It was a very Canadian execution — polite, respectful, and mercifully decisive. The reason New Democrats made the decision to oust a party national leader for the first time in their history is, perhaps, even more surprising than the decision itself.

Pundits not familiar with the deep, mostly hidden, roots of the party’s DNA seized on the obvious: a division over pipelines. Others said that Thomas Mulcair’s “progressive” virtue was suspect. They’re both wrong.

New Democrats have fought in conventions over climate change, energy policy, and “true socialist values” long before Thomas Mulcair stopped shaving. Indeed, to read excerpts from speeches from long-forgotten Canadian socialist parties, one chuckles at how little the party’s far left have moved in a more than a century.

It would be interesting to know, looking down from above, what David Lewis’ thoughts are on the leapers. It was after all his signal contribution to the party to eradicate the earlier Trotskyite and Marxist entryists, first as the Communist-led “common front” and later as the Waffle. No, like Libertarian conservatives’ forlorn quest for smaller government, better services and lower taxes, the Birkenstock Left in the NDP has always been with us, and always will — hopefully, though, soon returned to their more traditional perch outside the party mainstream.

The scent of power was what made this decision so unique.

First Jack Layton, and then more decisively, Thomas Mulcair, made it clear that the NDP intended to govern Canada. Dismissed as delusional by the pundits when he first nominated himself for prime minister, Jack Layton’s aspiration was greeted with embarrassed blushing within many NDP circles.

By 2011, a majority of party activists had been energized by the prospect of a truly progressive government, for the first time, in Ottawa. By the summer of 2015, so had a clear plurality of Canadians. And then it all evaporated as quickly as an early morning fog. Thomas Mulcair had set a very high bar for success, and was decisively judged on failing to have achieved it on Sunday.

In the sunlight that followed, Canada returned to a more familiar, comfortable path. We cheerfully endorsed a “progressive Liberal campaign,” many knowing that as sure as night follows the sunniest of days or even ways, the new government would, in the words of MacKenzie King, once more have campaigned “from the left, to govern from the right.” That every truly centre-left government disappoints their progressive supporters — their transformational promises of real change broken by the exigencies of governing and the demands of the powerful — is true across every democracy.

In Canada, it is the role of the Liberal Party to break progressives’ hearts. The only question is who scoops up the disheartened. Recently, it has been a very angry, Republican-bred, nasty conservatism, as well as the NDP. Even with a new Tory leader not so keen to stomp all opponents with heavy boots, it is hard to see a unifying Conservative leader, one who can keep Quebec and the West, progressive conservatives and vengeful Harperites, in the same tent.

For the NDP 2019 presents a fateful choice. It can once again indulge its tribal myths about public ownership and an Arctic nation kept affluent and warmed by thousands of acres of solar panels. Or it can pick up the baton that Jack Layton bequeathed to Thomas Mulcair, that of a serious national progressive party disciplined enough to be rewarded with power.

If it chooses the Jeremy Corbyn, Bernie Sanders, Socialist Caucus book of children’s political fairy tales, they will have decisively buried that dream, consigned its achievement to a distant future generation.

They would be better to heed Rachel Notley, impressively seasoned by her painful experience of power, facing the most brutal economic circumstances any Canadian government has in a generation. Her eloquent vision presented to the Edmonton convention got a polite response, and was then undermined by the party’s decision to consider a suicidal leap to the left.

That she is politically and even ethically correct is surely incontestable. No truly progressive government would deliberately erase thousands of Canadian jobs. No evidence-based government would be so foolish as to flick off fossil fuel consumption tomorrow. And as she clearly implies, if New Democrats will not turn themselves to finding a principled, environmentally sound, economically credible approach to the painful energy transition ahead, what claim can they make to political relevance?

Thomas Mulcair’s graceful exit speech, surrounded on stage by a quiet respectful caucus — many of whom had voted to oust him only minutes before — was another very Canadian political image. Mulcair can now return to his role as the giant in the House, and serve as a party elder during this transition.

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If the party uses the next two years to find the next serious leader to whom to pass the torch, Jack Layton and his fellow former leaders will smile down from above. If they join the loony leapers, then Liberals will smile all the way through the next campaign — and probably beyond.

Robin V. Sears, a principal at Earnscliffe and a Broadbent Institute leadership fellow, was an NDP party strategist for 20 years.

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