Burnaby South

You can watch the results here.

As the count begins two points: first, Mr. Singh pretty much has to win this or his tenure as NDP leader will come to a very quick end.

Second, if People’s Party candidate Laura-Lynn Thompson polls respectably, a solid third or even second, Max can declare victory and push on. Fourth won’t cut it. She has to beat at least one legacy party’s candidate.

Bonus third, if Laura-Lynn Thompson wins, which is most unlikely, Canadian politics will never be the same. All of a sudden the People’s Party becomes viable and the CPC’s mistake in electing Scheer rather than Max is going to become as pressing as Mr. Singh’s demise.

Enjoying political drama as I do, I am hoping Thompson beats the odds and wins; but if she manages a serious finish and Singh is defeated, the next General election is going to become a lot more interesting.

Update: Lots of votes to be counted but Singh looks to have taken the riding and Thompson is running a distant fourth. Canadian politics reverts to the boring mean. Not unexpected and, frankly, Thompson’s socon politics leave me cold. One of my kids asked me if I would have voted for her if she had a serious chance to win. Given my own, largely libertarian politics, probably not. A data point Max might consider.

Social conservatives, however well meaning, tend to be out of step with pretty much the whole of Canadian society. Which is electoral poison. Max needs to recruit smart libertarians if he wants to win. Running socons is not a winning look.

Updater: This shouldn’t matter but apparently it does. Jagmeet Singh is the first non-white leader of a Canadian political party to ever take a seat in the House of Commons.

I once was lucky enough to have a Sikh girlfriend (Hi Sandy!) and I’ve had many Sikh clients over the years. The idea of “non-white” seems very silly to me. Canadian Sikhs have embraced Canada. Their skin tone seems a grand irrelevance. The faster we dispense with “white/non-white/black/First Nations” the better. But, for the moment, we can celebrate the fact that a deeply misguided, socialist, intersectionalist, and slightly brownish Canadian was elected despite not being all that white. How cool is that?

Jagmeet!

In the midst of the sad commentary about the Edmonton terrorist incident -“diversity is our strength”, “beat terror with unity”, “lone wolf nothing to do with Islam” – I was cheered to see the rollover victory of Jagmeet Singh for the NDP leadership. Singh seems to be from the pragmatic end of the NDP and will be relatively immune from identitarian and intersectional attack simply because he’s brown and wears brilliant turbans. He’s intelligent, well spoken and has a bit of charisma. And he is just going to kill Justin Trudeau in places Trudeau needs to win.

It is simplistic to say that the Sikh community in Canada will universally support one of its own, there will certainly be a temptation to defect from Trudeau to Singh. While that might have some effect in Tory ridings, it will be felt most strongly in seats which have traditionally swung from Liberal to New Democrat and back again.

I am not sure, however, that Singh’s ethnicity is his biggest threat to Trudeau. By 2019 the emptiness of much of the Liberal’s program will be apparent to all. The broken promises, the tepid policy initiatives and, above all, the fiscal incompetence on the revenue side and on expenditures will be pretty apparent. For small business owners and consumers with half a clue, the combination of the lunatic small business tax measures and the expensive, but pointless, carbon tax will pour votes into the Conservative column. But with Canada’s first past the post system, that may not be enough.

Singh’s real threat to Trudeau is in marginal seats where the Libs beat the Conservatives by a few thousand votes in the last election because a) people had had enough of Harper, b) Justin seemed bright and shiny. People who would have voted NDP in the past were so eager to get rid of Harper they voted for Trudeau. Mulclair simply lacked the appeal to keep the faithful in the pews. At a guess, the rank and file NDP voters, as well as the multi-culti virtue signallers, will be much more inclined to give Singh a go. Which means he has the capacity to bleed off Liberal voters in significant numbers.

