Murray Mandryk: Sask. NDP very bad at politics

By Murray Mandryk

It was very bad week for the Saskatchewan NDP — largely, because the NDP are very bad at the game of politics.

If you have just awoken from a 30-year slumber, this may come as a shock to you.

For whatever you might think about the Saskatchewan NDP philosophy that’s often been at odds with the oil sector and modern-day Saskatchewan agriculture, most would acknowledge New Democrats were rather good at the political game.

The NDP managed to hold office for 16 years after the demise of the Grant Devine Progressive Conservative government by reminding voters how bad that government really was and by somehow being able to relate to voters.

But the NDP’s talents clearly diminished in the early years of this millennium, soon surpassed by the new guard of the Saskatchewan Party that quickly proved to be far better at the political game in this province.

This has been the Saskatchewan political story for the past 20 years now. And judging by what we saw in the last week or so, don’t expect this story to change any time soon.

Let us begin with a seemingly innocuous social media post of Saskatchewan New Democrat enjoying a few beers at the first Saskatchewan Roughrider game of the season.

Even if you don’t partake in the self-indulgent world of social media, you likely have heard about this selfie post that the party removed from its social media feeds almost as quickly as it put it up.

No, the NDP MLAs and others in the picture were not in violation of any rules. All were of legal drinking age. And given that masking/social-distancing requirements had been removed long before the game, there was actually nothing wrong with the fact none of them were wearing masks in the photo.

Or at least, there would be nothing wrong with it, if you weren’t members of a political party who described this very game as a potential super-spreader event because Premier Scott Moe who had removed masking requirements and had not insisted on vaccine passports. If you were sincerely worried this was as super-spreader, why were you there? And why would you be happily posting selfies? Might it not have been wise to sit this one out at home?

If there are COVID-19 infections stemming from this game, can the NDP now legitimately criticize government policy?

Even a lot of New Democrats got how horrible this looked, although there were just enough defending the social-medial posting to reinforce the notion this party was behaving hypocritically.

In a desperate attempt to use to social media to demonstrate they were ordinary folk, what the New Democrats, mostly managed to remind many of what they don’t like about these New Democrats — that they are virtue-signalling politicians seemingly not all that interested in abiding by their own supposed principles.

Not long after NDP MLAs issued an apology for perhaps sending the wrong message with their selfie, they were hit with the more bad news: Long-serving MLA Buckley Belanger was resigning his Athabasca seat to run as a federal Liberal candidate.

Of course, this decision was Belanger’s alone. But given that Ryan Meili and others in the party were quick to praise Belanger, they didn’t exactly express anger at a defection to Justin Trudeau’s team.

The NDP are likely to retake Athabasca in a by-election. And after both Sask. Party MLAs Warren Steinley and Corey Tochor abandoned their provincial seats for successful runs as Conservative MPs, one might think abandoning your seat is for a better political opportunity is less of an issue.

But it’s highly problematic for Ryan Meili’s NDP caucus when one of its 13 members so easily transitions to the federal Liberal caucus.

At the very least, it shows how bad the Saskatchewan NDP is at the political game.