'So now, with the byelection on, an unpinned Singh can advance a new narrative — one starting from the conditions he is in and aiming to improve them. The challenge is to choose the story to tell.'

Every successful political leader goes through their trial by fire. The pundits take a run at the new guy. The politicos pile-on, trying to smother a new political threat before it can grow.

Jack Layton was a “used car salesman.” Jean Chrétien was “yesterday’s man.” Stephen Harper was “too cold.” New Democrats should neither tear their teeth out in fear about their newish leader’s trials nor shake their fists in rage at media bias. They should learn from the experience as the story moves to a new chapter. And think about the story that needs to be told.

That new chapter started with the Burnaby South byelection. And so far, so good. A poll in January showed Singh at nearly 40 per cent support, considerably up from the 2015 election, and 13 points ahead his nearest rival. And that was before Trudeau’s first candidate, Karen Wang, exited after a brand-incinerating racially-divisive social media post.

The actual story of Karen Wang’s downfall has hardly been written, though a local paper hints at it. On Saturday Jan. 12 both Singh and Wang attended a fundraising gala for the Burnaby Hospital Foundation, an event with many Chinese-Canadian attendees, reflecting the area demographics. And Singh was much in demand — people crowding around to meet him, chat, wish him well, get to know him. In contrast, Wang was sidelined, little noticed and left early. A few hours later the ‘vote for your own’ social post was made. And the rest is history.

But in the previous chapter, the PMO’s game of byelection delay had Singh pinned in no man’s land. Time was suspended — extended, even — while Singh remained stuck in the open, taking on shots from all sides. A problematic Mainstreet poll in November added weight to a narrative that Singh might lose the byelection and, thereby, the NDP leadership.

From this semi-factual basis, layers of conspiracy theory got larded on top of each other — culminating in the outlandish “zebra hooves” theory from the National Post’s John Ivison. According to his theory, the PMO engineered the candidacy of Karen Wang knowing she would implode and result in the Singh win the Liberals want.

This was the kind of ‘analysis’ possible while Singh was pinned. All serious discussion about him, his ambition or policies was batted away with mockery and ridicule — and increasingly so, as one disparaging meme was topped upon another.

But perhaps the problem of no man’s land was at least partly the NDP’s own making. When elected NDP leader in October 2017, Singh said he would run in Brampton East in the general election and take advice about byelections as they came along. The NDP buttressed this line with a reminder that Jack Layton remained outside the Commons from his election as NDP leader in January 2003 until the general election of June 2004.

Maybe pointing to past practice was an error.

Conditions had changed. In 2003 and 2004, no one cared about the NDP. No one asked about Jack Layton. Sure, he was a super star in 2011. But in 2003, the NDP was near extinction, having received a miserable 8.5 per cent support in the November 2000 election. Questions about Layton winning a byelection seat were not asked because everyone knew the answer — not happening.

And the past practice led to misinterpretation. Layton never sought a byelection. The appeal to history allowed a Liberal and Conservative reinterpretation of Singh’s position as a rejection of a byelection run. NDP corrections made them look weak. And when Singh took the first reasonable vacancy — Burnaby South — it appeared like a flip-flop, though it wasn’t. But appearances in politics … well, you know.

So perhaps there’s a general point: it is better to not make arguments from history so as to avoid being trapped in it. Focus on the future, staying open to possibly advantageous steps, evaluating each opportunity as it comes. Ambitious eyes forward, on the horizon, always.

A second problem was the several byelections called between Singh’s leadership win and his Burnaby South announcement. None were in ridings the NDP could win. And while political leader might be blamed for playing it too safe, none can be blamed for failing to jump off a cliff. NDP pundits could have more aggressively recast Liberal cliff-jump demands as the idiotic sort of advice that they would never offer to their own leader in a similar situation.

It’s important to tell your narrative well, but you can only create it from the conditions you find yourself in. And the point of the narrative is to advance your conditions.

Perhaps a different story might have unpinned Singh from his limiting conditions earlier — by getting the Burnaby South byelection called on Oct. 28, alongside the byelection for Leeds-Grenville-1000 Islands and Rideau.

With the PM dithering about whether to run a candidate, Singh could have called the byelection himself. Tough Question Period-type questions could be directed at the PM from the working class doorsteps of Burnaby South constituents — or even elsewhere. Singh could announce bills to be tabled on his Commons arrival. Or new policies. He could taunt the PM to come down to the street and meet the people he’d turned his back on.