Getting rid of Trudeau and his gender balanced gang of incompetents was never going to happen as the result of a surge of support for that guy leading the Conservatives. The Tories will be lucky to see a 3-5% increase in their popular vote as people realize that the Liberals are committed to gutting what’s left of the productive sectors of the Canadian economy in the name of “fairness”, “climate change” and “diversity”. For Trudeau to lose he has to actually lose the votes of people who supported him last election. If the NDP had gone with the po-faced, ideologically pure, Niki Ashton or the “makes that Andrew Scheer guy looks exciting” Charlie Angus, Trudeau would be home and dry. Singh is an actual threat.

One other thing: Singh took the leadership. He was aggressive, he sold memberships, he raised money. He ran as an outsider and he won. On the first ballot. This is deeply impressive. Not like the NDP at all.

Corbyn, Progressives and Elections

The British Labour Party, having suffered a surprise and humiliating defeat in the last General Election is in the midst of a leadership contest. Without going into detail, the contest is looking like a runaway victory for one Jeremy Corbyn. Mr. Corbyn is a Progressive wet dream – renationalization, a Hamas supporter, deep, deep green. So much so that Tony Blair, writing in the Guardian said,

If Jeremy Corbyn becomes leader it won’t be a defeat like 1983 or 2015 at the next election. It will mean rout, possibly annihilation. If he wins the leadership, the public will at first be amused, bemused and even intrigued. But as the years roll on, as Tory policies bite and the need for an effective opposition mounts – and oppositions are only effective if they stand a hope of winning – the public mood will turn to anger. They will seek to punish us. They will see themselves as victims not only of the Tory government but of our self-indulgence. the guardian

In Canada, as Dr. Dawg points out, the NDP is conducting an “Orange purge” of its candidates based upon those candidates support for “Palestinian Human Rights”. Two candidates purged so far according to Dawg.

In the US, while Trump wanders about saying the unsayable, the progressive left of the Democratic party personified by Bernie Sanders is pulling ahead of the lacklustre Hillary – who is, frankly, more likely to be indicted than nominated. But Sanders faces his own progressive nemesis in the form of harpies from the Soros funded #blacklivesmatter claque.

Sitting well to the right I can, of course, simply pop open a beer, grab some popcorn and cheer the lefties on. However, there is something actually happening here which makes this more than a pleasing spectator sport.

All over the West there is fissure between what might be called the “pragmatic” left and the “progressives”. The progressives embrace a multitude of causes – they are social justice warriors, militantly pro-immigration, deep green, pro-Pali, certain that Islam is never the problem, all about equality and very much against a particular form of “inequality”. They are happy to include 9-11 Truthers, BDS activists, radical environmentalists and intersectional feminists. And the progressives are sick and tired of, on the one hand, having their activism used by mainline parties and on the other being pushed into the backroom when it comes time to actually run an election campaign.

For several decades the ostensibly left-wing parties in the West have tried very hard to keep their progressives as far away from the public eye as possible. Sort of like the crazy uncle in the attic: you can hear him but never meet him. Pragmatically this makes a lot of sense because if you let them out of their cage they come up with gems like Linda McQuaig announcing that oil sands oil needs to be left in the ground so that we can avoid the scary “global warming” which occupies so much progressive attention.

For those of us on the right, progressives provide a good deal of entertainment. SJW’s earnest discoveries of racism under every bed simply denatures the word “racist”. The capacity of true green believers to “keep the faith” in the face of the collapse of the IPCC’s models and the Pause” is delightful proof of the power of belief over science. However, for people like Mulcair or Tony Blair or Hillary Clinton, the progressives’ intrusion at the grown up table is an existential threat.

