Party mutineers still don’t get it

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This article was published 12/03/2016 (3737 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Brandon — A full year after the failure of their scheme to seize control of their party and our provincial government, they still don’t get it.

Refusing to take responsibility for the turmoil caused by their actions, Theresa Oswald and Stan Struthers continue to defiantly portray themselves as martyrs who selflessly put their duty to protect the interests of Manitobans ahead of their own interests, and then paid a terrible price for doing so.

March 8 marked the anniversary of last year’s decision by NDP delegates to have Premier Greg Selinger remain as party leader. The 33-vote loss by Oswald ended the mutiny she initiated six months earlier with Struthers and fellow cabinet ministers Jennifer Howard, Erin Selby and Andrew Swan.

Reflecting on that defeat, Struthers told the CBC earlier this week: “We just didn’t get up one morning and decide we were going to overthrow the government… We tried our best to avoid an electoral disaster. We tried our best to make sure our party knew some of the shady decisions that had been made.

“I always take my share of responsibility,” he added. “I am one of the ones, though, who can say I sacrificed and stuck my neck out in an effort to help the NDP. There are others who can’t say that.”

The bitterness evident in Struthers’ comments was echoed by Oswald in her farewell speech in the legislature Tuesday.

“On the subject of five particular colleagues, I have no adequate words of my own,” she said. “Shakespeare wrote in his most famous speech in Henry V: ‘Proclaim it… / That he which hath no stomach to this fight, / Let him depart; his passport shall be made, / And crowns for convoy put in his purse; / We would not die in that man’s company / that fears his fellowship to die with us.’

“I hold you in my heart’s core and say: ‘We few, we happy few, we band of brothers; / For he today that sheds his blood with me / Shall be my brother…’”

The comments by Struthers and Oswald illustrate their twisted misperception of the situation.

Struthers claims he took risks in order to save the NDP from impending electoral annihilation, and implicitly condemns those who did not, but he still refuses to acknowledge the rebellion worsened the party’s re-election hopes. (A Probe Research poll revealed the NDP was regaining support before the revolt began.)

Oswald’s recitation of that particular passage from Henry V is strange. With those words, King Henry is not praising those leaving his over-matched army on the eve of battle; he is mocking the deserters for their cowardice. He argues his army is better off without them. It is not the deserters whom he regards as his “band of brothers,” but rather those with the courage to remain and fight the seemingly unwinnable battle.

The parallel to the current situation obviously eludes Oswald. Having failed to unseat Selinger, she, Howard and Struthers (and Selby last September) are abandoning their caucus colleagues on the eve of a tough election contest that could reduce the NDP to third-party status. As one New Democrat said to me earlier this week: “How truly ironic that even at this late date, Theresa might mistake herself for royalty when in fact she leads those without the stomach for the fight.”

That one sentence goes to the heart of the issue. Despite all evidence to the contrary, Oswald and Struthers still regard themselves as heroic victims in the NDP leadership saga. They are not merely unrepentant for the discord they have sown within their party, and which still lingers; they stubbornly refuse to acknowledge the government they claim they sought to rescue from imminent disaster is now more vulnerable because of their actions.

Worse still, the decision by Oswald, Struthers, Howard and Selby to not seek re-election means less-blameworthy colleagues are left to bear the consequences on April 19 for the reckless actions of the Gang of Five.

Oswald and Struthers may regard such conduct as courageous, but Shakespeare’s King Henry V would condemn it for what really it is: cowardly.

Deveryn Ross is a political commentator living in Brandon.

deverynrossletters@gmail.comTwitter: @deverynross