Article content continued

We’re still a year away from the next writ and some veteran rats have already declared they’re leaving the sinking ship. That sounds like par for the course, until you realize it’s the perennial third-place ship of a party that believes wholeheartedly in bailouts. Things must be really bad.

David Christopherson, a man with more than 30 years’ experience serving the communist-loving people of Hamilton, is going. Hélène Laverdière, the two-time Gilles Duceppe slayer, is going, too. Kennedy Stewart is trying his luck in the race to run Vancouver. And Tom Mulcair, the former NDP leader who waaaay back in 2015 had the NDP one Trudeau misstep away from government, is already gone. Others will undoubtedly follow, too, once they realize, if they haven’t already, what a complete and utter zero their leader is proving himself to be.

Ah yes, Jagmeet Singh. Strange that I should leave it so late in the column to mention his name; I suppose I was only trying to mimic real-life conversation about the NDP, where Singh features about as regularly as the third-choice goalie on a last-place NHL team.

How does one describe a politician such as Jagmeet Singh? He’s like Stéphane Dion, but without the charisma. He’s like Michael Ignatieff, but without the commitment to Canada. He’s like Justin Trudeau, but without the intelligence. He’s like Tom Mulcair, but I don’t even know how or why, because Singh has never stepped on the floor of the House of Commons to fire a question at the prime minister.