AGAR: Will anyone step forward to lead the federal NDP?

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Have you ever wanted to be the leader of a national political party? Now is your chance.

The NDP, demolished in the recent federal election, needs a leader. The guy who led it to devastating defeat, Jagmeet Singh, resigned after the election and no one of real national prominence and heft seems to want the job.

If you can name people who have signed up to vie for the leadership, you are either one of them or a real geek of Canadian politics.

I believe the party’s problem was effectively highlighted by Michael Taube in the National Post.

He wrote, “Singh’s ineffective leadership has set back the NDP by at least 2-3 election cycles. Any hope of recovery likely won’t rest with the next unknown party leader chosen at a sparsely attended political convention. Or the one after that, it seems.”

Lisa Raitt, former politician and cabinet minister, speaking to John Moore on Newstalk1010, said, “This is the renewal part. This is the part where you get to see someone coming from a part of the world you hadn’t anticipated. Paging Wab Kinew.”

Kinew, premier of Manitoba and leader of the Manitoba New Democratic Party since September 2017, is popular not only at home but nationally. He has the style and grace, it seems, to be a popular choice because even as an NDP politician, he is easy to take personally in the minds of people who don’t like the party’s politics. That leaves room for the advancement of an agenda.

It doesn’t seem like Thomas Mulcair is planning a comeback and the most successful former NDP leader, the man in charge of the party’s glory days, Jack Layton, is dead.

That brings us to Layton’s widow. Olivia Chow, who’s been an elected official for a great part of her life, and is now the mayor of Toronto.

Chow seems likely to run for a second term; the first was one a truncated affair as she replaced John Tory when he stepped down.

The left likes Chow. She is a dyed-in-the-wool, tax-raising lefty. Not a liberal; a lefty.

She would also change the game.

Many of my radio listeners in Toronto cheered the idea when I floated it on air, but only because they want to offload her onto the NDP in favour of anyone else as mayor.

That said, when it only takes less than 40% of the vote to win in a crowded field in Toronto, Chow is currently polling as the frontrunner in the next election.

Perhaps potential hero candidates are looking at how difficult it is proving to be for the Ontario Liberals to come back from a similar defeat.

Since Kathleen Wynne took the Liberals to below official party status in 2018, John Fraser has twice been interim leader, Steven Del Duca didn’t improve party fortunes and current leader Bonnie Crombie is without a seat at Queen’s Park, with the party failing to become official opposition.

Raitt said our system is “not a pecking order. Not an automatic coronation as to who gets to be the leader of a political party.”

The top dogs, so to speak, don’t seem to want it for now.

So, there you go. It could be you. The next leader of the NDP.

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