NDP President 'Topps' Among Choices For Layton Successor?

Brian Topp, the NDP's Wizard of Oz, could face off against Thomas Mulcair to lead their 103-member caucus.

With Jack Layton lying in state today in the foyer of the House of Commons, his party is beginning the work of finding a new permanent leader, with some suggesting NDP president Brian Topp as the unlikely frontrunner for the gig. Canadian Press' Joan Bryden (as reliable as Hill journos get) reports that sources within the party say support for Topp's entry into the leadership race is building. Topp, who was instrumental in preparing for the NDP's unprecedented breakthrough in Quebec this year, was a close friend and adviser to Layton, and helped pen his famed deathbed letter, which called for a leadership convention in the new year. He's worked with the party and its provincial counterparts in some form or another since at least the early 1990s, although he's never held elected office and isn't exactly widely known outside of the party and Ottawa's myopic chattering classes. The field of likely leadership contenders looks pretty thin, otherwise, with Thomas Mulcair, Layton's bilingual Quebec lieutenant, seen as the only other truly viable candidate to lead a party whose support mostly lies in Quebec.