A great deal of the left’s electoral success is based upon its capacity to isolate and immobilize the progressives left parties usually contain. (The NDP in Canada buried the Waffle so deeply they can’t remember where they put it.) But that capacity is showing signs of slipping away. Corbyn will either become the next leader of the Labour Party or the fixing of the leadership election will be so blatant that the Labour Party itself will be destroyed. If Mulcair does not win the next election, the progressive part of the NDP will be able to claim that it was because the NDP sold out its progressive heritage. If Hillary somehow manages to win the Democratic nomination and is beaten in the General, the progressives will be able to claim that a real progressive would have won. And in each of these scenarios the farther shores of progressive thought will no longer be confined to the back rooms.

If the progressives are able to gain traction it will open terrific opportunities for the conservative interest. Western political landscapes being what they are, the right has rarely governed from a conservative position. At best, it heads in a statist direction a little more slowly than the left would prefer. But if the progressives are able to seize control of the main left parties and propel them out into the progressive wilderness, the conservative parties stand a chance of election on actual conservative platforms.

Pragmatism on the left has been met by pragmatism on the right; but if the left is willing to embrace the electoral poison of progressive policy, the right will be able to get on with the job of slowly shrinking the state.

Security

NDP leader Tom Mulcair 

Apparently the Lying Jackal is stuck in an airport and he writes,

Bottom line, as noted above: most of the job in politics, now, is simply getting people to pay attention. My hunch is that the hue and cry about that CPC/ISIS/JT ad has helped to achieve the mission’s key objective: i.e., to get the electorate to pay attention in the sleepy Summer months and agree, yet again, that Justin Trudeau “just isn’t ready” to deal with the Satanic horrors that seemingly occur daily in this world.

That may make you mad. That may leave you outraged. But it’s unlikely you were ever part of the audience the CPC had in mind when they did the thing up on some staffer’s computer, for about ten bucks.‎

Oh, and why was I stuck in the WestJet waiting area, for hour after hour?

Because the airline had been targeted by a bunch of bomb threats in recent days, that’s why. ‎People getting hurt jumping out of planes, planes getting grounded so the cops can search for bombs.

Hope and fear: they work.

Fear works particularly well when, you know, it corresponds with reality. lying jackal

He is referring to the now notorious CPC ISIS ad. Which will, having done its job, be forgotten by October. But there is a larger picture emerging which the CPC will be mining for the next few months. It is about headlines.

Greece Collapses/China’s Markets in Freefall/Vancouver Housing Prices in Orbit/Ontario Bond Rating one grade above Junk/Fire Engulfs West/Drought!/ISIS battles Egypt/Refugees Flood Italy/Iran Outwits Obama/Putin outwits Obama/Mexicans outwit Obama/Missing IRS emails found on Hilary’s Private Server (OK, I made that one up)….

Write your own. If they are not true they soon may be.

At the moment the world is a rather hostile and confusing place. Central banks and governments are out of bullets when it comes to the next financial crisis. Canadian housing prices – in Vancouver and Toronto – have hit heights where even the people who own the houses are beginning to wonder if this is all a bubble. There are real terrorists in the world and they certainly have the capacity to land on European and likely North American soil.

Much as Canadians may loathe Harper, and many do, the question of security, broadly defined, is a huge factor in the next election. Taking a flyer on Justin is emerging as a non-starter. Mulcair? Perhaps if the economy was booming or the terrorists back in their caves he’d be a grand alternative to Steve the Dull. But right now?

The oil patch is trying to adjust to $50-60 oil prices. We’re running a significant trade deficit. The Canadian dollar is weak. We’ve had a couple of lone-wolf, ISIS inspired, if not directed, terrorist attacks. Is this the time you want to trade the bland, but largely competent, Harper for the untested Mulcair and his band of one term MPs?

The CPC does not have to sell Harper. We know exactly what we are getting. But the NDP has to sell Mulcair and, as they do, they open up his flanks to the doubt ads the CPC will run. We know Justin isn’t ready. Is Mulcair? Plant that question in the minds of a nervous population and Harper wins in a romp. Not because people like him, not because people embrace the CPC’s limited vision for Canada, rather because in conditions of uncertainty “change” is terrifying.