The Cult of Layton

Jack Layton slips unannounced through the hall's back door. He strides to the stage until spotted by a few supporters at the rear of the room, whose smattering of applause draws the attention of others.

Layton pauses, smiles, waves. The crowd is on its feet, shouting and cheering. Jack Layton is in the building.

"Hello, New Democrats!" he shouts from the stage.

"Hello," they call back.

"Everywhere we go," the federal leader tells the Victoria audience, "it's standing-room only with New Democrats, I tell you."

Crowded, too, is the field of B.C. candidates vying to march with Layton into federal electoral battle. (See related story in today's Tyee).

Layton claims the party's national membership of 50,000 has more than doubled in 18 months, a time in which the party has also returned to its traditional level of support of 16 percent in national polls.

These are heady days for a party rejected by 92 per cent of voters three years ago. For once, they have a leader with star quality. He knows it, too.

Pushing the brand on TV

The party that brought you medicare and "corporate welfare bums" has bought its own small slice of red-carpet celebrity. On Sunday night, the NDP spent about $100,000 for a 30-second advertisement on CTV's telecast of the Academy Awards.

For a party that still raises money by tithing the faithful and passing plastic buckets at meetings, the toilet-break time slot cost a substantial sum. Still, the party struck a jackpot of earned media simply by buying the ad, a decision which earned an article in the Globe and Mail on Friday and an airing on "Inside Media" on CBC Newsworld on Sunday morning.

The ad consists of a slide show of still photographs with a voice-over reading favourable comments about the leader from the Winnipeg Free Press ("a thrilling new figure") and the Toronto Star ("brims with energy and ideas"). The ad is titled "Layton."

The fellow with the Village People mustache, who wears a white dress shirt and tie, is being marketed as a cult of personality.

The cover of the NDP's current brochure doesn't even include the party's name. A colour head-and-shoulders photograph of Layton peers from beneath his name in large letters and the legend, in much smaller type, "building the national alternative."

The six-page pamphlet includes 24 citations of Layton's name, while the party gets just 20 mentions (including two for the Web site and one for the mail-in card). It reads like new packaging for a brand name on which the owners have soured.

Swearing free swinger

Layton is an energetic presence and unapologetic about speaking about poverty (bad), homelessness (bad), medicare (good), government corruption (bad), Star Wars missiles in Canada (bad), corporatism (really bad), and the gradual loss of Canadian sovereignty to our oversized neighbour (unbelievably bad).

In the speech in Victoria, Layton got most worked up about American aerospace giant Lockheed Martin Corporation having won a contract to conduct Canada's next national census, a decision against which Mel Hurtig has been campaigning.  Layton was so excited his errant arm knocked the microphone from its stand. "Lockheed Martin can go to hell!" he shouted. "We can count ourselves!"

A few words of schoolboy French went unacknowledged by the unilingual crowd, as Layton exulted in the good news that the party was at 11 per cent in the polls in Quebec. One takes political solace where one finds it. The NDP had been polling at two per cent, so within-the-margin-of-error low that there was a statistical possibility that none of Quebec's millions of voters supported the party of Canadian social democracy.

The NDP has not been a party susceptible to swooning to star power. The first television-age leader was Tommy Douglas, a diminutive prairie preacher with a mastery of Dirty Thirties rhetoric. David Lewis, Ed Broadbent, Audrey McLaughlin and Alexa McDonough present a quartet never accused of cruising on charisma.

Man with a cereal message

The NDP's head-over-heels romance with a pretty boy is not without precedent, nor does it come without dangers. The on-again, off-again affair with Pierre Trudeau aside, party faithful in Canada have on occasion gone ga-ga for celebrity only to suffer heartbreak endings that seemed sadly predictable in hindsight. (Kim Campbell proved to be a sorry Tory and John Turner a misfit Grit.) Already, the Liberals are referring to Layton as Stockwell Day with a library card.

At the Victoria meeting, Layton tweaked Prime Minister Paul Martin for carrying out Brian Mulroney's "corporate agenda." He complained that Martin used the word "new" so often that he was beginning to resemble a cereal box. It was like Lucky Charms being accused of sweetness by Frosted Flakes.

For the NDP's true believers, whose best hopes for furthering social democracy can be found in fantasies of a minority government, the current fixation can best be summed up as: Better Layton than never.

Tom Hawthorn is a widely published Victoria writer. Visit his website at www.TomHawthorn.com