And so, after interminable delays, Thomas
Mulcair is the new leader of the NDP.
In case you missed the rundowns, here they
are:
1st Ballot: Ashton: 3,737, Singh
3,821, Dewar 4,883, Nash 8,353, Cullen 10,671, Topp 13,915, Mulcair 19,728
2nd Ballot: Nash 10,519, Cullen
12,449, Topp 15,624, Mulcair 23,902
3rd Ballot: Cullen 15,426, Topp
19,822, Mulcair, 27,488
Final Ballot: With 33,881 votes (57.2%):
Mulcair wins.
In his victory speech, with the other
candidates around him (along with Olivia Chow and Libby Davies), Mulcair read
(from a page and not a teleprompter) his praises for his colleagues,
family, his team, most of it in French. He spoke about his rise to politics,
and how members of his party will only serve the public interest. With a mention
to youth not voting, and how the Conservatives divide people, but honestly? It
was flat, and uninspiring.
The party will spend the day in a caucus
meeting, where they get to focus on things like party unity, and quite possibly
dividing up new critic responsibilities. Whether that means rewarding
supporters and punishing certain detractors, well, remains to be seen, but it
will be very interesting to see how certain MPs (like Libby Davies, for whom
there is some bad blood with Mulcair) will fare as it shakes out. Stay tuned
for the coming days. I suspect that Tuesday’s QP will be fairly combative (and
I say Tuesday as I doubt Harper will be there on Monday given his Asia trip).
