Does Canada's NDP Need Jack Layton?

I doubt there are many Canadians who don’t feel a pang of sympathy, even empathy, with the New Democratic Party (NDP) leader Jack Layton as he fights a new bout against cancer.

The oddity, even tragedy of his present situation,  is that he’s at the peak of his career – he has almost iconic status among many, who attribute to him the NDP’s astonishing triumph in Quebec in the last election, where they replaced the Liberals as the Official Opposition with 103 seats

Layton is given credit for the NDP’s surge in Quebec that all but annihilated the Bloc Quebecois, and enabled a bunch of unknown neophytes to become MPs, when even they didn’t think they had a chance.

Whether Layton deserves this assessment is not the issue. Perhaps, instead it was disillusion among Quebecois with both Liberals and the Bloc.

Layton is in the catbird seat. And if circumstances prevent him from re-assuming leadership of the NDP, come Sept. 19, his stature will rise accordingly.

One should divorce political reality from the emotional fantasy of the moment. While Layton’s icon status is secure, the fate of his party isn’t.

Even presuming Layton had conquered his previous prostate cancer and was super-fit and raring for battle, the future of his party in Quebec in the next electionwould be anything but a sure thing.

Some two-thirds of NDP MPs are from Quebec -  some are fast learners, but many aren’t.

What can be guaranteed is that the the Liberal party, which has now shrunk to 34 MPs in Canada (seven from Quebec), are not going to passively fade into obscurity. They’ll revive, and be a credible force again.

One should remember that after the 1993 election, the Conservative party was reduced to two elected MPs, but bounced steadily back, through various versions of Reform party and the Canadian Alliance.

Also the Bloc, now wobbling with 4 elected MPs, is going to smarten up and they’ll be back, hunting for NDP scalps. You can bet on it.

So even if things are going swimmingly for Layton and his party, the future is not without speed bumps.

Curiously, right now the Liberals and NDP have interim leaders – respectively Bob Rae and former union leader (and rookie MP) Nycole Trumel.

Is there anyone behind the scenes that may make a viable leader in either the Liberals or NDP? Not many – especially in the NDP.

If Layton doesn’t lead his party in the next election, conventional wisdom will likely be that the debacle for the NDP in Quebec will be because his charisma was absent. That’ll be nonsense, but it’ll become part of mythology if he doesn’t return.

Leaders disappearing at the peak of their success and power are guaranteed a form of immortality. It happens in war; witness Nelson at the Battle of Trafalgar, witness Wolfe at Quebec, witness Abraham Lincoln being assassinated immediately after winning the U.S. civil war – people forget that he was on the verge of losing the election, but for Ulysses S. Grant.

None of this detracts from the sympathy Canada feels for an effective political leader being sidelined who had caught the wave, captured the imagination of the country with his cheerful enthusiasm.

Nor does it colour the reality that the NDP seems destined to lose Official Opposition status in the next election, Jack Layton or no Jack Layton.