NDP governments. Rachel Notley was a fixture of the last convention, but this year she’s not attending. (Neither is John Horgan.) They’ll find out from a distance where the federal party stands on the Trans Mountain pipeline. Given that both have staked opposing sides on an existential question, it will be difficult for their federal leader to leave Ottawa this weekend without picking his favourite child.

There will be other major struggles on the convention floor. The party will look at formally adopting the Klein-Lewis Leap Manifesto, which will dovetail nicely into its soul-searching over the Alberta oil sands. They will also be pushed to take a stance on Canadian foreign policy toward the state of Israel. This has been a sore point in the party for some time —recall the way Team Mulcair scrubbed the party of pro-Palestine candidates in the lead-up to the 2015 election. (That said, I wouldn’t hold my breath for any dramatic upheavals.)

Into all this strides Jagmeet Singh, still on orientation for his five-month-old job as federal leader. He won the contest on the first-round ballot, and he did it thanks in large part to bringing new members into the party while his rivals spoke more directly to the base. They’re the ones he has to impress, and they’re the ones who will give him his first leadership review. It’s mostly symbolic, and it’s very unlikely he’ll fail. But a major criticism from some Dippers has been uncertainty about Singh’s leftist bona fides on pipelines and Palestine, so the judgment they pass will tell us a lot about how convincing he is as the Genuine Article.

Hey! Everything will probably be fine. I’m sure Jagmeet will have a fun weekend putting a happy face on his thankless job as the load-bearing wall in a dilapidated house.

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