It made the news last week that the leader of the Federal NDP is now ready to run for a seat in Parliament, after more than a year of being the leader and after passing on four by-elections since he won the NDP leadership. The seat he has chosen is in Burnaby BC, which is available and for which a by-election has to be called by March 2019.
The Prime Minister has decided to wait to call that by-election and the NDP in general and Mr. Singh in particular are up in arms about it.
I have been watching Mr. Singh for the past few months and it strikes me that he is not enjoying his job. It strikes me that maybe he would like to leave it. Unfortunately, a whole host of reasons would prevent him from resigning at the moment so he is stuck.
However, if he were to lose the by-election, which would be very possible since the Burnaby seat is by no means a safe NDP riding, he would have his excuse. Unfortunately, in order for that excuse to work he would have to lose that by-election sooner rather than later. His resignation as a result of that loss would have to be early enough to allow the NDP some time to pick up the pieces.
Losing in March would be bad for both him and the NDP. If he sticks around the NDP would be saddled with a wounded leader, perhaps a mortally wounded leader and the 2019 election would be an NDP bloodbath. If he left then the NDP would only have about six months to find a new leader and develop an election platform. Again, that would be a recipe for an electoral bloodbath for the NDP.
This is all speculation of course and I could be completely wrong in my assessment of what I am seeing. However, my political gut is telling me that there is more to Mr. Singh's sudden urgency to win a seat in the House of Commons than what we are hearing from him and the NDP.
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