In The Weekly Wrap Sean Speer, our editor-at-large, analyses for Hub subscribers the big stories shaping politics, policy, and the economy in the week that was.
The Liberals and the NDP policies are essentially indistinguishable. I’d call that a success for Jagmeet Singh
In March 2022, when Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and NDP leader Jagmeet Singh announced their parties’ supply and confidence agreement, I disagreed with many pundits who argued that the arrangement was self-evidently bad for the NDP. As the agreement came to an abrupt end this week with Singh’s announcement that the NDP is pulling out, I remain in the small minority who believe that it’s been good for New Democrats.
I don’t dispute that it has probably been harmful from an electoral perspective. But the federal NDP’s aim isn’t to win elections. If it was, it has done a rather poor job over the years. If you back out the aberrant 2011 election, the party has barely secured an average of 16 percent in the nine federal elections this century.
Yet if one instead understands the NDP as a small, ideological minority whose principal purpose is to shift the centre of gravity of Canadian politics in a left-wing direction, then it has been much more successful, including over the nearly two-and-a-half years of the supply and confidence agreement.
One way to think about the NDP’s influence is to consider a world in which the party didn’t exist. If the Liberals had no party on their leftward flank, is there any reason to think that they would have tilted to the Left as much as they have over the past decade? I think the answer is no.
After all, the Liberal Party’s move to the Left in the 2015 election campaign wasn’t merely motivated by ideology. Its support for budgetary deficits and higher taxes on high-income earners was to a large extent a political attempt to cannibalize the NDP’s support—to essentially bring Layton Liberals back into the fold—in order to jump from third place to first in a single election cycle. And it worked.
The success of its leftward electoral shift laid the foundation for its left-wing government. The Trudeau government’s subsequent conception of the so-called “care economy,” its hyper-focus on redistribution, its identity politics, and its “ham-fisted” response to the Israel-Hamas war are at least in part a reflection of the NDP’s competition for progressive voters.
The Liberals have managed to outflank the NDP in political terms but in policy terms, they’re the ones who’ve been cannibalized. They’ve turned their political party into an offshoot of the NDP. The two parties are now virtually indistinguishable from one another. The differences are limited to matters of degree rather than ones of real substance.
Take for instance the Israel-Hamas war. NDP MP Nikki Ashton’s anti-Israel views are pretty radical, but so are Liberal MP Shafqat Ali’s and others who opposed their colleague Anthony Housefather’s appointment as the government’s special adviser on Jewish community relations. We know that there were as many as 80 Liberal MPs (or more than half of the parliamentary caucus) who were ready to support the NDP’s motion in favour of Palestinian statehood in March 2024.
It’s funny therefore that so much of the commentary this week has focused on Singh and the compromises that he’s made and so little has questioned the bigger trade-offs for the prime minister and the Liberal Party.
Their conscious shift to the Left has led to nearly ten years in office and some accomplishments for which they can be proud. The cost, though, has been a thorough rejection of Jean Chretien’s political centrism and the transformation of the Liberal Party into a decidedly progressive party.
Depending on what happens in the post-Trudeau era, one suspects that historians will debate the long-run consequences of the choices made over the past decade. In the meantime, New Democrats should stop being so negative. Justin Trudeau has effectively been the country’s first NDP prime minister. That’s a win.
Former President Donald Trump talks with Tucker Carlson during the final round of the Bedminster Invitational LIV Golf tournament in Bedminster, N.J., July 31, 2022. Seth Wenig/AP Photo.
What does growing conservative criticism of Tucker Carlson’s foolish flirtations mean for the Right’s relationship with Trump?
When Donald Trump famously said that he could shoot someone in the middle of Fifth Avenue and not lose the votes of his core supporters, he was speaking an essential truth. In today’s polarized world, it’s much harder to admit that one’s side is wrong than it is that the other side is right.
Popular media personality Tucker Carlson and others like him have benefited from this sense of tribal loyalty. Many of us have looked the other way in the face of their reactionary excesses because they often have the right critics. Negative polarization is a hell of a drug.
We learned this week however that even among the most committed tribalists there are limits. Carlson hosted amateur historian Darryl Cooper for a wide-ranging conversation that included overwrought criticism of Winston Churchill and ahistorical excuses for the Nazis and their Final Solution.
The reaction has been swift and overwhelming. Conservative outlets like The Free Press, National Review, and Commentary Magazine have not only condemned the interview but rightly criticized Carlson for affirming the worst impulses of the online Right.
Recent Munk debater Sohrab Ahmari characterized the interview as “a fiasco.” Best-selling historian Niall Ferguson described it as an exercise in “anti-history.” And well-known conservative writer Jonah Goldberg called it “pathetic” irrespective of whether Carlson is motivated by ideology or grift.
These cases are notable for various reasons. One is their stature. It’s striking that even after Carlson has pushed the envelope of reasonable comment so successfully for so long, leading mainstream conservatives have finally challenged him. We eventually discovered a line—borderline Holocaust denial—that most are not prepared to cross.
Another is what it may tell us about the Right’s relationship with Trump. One gets the sense that the strong reaction to Carlson’s interview is an implicit criticism of the former president whose presidential campaign—starting with his rambling convention speech—has been an undisciplined mess. When he looked to be ahead of Joe Biden in the polls, many conservatives were prepared to live with Trump’s deep personal flaws. But as he has come to self-sabotage with bizarre speeches and online memes, they’ve grown increasingly exasperated.
Supporting Trump is a Faustian bargain, to say the least, but even that is predicated on him holding up his end of the bargain by winning. If he is going to lose, which seems now quite plausible, it’s the worst of all worlds. Conservatives supporters have effectively traded off their principles and they’re not even getting a tax cut for their troubles.
The uncharacteristic criticism of Carlson may therefore reflect a growing recognition that this whole sad episode—including both Trump, Carlson, and others like them—has not been worth it. If so, if Carlson’s interview with a Nazi defender causes American conservatives to rethink their political choices over the past decade or so, it may inadvertently prove to be the best thing that he has done.
A Seabus passenger ferry passing a bulk carrier ship at anchor and the downtown skyline are seen in Vancouver, May 9, 2024. Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press.
Calling all Vancouver Hub supporters
A reminder to The Hub community that I’ll be in Vancouver early next week for a health-care conference organized by the Canadian Constitutional Foundation, Montreal Economic Institute, and SecondStreet.org.
There’s still time to register for Tuesday’s conference. You can find the registration page here. The organizers have generously offered Hub readers an exclusive 15-percent discount on the registration fee. Just enter the code: RX15.
On Monday evening (September 9), we’re hosting a Hub pub night at the Lions Pub. You can find more details here. Please join us if you can. The Hub will buy your first drink.
Sean Speer is The Hub's Editor-at-Large. He is also a university lecturer at the University of Toronto and Carleton University, as well…
