Matt Gurney: I support Singh's right to terminate his half pregnancy

His long, entirely self-inflicted national nightmare is over.

By: Matt Gurney

Let us start with words of affirmation and support: I support Jagmeet Singh’s right to terminate his half pregnancy. How could anyone not? His constant daily humiliation was getting uncomfortable to observe.

I know you might be expecting some kind of political analysis here. What will the end of the Confidence and Supply Agreement — or Supply and Confidence Agreement (we probably should’ve settled on one before the thing collapsed)—mean for Canadian politics, the upcoming elections, and the next general federal election? But the truth is, I don’t know. No one does. All we can say with any particular certainty is that our minority government situation has become more complicated. The Conservatives will keep trying to bring the government down. Don’t be surprised if they try to make everything a confidence motion, if only to further embarrass Singh. The NDP, for their part, will face some brutal decisions. Most polls show them heading for a wipeout, with half of their seats looking likely to flip to someone else. They’d need a huge spike in the polls just to break even. So, that’s going to be fun for them to navigate. Then, of course, there’s Justin Trudeau and the Liberals. Their prospects look awfully bleak, too. But it’s entirely possible they might decide to rip the Band-Aid off and call an election at some point in the reasonably near future.

Am I predicting any of these things? No. Like I said, I have no idea what’s going to happen. If I had to guess, I’d say the NDP will continue to support the government unofficially for the foreseeable future while all the parties reassess the new reality on the ground. But that guess is entirely subject to revision as events unfold. Time will tell. What more can I offer you?

So, in terms of political commentary on yesterday’s news, that’s about it. I don’t expect any immediate changes, and we’ll see where things shake out. Thanks for reading.

But there is a related point I’d like to make. And though it may sound snarky, I mean it with total sincerity. I am so, so happy for Jagmeet Singh. Since the deal was announced, he’s had to keep Trudeau in office while also acting like he was as disgusted with the PM as the typical Canadian voter seems to be. It was, truly, cringe-inducing, a real-life manifestation of the first half of the Hot Dog Car sketch (the back half gets weird).

I wasn’t kidding when I said it was painful to watch. And it wasn’t just me who noticed — a few podcasts ago, Jen and I had a laugh at Singh getting hit by Twitter’s Community Notes fact-checking service. After one of his regular tweets attacking Trudeau, a note was added to it, reminding readers that Singh was officially, as per a signed agreement, responsible for keeping Trudeau in power. It was laugh out loud funny, and, alas for the NDP leader, we were very much laughing at him, not with him.

That’s finished now. His nightmare is over. He can stop looking so goddamn ridiculous every day now. The deal is dead.

And now that it is, we can finally take a long look back at it and wonder how the hell Singh ever decided that the deal, or at least how he behaved during the deal, was a good idea.

One of the funny things I’ve learned about politicians as I’ve gotten to know them over the years — admittedly, usually after they’re out of office and willing to speak more candidly to a weirdo like me — is that almost every one of them has a nightmare story about a time they had to completely embarrass themselves for the job. The level of humour and genuine trauma that comes out when they recount these stories is akin to hearing someone share their most mortifying high school dating flop. Even years later, you can tell it haunts them. It always will.

Some politicians got lucky. Their nightmare experience went unnoticed and was forgotten by everyone. These folks share their stories with relief mixed in with the mortification. But others had to take their lumps on social media or in front of news cameras, and some of them became iconic.

I won’t name names or betray confidences, but I suspect most of you could come up with a shortlist of such political flops. I came up with a bunch of examples while making tea this morning, and some of them happened before I was even born: U.S. President Gerald Ford falling down; Robert Stanfield’s fumble, Mike Dukakis riding in a tank; “I’m entitled to my entitlements”; Stockwell Day on a jetski; Stephen Harper in ... well, I’m still not sure what the hell this was — Jen knows the Stampede better than I do, so ask her. There was Gilles Duceppe in the hairnet. (And if I were feeling uncharitable, I could even add Singh in a Rolex to the list.)

