On Avi Lewis, purity politics, and the bill coming due
Friends,
The federal NDP has made its choice: Avi Lewis is its new leader.
The NDP has sent a signal; the party apparatus has decided that the path forward is not through coalition-building or appealing to the broad swath of Canadians who might be nervous about the word “socialism” but like the idea of dental care.
They want ideological purity. They want a leader whose primary skill is identifying heretics and drawing bright, unforgiving lines between the righteous and the compromised.
And you know what? That's their right.
I've said it before: political parties are private clubs. If the remaining membership of the federal NDP wants to steer their vehicle into the ditch of performative rigidity, that is the beauty of internal democracy. They paid their dues; they get to choose their champion. I respect the process, even if I think the destination is a dead end.
But here is where the delusion needs to end.
You cannot vote for a leader whose entire brand is based on attacking anyone who dares to compromise—whether that's a provincial premier trying to govern in a minority situation or a union leader who isn't sufficiently revolutionary—and then turn around and cry foul when the coalition falls apart.
The provincial wings out west are already distancing themselves. They have to actually try to deliver services, balance budgets, and answer to voters who care more about potholes than political purity. The federal vote share is going to plummet. It's already begun. When you make politics a religious test rather than a contest of ideas, you shrink your tent until there's nobody left inside but the choir.
I will never vote for this NDP. That ship sailed a long time ago. But if this is the party the remaining members want—if they want to be the faction of the left that posts the most aggressive statements on Threads rather than the one that actually improves the material conditions of the working class—then I respect their choice to make that trade-off.
The only question now is whether Avi Lewis is serious.
Is the trust fund revolutionary going to be a clown? Is he going to spend his tenure doing the thing he does best: making inflammatory content about how everyone to the right of him is a corporate shill, collecting a paycheque while the working families he claims to champion get left behind in the rubble of his ideological crusade?
Or is he going to stand up?
Not just posture. Not just a tweet. But actually do the ugly, grinding, thankless work of organizing, of making uncomfortable compromises for incremental gains, of standing in the rain outside a factory gate before the cameras show up?
If he does the latter, maybe he proves me wrong. I love to be proven wrong. But until I see the substance match the rhetoric, I'm treating this like what it looks like: a hostile takeover by a faction more interested in winning the argument than winning for the working class.
We'll see which Avi Lewis shows up. But don't expect the rest of the country to stick around for the answer.
Best,
— Will Adams
Editor, The Provincial Times
