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In terms of irrationality about its leadership, the federal New Democratic Party has out-PQed the Parti Québécois.

The PQ is known for having changed leaders every four years on average in the last 20 years, sometimes after a single general-election defeat. Not even the PQ, however, has ever voted a leader out of office, as the NDP did on Sunday. In fact, in the past 50 years, no other major Canadian party has.

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When the PQ does pressure a leader into resigning, it always has a replacement waiting. The NDP has no one in sight to replace Tom Mulcair as leader, especially in Quebec.

And 52 per cent of the delegates to the NDP policy convention in Edmonton voted to hold a leadership election even though their party can ill afford one.

They could have given Mulcair another two years, until the leadership review at the 2018 policy convention. (Not even the PQ, known for tormenting its leaders, submits them to that test more than once between general elections.)