The reaction to Avi Lewis’s victory as leader of the federal New Democratic Party was pretty much as predicted here Sunday night, with the pre-written responses by Alberta NDP Leader Naheed Nenshi and Saskatchewan NDP Leader Carla Beck setting the stage for the day’s journalistic hysteria.
“Under new leader Avi Lewis, federal NDP looks more communist than social democratic”— Don Braid, Postmedia’s Calgary Herald
“Smith calls Avi Lewis a communist, new NDP leader is Nenshi’s nightmare” — Rick Bell, Postmedia’s Calgary Sun
“‘Communist Party’: New NDP leader Lewis bashed in Alberta” — CityNews
“Federal NDP ‘pretty communist’: Smith on Avi Lewis” — CTV News
Messrs. Braid and Bell have their moments, but both of these columns are, shall we say, somewhat overwrought.
To give Alberta Premier Danielle Smith her due, she made me laugh out loud in CTV’s social media clip when she offered this evidence of the federal NDP’s drift toward Socialism with Canadian Characteristics, to paraphrase someone or other: “They want everyone to have a heat pump!”
If that’s not full communism, what the hell is? God knows, if there’s anything we do well in Alberta, it’s 1950s-style Red-baiting, from the days before red was the colour of the Republican Party and the ball cap worn by Ms. Smith’s political hero.
I expect we’ll be seeing a lot more of this in the next few days, weeks and months. The only reasonable interpretation of these outbursts – which remind one of the revival of Vladimir Lenin on The Simpsons – is that Mr. Lewis’s ascension to the leadership of the NDP scares the bejeepers out of the fearless champions of the overdog in Canadian media. They must be fearful Mr. Lewis will ease the famous Overton Window a few centimetres back toward the left.
Why, you ask? The example of Zohran Mamdani, maybe? Who knows?
Alberta’s longest-serving party leader – Naomi Rankin of the Communist Party of Alberta – must be looking at all the ink Mr. Lewis is getting with the political C-word in it and thinking, What am I? Chopped liver?
Meanwhile, Mr. Nenshi appeared to be trying yesterday to walk back his insulting news release attacking Mr. Lewis, which was published while the new federal NDP leader was still giving his victory speech, at least a little bit.
“My fight is not with Avi Lewis,” he temporized on the CBC’s As It Happens last night. “My fight’s with Danielle Smith.”
Well, good try. It may be too late for that, though. The point Mr. Nenshi seems to have missed was explained by author and political commentator Nora Loreto from the floor on the NDP convention in Winnipeg.
Describing on her Substack how Manitoba NDP Premier Wab Kinew rushed to the stage to congratulate Mr. Lewis, she went on: “Kinew wasn’t just on stage to demonstrate that, unlike his non-Premier provincial homologues, he supports Lewis. Kinew was showing that he understands that an NDP with a left populist flank can help a Red Tory like Kinew more than it will hurt him.
“By offering Lewis full support, Kinew showed the press that there is room in the NDP for disagreements, while not alienating Manitobans who are frustrated with Kinew’s radical centrism.”
Mr. Nenshi and Ms. Beck could learn from that strategy, she rightly concluded. “It’s the most basic pro-tip in politics: don’t do the opposite of what the successful, popular guy is doing.”
Alas, some politicians can’t learn.
Getting back to Mr. Lewis, his victory means, oddly, that the federal NDP now finds itself in a position analogous to that of Alberta’s United Conservative Party.
The national NDP is now dominated by what was not so long ago its ideological fringe, just as the UCP under Danielle Smith is now dominated by what as recently as during former premier Jason Kenney’s leadership was the Alberta Conservative movement’s ideological fringe.
At first glance, this doesn’t sound like a formula for success, but as Premier Smith proves every day, the right leader can make it work.
