NDP Leadership race maybe a coronation for Brian Topp.

Thomas Mulcair's NDP leadership bid is in doubt.

New Democrats seem to be crowning Brian Topp as their new leader. Can Thomas Mulcair still get in the game?

by Tom Thorne

Disturbing trends developed this week within the ranks of the New Democratic Party. The leadership race seems to be over. There has been a pregnant silence from Thomas Mulcair about his plans after former leader Ed Broadbent's endorsement of Brian Topp. This week Topp has been endorsed by his old boss, former Saskatchewan Premier Roy Romanov.

It looks like the NDP bigwigs are for Brian Topp. This development seems to have stopped Thomas Mulcair in his tracks since he doesn't appear to have much traction now that party brass and strategists have already backed their horse in the race. This is not a good situation for a party that claims to be democratic and recently renewed its claim on political decency  by releasing the Jack Layton manifesto letter at his state funeral.

Last week I said we would see Thomas Mulcair enter the leadership race. This week I am not so certain that he will. If he stays out, then that will be a pity because there are few other candidates that would be little more than form without substance up against Brian Topp and his back room backers.

Quebec is the weak link.

Although the NDP has 59 seats in Quebec they do not have a big membership to support Thomas Mulcair. In fact the membership of the party in Quebec is small and without much structure that means that as a Quebecker Thomas Mulcair hasn't got a lot to work with except the parliamentary caucus.  I suspect they will soon drift away soon to Quebec born Brian Topp when they sniff the wind and smell a winner.

So it looks like a Brian Topp coronation for the leadership and a lot of form without substance stuff between now and the Leadership convention in January 2012. Mulcair is popular in Quebec but perhaps somewhat unknown in the rest of the country. Brian Topp has a good record throughout the rest of the country however he too will also have to woo the membership and get to know them.

The real place for Thomas Mulcair to shine is in parliament shredding the ideological notions of the current Harper Conservatives. The omnibus crime bill offers a lot of opportunity for Mulcair to shine with his former justice ministry background  when he was a civil servant for the Quebec government. 

The NDP constitution elects leaders with one vote for each signed up member.  At the moment 80,000 people are card carrying NDP members who can by their party membership status vote for the leader. 

Only about 2,000 of these people are registered in Quebec. If Mulcair wants the leadership he has to not only sell memberships in Quebec but also convince card carrying NDP members across the country to support him.

The Broadbent and Romanov endorsement of  Brian Topp....

Can he do it? This is exactly what he is gauging at the moment. He has two strikes against him with the Broadbent and Romanov endorsements. Now he has to pull irons out of the fire to register with the NDP membership. Just what does he offer that they can't get with Brian Topp? 

Mulcair will need to offer a creditable direction to the party. Everyone of course will endorse Jack Layton's manifesto letter so no one gets a leg up by doing that. The problem is how leadership hopefuls put their stamp on Jack Layton's manifesto death bed letter. 

Passion may be the first thing Mulcair can use against a sombre Topp who has a demeanour of a seasoned back room person.  But can Mulcair harness the vision of Jack Layton better than Brian Topp? Can he marshall the membership to basic principles of the NDP? I would say that this process is a very hard uphill battle for Thomas Mulcair because Topp is election strategist  who did the 2011 election. Topp has these credentials in spades.

The real problem as the NDP seeks a leader is simply that the Harper Conservatives will get an easy ride in parliament for this session. Thomas Mulcair may find it difficult to be around parliament too much if he runs. He will have to campaign for the hearts of the party faithful between now and the new year.

Parliamentary performance important.

Things will slip as the Conservative front bench makes mincemeat out of the inexperienced NDP parliamentary caucus using their majority to ram bills through the House of Commons with scant attention to any opposition criticism. Mulcair is needed in parliament and he needs while he needs to get the membership thinking that he has a chance. However, first he has to decide to run despite the odds stacked against him.

It will be an uphill battle and perhaps a lose-lose if the NDP looks bad in parliament and Mulcair is drawn into a leadership campaign and falls on stoney ground. It also looks even worse if the NDP is seen to be presenting a crown to Brian Topp who is without a seat in parliament. How democratic is that scenario and does that gel with Jack Layton's manifesto?

© Copyright 2011, Tom Thorne, All Rights Reserved.

22 September 2011 Errata: 
I said today in the above story that Brian Topp was the only declared candidate for the federal NDP leadership. That is not true. Declared candidates are currently: party strategist Brian Topp and Quebec MP Roméo Saganash (Abitibi—Baie-James—Nunavik—Eeyou). Sorry-Tom Thorne

So far the NDP Leadership race is a one man band. Is Brian Topp the only candidate?

