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“We have somebody who had literally has fought their way, made their own name, has not received their celebrity as a matter of royal endowment. That makes a difference.

“Even if Canadians respond to somebody they grew up with and came to like for that reason, they will make a distinction between somebody who has made their own name and somebody who had their name given to them.”

Uniting the New Democrats — including the 44 current members of the federal caucus — and rebuilding the party’s fundraising moxie are among the top challenges Singh must now confront as he takes over the leadership role from Tom Mulcair.

He will also have to quickly name an interim leader in the House of Commons, since he lacks a federal seat of his own – a situation that poses both a challenge and an opportunity, said Christo Aivalis, a postdoctoral fellow in the history department at the University of Toronto.

It also evokes another comparison with you-know-who.

“Justin Trudeau had a seat in the House of Commons, but he spent relatively little time in the House of Commons compared to Tom Mulcair,” Aivalis said. “In the end, he is prime minister.”

Singh, who has represented a riding near Toronto in the Ontario legislature since 2011, became deputy leader of the party’s provincial wing in 2015, a role he surrendered in May when he decided to seek the federal job.

Prior to entering politics, Singh worked as a criminal defence lawyer — a background that doubtless informed the justice plank of his leadership campaign, which included a push to decriminalize drugs beyond marijuana and a pitch for a federal ban on racial profiling.