Thomas Mulcair defeats party insider Brian Topp and five others to become leader of the Official Opposition. Your move, Steve.
After a drawn-out and competitive race, Quebec MP Thomas Mulcair has defeated six other candidates and now takes the helm of the New Democratic Party. Mulcair won on the election’s fourth ballot, beating out Brian Topp by taking 57 per cent of votes in the final round. The results of the last two rounds were delayed due to technical difficulties with online voting brought on by reported dedicated denial-of-service attacks, but around 9:30 p.m., all the votes had been tabulated and the Outremont MP emerged victorious. Mulcair, a former Quebec provincial Liberal cabinet minister, first won a seat for the federal NDP in 2007 before co-ordinating much of the party’s efforts to pick up dozens of seats in Quebec in the 2011 election. He now takes the reins of a party that’s been struggling to stabilize itself after the death of former leader Jack Layton last summer, and will presumably be buying drinks for Brian Topp, Paul Dewar, Peggy Nash, Niki Ashton, and especially Martin Singh and Nathan Cullen at the Sheraton in Toronto tonight.