Thomas Mulcair: Still no commitment for the NDP Leadership race.

New Democrats must begin the process of finding a leader.

by Tom Thorne

Somewhere in the ranks of the New Democratic Party (NDP) there is a leader who will emerge. Declared candidate Brian Topp has (as I predicted in a earlier article on 30 August) thrown in his hat backed by Ed Broadbent former federal party leader and NDP eminence gris. 


Now Brian Topp must resign as NDP President which means this job is now up for grabs too. Looking for a new leader and a new party president at the same time could mean structural stress within the NDP as the new parliamentary sessions start this month. Hopefully interim leader Nycole Turmel has the reigns securely in her hands.

Before we go too far let me say that the last person Ed Broadbent endorsed was Jack Layton. In Jack's case he didn't have a seat in parliament and again Brian Topp currently the NDP President is also not a member of the 102 elected NDP members of the parliament caucus.

So in both cases Ed Broadbent has endorsed party leader hopefuls who will have to be elected. Jack Layton managed it after he became leader. It remains to be seen if Brian Topp can, if he is elected leader, find a safe seat to get into parliament. 

Brian Topp will need a seat in parliament.

There will have to be a by-election for Jack Layton's Toronto seat but Topp, I suspect, as a Quebecker, will want to run ,if he wins, from a Quebec riding. That might mean dropping one of the 59 elected Quebec members so there would be an open seat in that province. 

Perhaps Brian Topp should look for a seat outside of Quebec.Whether Topp should run in Jack Layton's old seat is a choice that will have to be made only if and when he wins. 

Waffling currently on the sidelines of this leadership race is Thomas Mulcair. He at time of writing today has not decided to run for the leadership. He as said recently that is is gauging his support within the NDP before making the plunge.

I predict that Thomas Mulcair will run. He was born in Ottawa in 1954 to an Irish Canadian father and a French Canadian mother. He is a graduate of McGill University in law and has taught law in Quebec universities. He has also been a Quebec civil servant working for the Justice Department.

He has been a Liberal cabinet minister in the Jean Charest Quebec provincial government from 2003-2006. That job included topics such as sustainable development, the environment and parks so he can be green if he wants. However his Liberal background could be a liability with NDP purists.

In 2007 Mulcair ran as an NDP federal candidate in Outremont riding in Montreal and won. He was the first NDP candidate to win in Quebec and Jack Layton made him Deputy Leader as a reward. Of course he was re-elected in 2011 in the NDP sweep. His authority in Quebec may preclude Brian Topp running for a seat in that province.

Brian Topp and Thomas Mulcair are the two top candidates for the NDP leadership at this time but Mulcair has yet to decide to run and he doesn't have much more time to think about it. The leadership  entry fee is $15,000 to discourage flighty and fanciful candidates from running. Here are some other possibilities for the leadership but may think twice about the entry fee.

Libby Davies....what's her support like? She needs to speak French.

Some people tout west coast MP Libby Davies as a potential leader. Miss Davies is out of the closet as a lesbian, but what that has to do with party leadership abilities is anyone's guess. She also does not speak French so with a huge Quebec caucus that will go over badly. 

Libby Davies is the co-deputy leader of the NDP caucus a job she shares with Thomas Mulcair. Mulcair takes care of the Quebec group of MPs and I suspect Libby Davies takes care of the rest of the country's elected members.

Since Libby Davies is more to the left, both Mulcair and Topp celebrate a more centralist viewpoint. Mulcair in particular is more of a liberal from what I can see, abandoning the Liberal party for a run at a seat in pre-NDP Quebec in 2007. A gutsy move considering that NDP supporters and elected members to the federal parliament were as scarce as hen's teeth back in 2007.

Brian Topp I think is also a centralist NDPer and he brings Saskatchewan government credentials as a back room boy for Premier Roy Romanov. Topp is also a former labour union boss and so brings that credential to the table. Libby Davies is probably the closest NDP MP you will find who could be seen as a socialist.

There is one more possible leadership hopeful and that is Paul Dewar, 48, the sitting NDP MP for Ottawa Centre, Ed Broadbent's last riding when he returned to parliament in 2004. Dewar is a graduate of Queen's University in Kingston and is an elementary school teacher by profession. He has served as the NDP foreign affairs critic and is a champion of legislation to make generic drugs available to the Third World especially to fight HIV/AIDS.

Paul Dewar is more to the left than Thomas Mulcair and Brian Topp. Obviously now it is time for serious candidates for the NDP leadership to ante-up the $15,000 fee to run. So far it is only Brian Topp in the ring. I don't think the NDP membership will allow him to get the leadership by acclamation. Let's see what next week brings.

© Copyright 2011, Tom Thorne, All Rights Reserved.