But here’s the thing about most of those humiliating moments that became iconic: they were just that — moments. Whether planned or accidental, they were one-time occurrences, often literal snapshots that, to the politicians’ misfortune, became immortalized. Even if the event was planned, the immortalization was a fluke.

It wasn’t like that for Singh. His humiliation was planned. It was a strategy, faithfully executed. For more than two years.

Two years — two and a half, really! Every time the poor guy had to go out and talk tough about the Liberals while simultaneously propping them up, he looked like an idiot. And the guy is more than intelligent enough to have realized that. In a way, I almost pity him. I stress “almost.” Going out and making the kinds of statements he routinely made during the agreement — slamming the government while also keeping it alive — was a pretty remarkable act of self-abasement, and he barely even flinched. I assume some overworked social media manager, or maybe an intern, was responsible for putting out the tough-talking tweets that were so roundly and deservedly mocked, but even so, they were under Singh’s name. Maybe it’s the hockey fan in me, but I can’t help but admire, just a little bit, a guy who’s willing to take a hit he sees coming.

But he doesn’t have to anymore. And that’s why I can say, with total sincerity, that this is a relief. Singh’s long national nightmare is over. He can go back to doing what he should’ve been doing all along: criticizing the government as much as he wants, on whatever issue he chooses, and bargaining hard with them for concessions on a case-by-case basis.

To be clear, I don’t think that’s always the better way for an opposition party to act. I wouldn’t have had any problem whatsoever if Singh had taken his party into a formal coalition with the government. That would’ve been completely legitimate under our system, and if voters didn’t like it, they’d eventually get their say.

Here’s the thing, though: I wouldn’t have had a problem with that. But Singh clearly did. I don’t know if it was personal reluctance or political advice, but he committed himself from the outset of the CASA to the ridiculous fiction that he could be half pregnant — that he could support the government under pre-agreed conditions for a predetermined period while also functioning as an independent opposition party. You can’t. It’s not possible.

And Singh never made peace with that. I guess he couldn’t. He should have done the more honest thing, and frankly the more self-preserving thing, and just … opposed. Bargained and cooperated where it made sense, and opposed otherwise. He would clearly have preferred that, and I am confident that he would have gotten comparable concessions from the government. I even suspect he might have been able to wring a bit more out of them.

There was another honourable solution to the problem. He could have signed the deal, mostly shut up, and worked behind the scenes to ensure the Liberals stuck to their end of the deal. His public comments could have focused on what he was doing for Canadians. When asked about the Liberals, he could have shrugged and said, “Hey, they’ve got the most seats. We’re getting what we can from them for the betterment of the people.” It wouldn’t have solved the political problem he had, and that every junior partner in such an arrangement has. You get assigned the blame, while the other guy takes all the credit. Singh still would have had that problem. But! He also would have had a bit more dignity, and that ain’t nothing.

But … no. Singh could have been in. He could have been out. But he tried to be both at once. I don’t know if a more talented politician could’ve pulled it off with less humiliation, but I do know — and we all know now — that Singh wasn’t talented enough to make it work.

And that’s why I’m sincerely happy for him. He’s escaped the bizarre trap he set for himself. Now, he can bring down the government and throw his fate to the voters. He can bargain hard with them to stay in office in the hopes of pulling off a turnaround. He’s got a thousand different options.

And he doesn’t have to humiliate himself anymore. He doesn’t have to be half pregnant and visibly unhappy about it. This is good for him. And I’d also dare suggest that it’s good for all of us, especially those dwindling few of us who are desperately trying to cling to whatever residual faith they may have in Parliament and our elected leaders to act as forces for good. It’s hard to feel that way when one of the leaders, a man who had (whether he wanted to admit it or not) considerable power, went out of his way almost every day for three years to epically beclown himself. I know this will sound trite, but if only for the sake of keeping up appearances, it would be good if our political leaders didn’t act in ways that are overtly and palpably ridiculous.

So yeah, I support Singh’s right to choose to end his half pregnancy. Good for him. I just wonder what took him so long. I suspect he’ll probably feel the same way soon enough. If he doesn’t already.

Correction: The agreement was two-and-half years old, not three. My bad!

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