In the byelection, Singh used this tactic with success, announcing an NDP government would build 500,000 non-profit housing units. The announcement received applause — and prompted a Liberal misfire. Surely trying to bigfoot Singh’s pledge, Trudeau recently told the Commons his housing plan had “helped more than 1 million Canadians find affordable housing.” But within a day Trudeau’s overinflated claim was popped by a Toronto Star report showing fewer than 15,000 units are actually in the works.

Using tactics like Singh’s housing announcement may have strategically telegraphed confidence, switched onus and recast him as the dangerous outsider. And each tactic could be summed up with a call for Trudeau to call the bloody byelection, already.

We can’t know if a strategy of challenging the PM might have succeeded in advancing the byelection call. But it’s been my observation that New Democrats often lack the confidence to direct their own play and cast themselves as the central plot protagonist — and instead end up as the actor onstage for no apparent reason.

On the other hand, Singh did show confidence in avoiding traps around the nonresignation of Raj Grewal. Despite the baiting of Liberal operatives to switch to Brampton East, Singh not only made the right choice, he made it promptly. Switching could have been interpreted as opportunism, disloyalty and weakness. And, as we see now, Liberal operatives were baiting Singh to switch to a seat they knew wasn’t actually vacant — and never did become so.

What may have aided Singh’s confidence was an internal poll, taken in September and never made public, that showed him well ahead in Burnaby South (note to NDP strategists: the default answer to the question of “should we leak this poll showing us leading?” is yes).

So now, with the byelection on, an unpinned Singh can advance a new narrative — one starting from the conditions he is in and aiming to improve them. The challenge is to choose the story to tell.

Without doubt there is a creeping suspicion about the frame of liberal identity politics the Trudeau marketing machine applies so assiduously. Images and stories that celebrate Trudeau as the font of an identity status quo can mollify. But reducing people to subjects inside two-dimensional identities has limits. A framed image can be about “remember when.” But it can’t hold back dynamic political actors who exist in all four dimensions — with not just a deep real life, but also ambitions for the future, both personally and for their society. Their depth and ambition will crack the frame.

Cracking that frame may be Singh’s story. Commonly his speeches appreciate different identities — but almost always as a prelude to an appeal to “bring people together” and argue “we are all one.” His message isn’t contentment with the present. Or nostalgia for the past. It’s an ambition for people to act on how they want things to be. A story of change in which Singh is the protagonist against the Trudeau frame.

Working class people, marginalized people, poor people, the lonely, indebted students. Sears pensioners, military veterans and GM workers. These are the identities of the many people who deserved Trudeau’s help, but instead got his back. Not the deplorables — the ignorables.

It’s subaltern Canada. Or perhaps subaltern Canadas. The networks of official Canada run through government, business and media, establishing an elite shared discourse and culture. But subaltern Canadas are separate. Subaltern networks, like social movements and the labour movement, have become divided and weakened by both centrist stratagem and neo-liberal claims of no alternative. The result is weak shared culture and little language to tell a shared story.

So the ignorables get squeezed between stuck wages and rising costs. With relatively simple reforms, like a national drug plan and building non-profit housing, Ottawa could directly improve millions of Canadians’ lives. But Trudeau doesn’t do much. He makes plans and promises numbers. In official Ottawa, the hegemonic issues are China, Trump and corporate tax concessions. But those don’t touch much life in subaltern Canada.

So there is a job to do. The role of a political leader is to combine disparate identities into a political constituency and bring power to a plan that benefits it. The role is, as Singh says, to bring people together.

That project requires allies. And there is no greater challenge facing Singh’s NDP than to persuade social movements and the labour movement to quit playing defence for a rotten economic, environmental and political model out of fear of a new bad model will take over. Their goal cannot be to slow down a collapsing present.

But most importantly, the project needs a story than connects subaltern Canada’s ambitions and passions, breaking Trudeau’s frames of separation. Unpinned, Singh clearly has an instinct for it. Now his party needs to cast a new story about it, with Singh as chief protagonist.

But the New Democrats best be quick, because Singh’s opponents are no doubt already working on a new play in which he again holds a subordinate role and the frames are held firmly in place.

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