The NDP and the art of bouncing back

Is Jack Layton like one of those egg-shaped tumbler dolls that can't be knocked down?

Not that Michael Ignatieff and Gilles Duceppe didn't try.

During the leaders debates, Bloc leader Gilles Duceppe took a swipe at him. "Mr. Layton, you know this just as much as I do. I will never be prime minister. And you know, you won't be prime minister either." Michael Ignatieff waxed on this theme as well. "Jack," he said, "at least we get into government. You'll be in opposition forever." Layton retorted, "There's that sense of entitlement again."

It's not a great career move, says NDP strategist Brian Topp, for the elites, as he calls the Liberals and the Bloc (this would be in their pre-election forms), to boldly state their entitlements, nor, he says, is it wise for politicians to behave as if they're pundits and tell the electorate how to vote.

Still, how did Layton, or for that matter, the NDP, keep going over the years, and endure the insults and the neglect?

Jack Layton remembers the days when the NDP had two per cent of the vote in Quebec. He'd attend NDP Council in Quebec and there would be a few dozen people in the room. Compare this to the meeting he went to last week: there were 200 people -- two representatives from each riding as well as all the Quebec MPs. There would be "no person per riding before," recalls Layton's longtime press secretary, Karl Belanger. Layton adds that one of his new member's father had run in his offspring's riding six times.

Brian Topp says his wife ran federally for the NDP three times, and so did his mother-in-law. "Too bad they didn't run this time", he says. Topp remembers his younger self doggedly campaigning for the NDP in Montreal in a provincial by-election during a frigid February in 1985. "We had a big party afterwards," he recalls, "dancing on tables even, because we increased our vote from 1 per cent to 2 per cent."

Rebecca Blaikie, daughter of the NDP's legendary Bill Blaikie, ran against soon-to-be Prime Minister Paul Martin in 2004. She got 4 per cent of the vote, but she had doubled it, from 600 to 1,200 votes. The most valuable things she learned was, "Nobody (in Quebec) had heard of us. I'd think 'We're one of the major parties, man!'"

After that experience, Blaikie started organizing for the NDP in Quebec. She and a colleague would travel around the province, cold-calling labour leaders, or people in the arts, or environmentalists and arrange a meeting. "We had coffee with a thousand people," she recalls. "We had some great conversations." (Blaikie ran again for the NDP in this election in Winnipeg; she lost by a tiny margin).

All that work in Quebec, she says, must have paid off, combined, this time, with Jack's popularity and some good advertising. Still, she admits, all she hoped for was 12 seats there, and a lot of people thought she was dreaming. She says she was as surprised as anyone when the NDP won 59 seats.

In Quebec, says Topp, you play for the table. "It's nothing, nothing, nothing, and then you get it all."

And now there's the next step. Can the NDP actually form government? Topp recently wrote a blistering comeback when a Globe and Mail editorial suggested that only the Liberals and the Conservatives could ever do such a thing, and when are the Liberals coming back, anyway.

Topp says he always rejected the idea that the NDP couldn't win. Momentum started, he says, in 2008 when Jack Layton announced he was running to be prime minister. The media laughed, but in focus groups conducted by the NDP, Topp says people asked, you mean, you weren't running to be PM before?

Blaikie says that in Outremont in 2008, when she worked for Thomas Mulcair, once people realized that there was a possibility that Mulcair could win, people flocked to him. And those were the halcyon days a mere three years ago, when the NDP considered it an incredible triumph to win one seat in Quebec. For a political party, it was a bit like the Samuel Johnson observation about a dog dancing on its hind legs. It's not that it's done well, just remarkable that the dog can do it at all.

The NDP has suffered cracks like that forever. So, how did they keep putting up with it, especially in those two per cent days? "Hope" says Karl Belanger. He laughs. "When you get that low, it can't get worse."

Photo: Jack Layton greets his caucus, May 24. (Canadian Press)