Chris Selley: The NDP ends a defective deal, but its defective leader remains

So, the deal is off. NDP leader Jagmeet Singh apparently located a few scraps of dignity in some long-forgotten kitchen drawer or closet. Just minutes before Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was set for a press conference to give himself yet more credit for the NDP’s national school-lunch program, Singh announced he was calling off the NDP’s two-and-a-half-year-old confidence-and-supply agreement with the governing Liberals.

“Canadians are fighting a battle … for the future of the middle class,” Singh pronounced. “Justin Trudeau has proven again and again he will always cave to corporate greed.” Reports suggest it was the Liberals last month ordering the railway unions back to work and into binding arbitration with their employers that finally soured the milk in Dipperland.

“In the next federal election, Canadians will choose between Pierre Poilievre’s callous cuts or hope” Singh continued, casting himself as the Barack Obama figure in the forthcoming contest — “hope,” he specified, “that when we stand united, we win; that Canada’s middle class will once again thrive together.”

Because a Canadian political announcement must come with some impenetrable bafflegab, Singh added the following: “It’s always impossible until it isn’t. It can’t be done until someone does it.”

Up is left. Forward is up. United we dance. The future.

All the reasons for the NDP to cut the Liberals loose on Wednesday were so myriad and obvious that it’s difficult to remember what on earth the point of this agreement was supposed to be. Singh got no cabinet seats out of it, maybe just a few “thanks for your contribution” pats on the back from Trudeau and his ministers along the way. But the NDP essentially gave away any policy wins to the Liberals.

New Democrats understand better than anyone else the fundamentally amoral nature of the Liberal Party of Canada. They understand the Liberals’ all but total conflation of the party’s best interests with the country’s, and therefore its utter lack of shame. Anything the Liberal party does, anything it says, even if it’s completely the opposite of it did and said yesterday, is precisely the medicine Canada needs. And the NDP understands as well as the Conservatives do how mainstream Canadian media privileges the Liberals in that regard.

And yet, the NDP scarcely seemed prepared to live with the agreement they signed. Did the party really think trotting Singh out twice a week to denounce the Liberals’ corporatist, neo-liberal perfidy, with no answer ready for the inevitable question — then why are you supporting them for God’s sake? — was the path to eventual victory?

The political calculus didn’t change on Wednesday. Both the Liberals and the NDP would be mad to let Trudeau’s government fall right now, with Poilievre threatening to win a Mulroney-esque majority and then leave the country a smoking anarchic ruin (or so the Liberals and NDP tell us).

Singh still has just as much leverage over Trudeau as he did Wednesday morning. Like NDP leaders before him, he can still make policy demands of the government in exchange for propping it up on a vote-by-vote basis. And he can more easily and credibly take credit for those wins in an authentically adversarial relationship with the government than in a falsely co-operative one.

If anything is going to lead the NDP to victory at the federal level, that’s presumably going to be it: A centre-left populist answer to Poilievre’s centre-right populism. The “Canada is broken” zeitgeist ought to be the NDP’s moment. And yet polls suggest a good few of their erstwhile supporters are considering voting Tory. A recent Leger poll put the NDP at 15 per cent support nationwide.

Fifteen! Per cent! Never mind ditching the Liberals; why on earth is the NDP — one party, supposedly, from sea to sea to shining sea — putting up with Singh?

Does the federal NDP even want eventual victory? It’s not as though the party is lost in the wilderness everywhere. Manitoba NDP Premier Wab Kinew is easily one of the most interesting politicians of his era. British Columbia NDP Premier David Eby still has a good shot of staying in power against the suddenly rejigged right in that province. Provincial NDP leaders Naheed Nenshi in Alberta and Carla Beck in Saskatchewan look set to give the incumbent premiers a run for their money.

What the heck is Singh’s excuse?

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