NDP DEI DOA

The current federal NDP leadership race is attracting little attention. The NDP has faded into irrelevance. And there is no one in the current crop of contenders who seems likely to change that. No one is particularly prominent, there are no obvious flashes of charisma.

If the NDP is in this position, this has a lot to do with poor leadership choices in the past. It ought to have more vitality than this—the populist let in the US, under figures like AOC and Bernie Sanders, has been more energetic. As has the populist left in the UK, under Corbyn or Galloway. But a couple of times, just as it seemed to have broken through into relevance, the NDP seems to have gone for DEI hires at the helm. It has not turned out well.

Most obviously, there was the defenestration of Tom Mulcair, who won them 44 seats, and who had been a provincial cabinet minister in Quebec, in favour of Jagmeet Singh, who had been a provincial MLA. Singh defeated Charlie Angus, who had a seat in parliament and was an established author, publisher, and founder of charitable institutions. Not to mention, Angus had charisma. Singh has all the charisma of a high school student council president. One must assume Singh was elected due to his ethnicity. 

He led the NDP to seven seats and the loss of party status.

Don’t say this was due to racism among voters. I never saw or heard a single attack on him due to his ethnicity. It was due to sheer political incompetence, jettisoning any trace of principle and managing to fully identify the NDP with the larger, and widely unpopular, Liberal Party.

Their earlier error was to vote in Audrey McLaughlin as leader in 1989. She had been an MP for only two years; and won then only because she was given a special exemption from defending the federal party platform. The party chose her over Dave Barret, who has been the premier of B.C. It seems clear they elected her on her sex; so they could boast being the first major party to elect a woman as leader. 

And she led the NDP from 44 seats down to 9. Because McLaughlin had nothing to sell, just more of the same old, at the very moment that populist ferment was breaking out in the West. Instead, the upstart Reform Party took all those anti-establishment votes.

This is a useful public demonstration that DEI hires do not turn out well. McLaughlin and Singh were out of their depth. Merit is the only principle that matters.

How would you feel if your heart surgeon were a DEI hire?