‘You’re not going to defeat Stephen Harper with a slogan’

Thomas Mulcair talks to the Toronto Star.

We have to renew. We’re one of the only social democratic parties to never have renewed itself. One of the things that we did in Quebec was that we reached out beyond our traditional base…

(When) I was being recruited to become Jack’s Quebec lieutenant . . . I said, why in heaven’s name do you keep using this boilerplate of ordinary working class Canadians, ordinary this, ordinary that? First of all, you can’t translate that into French because ordinaire is considered a slight in French. But why do you keep restricting yourself? Does that mean you don’t want other people in the NDP? I got scolded, “you don’t seem to understand, that’s how we stay at 17 per cent,” and my answer was that I thought the idea was to go beyond 17 per cent.

Bruce Anderson considers Mr. Mulcair’s challenge.