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This is not to say Mulcair himself doesn’t share in the blame for the debacle. He set himself up for defeat — first, by allowing the convention to take place in Edmonton, while having nothing approaching a strategy for dealing with the oil pipeline issue that had bedeviled him since he became NDP leader in March of 2012. He then delivered a speech stunningly devoid of meaningful content — a pastiche of bromides reminiscent of the stump speech that had failed to ignite voter enthusiasm last October.

The speech was preceded by a video that, in tone and style, resembled the TV ads that formed a part of last year’s losing campaign. It featured no excoriation of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau or his Liberal government — though party elder Stephen Lewis had demonstrated Saturday just how effectively this could be done, in a barnburner that made NDP delegates laugh and cheer. Lewis, at 78, was the star of this convention. Should he choose to present himself for leader, one suspects he would win in a landslide.

But that doesn’t appear to be part of the plan. Avi Lewis, Stephen Lewis’s documentary film-maker son, seems a likelier candidate for the job. In an interview Saturday with the CBC, the younger Lewis pointedly did not rule out a future in politics, though he also did not rule it in. This little pas-de-deux was eerily reminiscent of Justin Trudeau’s early non-committal interviews, when he was being asked the same question.

And Avi Lewis has another reason for running, than simple dynastic inevitability. He was, whether by design or accidentally, instrumental in Mulcair’s collapse. Lewis is the front man for the radically left-wing Leap Manifesto, which the convention voted to debate at the riding level and consider in future policy-making, repudiating Alberta NDP Premier Rachel Notley’s plea to the delegates Saturday.