Niki Ashton is the leader the NDP and Canada needs

Guest Editorial by Robert McCarthy

My name is Robert McCarthy from Sudbury, Ontario and I am supporting Niki Ashton to become the next leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada. Like myself, Niki is a proud Democratic Socialist. She is the candidate that I most identify with. Her vision includes free tuition and student debt forgiveness, opposing pipelines where they infringe on Indigenous rights and endanger the environment, and the expansion of public healthcare to include dental care, pharmacare and access to mental health services for all Canadians. These policies are perfectly in line with what I believe.

I had the pleasure of meeting Niki in 2012 during her first run at the party leadership. The Sudbury NDP had hosted a debate for all the leadership candidates at the Steelworkers’ Hall. Before the debate officially started I had a few short minutes to talk to Niki and had my picture taken with her. Both during this meeting and during the debate she impressed me. She has strong conviction, unwavering principles, and the capacity to intelligently convey her beliefs. Niki is a great listener and takes the time to hear proposed solutions from ordinary Canadians to address the issues of the day. I knew Niki would be an important part of the NDP and Canadian politics for many years to come. Niki’s policies are a breath of fresh air. I believe Niki’s drive, determination, charisma, and all around ability, make her exactly the person we need to lead the NDP and Canada now and long into the future.

Robert McCarthy lives in Sudbury, Ontario and has been an NDP activist and the Disability Rights Representative on the Federal Sudbury NDP Executive since 2008.

Over the coming weeks The Left Chapter is interested in getting different perspectives on the NDP leadership race including from those both inside and outside of the party, from partisans of various candidates (perhaps explaining why), from critics of the race or those who think supporting any of them is perhaps a mistake, from those who would like to see a candidate who has yet to emerge, analysis of the candidates from an objective left perspective, etc.

If you have perspectives about the NDP leadership race specifically that you would like to share in blog/article/editorial form please contact us via theleftchapter@outlook.com

Do you have a left point-of-view or opinion, event or petition, a recipe or a story you want to share?

Send them to The Left Chapter via theleftchapter@outlook.com!

See also: The backlash against Niki Ashton from anti-Black Lives Matter commentators is what is really off base

See also: Niki Ashton launches her campaign from the left as NDP race heats up

Death of a delusion: The ONDP's internal fictions and the Sudbury by-election loss

On an abstract level I think it is fair to say that the by-election result last night in Sudbury, which saw the Liberals retake the seat from the NDP, is somewhat disappointing and reinforces the very deep, and perfectly reasonable,  cynicism many feel about what passes for politics these days.

As anyone who has read my (numerous) articles on the NDP knows, I feel that they have clearly veered away from any critique of capitalism or even a seriously reformist social democratic agenda and towards a misguided attempt at "left" populism based around tiny little supposedly popular "platform" planks and almost reactionary rhetoric about the empty pockets of tax-payers. Though, in the case of this Sudbury by-election, they did have a very good candidate it is hard to endorse them in any context given the fact that with the extreme levels of caucus "discipline" and centralization of power in the party into the leader's office, individual NDP MPPs and caucus members have less meaningful input into the party's public face then ever before.

Having said that, it is fairly clear that the Liberals behaved in what can most generously be called "ethically challenged", and even possibly criminal,  ways in their campaign to get former NDP MP Glenn Thibeault elected.

Liberals have a long tradition of behaving like this.  It is all a game to them, this politics thing, and they are good at it.

Just not always good at it in what are necessarily legal ways!

To see their candidate win, in the end, rather easily in spite of this, says little that is good about the way our democracy is unfolding.

But, in the wake of this clearly disastrous result last night for the NDP, I think we can now officially pronounce the lie that it was "white wine" swilling Toronto "elitists" that caused the ONDP to flounder and lose in the last provincial election, dead. This self-serving mythology, had persisted among NDP partisans as some type of collective delusion despite the fact that they had done far more poorly than anticipated in the general election and despite the fact that, as the so-called "elitists" had warned, they had lost the bulk of their Toronto caucus (and the NDP cannot possibly win a general election without almost sweeping Toronto).

They clung to this delusion by pointing to the supposedly significant pick up of three seats outside the city (one of which was Sudbury)  that, somehow, even though they would now be languishing powerless as the third party for the next four years instead of holding the balance of power, proved that it had been the right call to jettison all trace of the party's traditional narrative and alienate many of it traditional supporters.

During the election this alleged juxtaposition of the "hard working" Andrea Horwath and crew and all of those fictional wine drinking leftists and activists sitting lazing around Queen St. wine bars, one supposed, developing new plots to undermine the NDP, had been most idiotically advanced by union leader Smokey Thomas, who framed it this way both in print, and then most disgracefully and reprehensibly, on Sun TV, where he also basically said he would prefer to see Hudak elected over Wynne!

Even after the fiasco of the election result this narrative stuck within the ranks of the party. It was not the ONDP's bankrupt strategy itself that was at fault, it was those traitorous Toronto elites! "They" had stabbed the party in the back and were portrayed as some type of Liberal "fifth column" despite the reality that the critique of the party had been from the left and from activists, many NDP supporters for decades, who were not Liberals.

But, it was easier to accept this nonsense than reality one has to suppose and the party went on to actually reward failure at its next convention by giving Horwath a higher approval vote then before the election and by not altering course internally at all, other than by bringing in an organizer from the even more right wing Manitoba NDP!

In politics, though, a party's internal fictions cannot forever stave off the real world. This narrative had been bullshit to begin with and is totally done now.

If this by-election, in these circumstances, could not be won against a governing party who were being publicly exposed for highly dubious behaviour, it is now beyond obvious a change in direction by the party is seriously needed.

The ONDP failed to show any ability at introspection at all after the last election. Perhaps they will finally see that some is now clearly in order.

I would advise against holding one's breath on this front, however.