NDP leadership hopeful Rob Ashton on the picket line with striking Ontario nurses. Photo courtesy Rob Ashton/X.

For years, critics inside and outside the New Democratic Party have warned that the party is drifting away from its historic base. In election after election, the NDP has struggled to connect with the very voters it was founded to represent: the people who work in Canada’s warehouses, schools, docks, offices, hospitals, and factories—and who increasingly feel abandoned by a political class that speaks past them.

It is into this debate that longshoreman and union leader Rob Ashton has launched his candidacy for the NDP leadership. A political newcomer in the traditional sense, Ashton has never held elected office. But he has spent more than three decades on the docks and in union halls, rising to become national president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU). In an era when Canada’s Parliament is dominated by lawyers, consultants, and professional managers, Ashton represents something increasingly rare in federal politics: a leader who comes directly from the rank and file.

Ashton’s candidacy is a bet that the party can reconnect with working class voters only if it is led by someone who speaks their language—not as a rhetorical tactic, but as lived experience. He argues that the NDP must once again name class conflict for what it is, and fight unapologetically for the people being squeezed by corporate power and political complacency.

When we sat down to talk, Ashton was blunt: the NDP has lost trust, not because its values have changed, but because it has failed to communicate them clearly and consistently. He believes he can bring those voters back (the ones who went Liberal out of fear, or Conservative out of frustration) by offering a politics rooted in everyday struggle rather than insider calculation.

What follows is our conversation about the NDP’s future, the failures of Canada’s political establishment, and Ashton’s bid to rebuild the party from the shop floor up.

Christo Aivalis: One question many NDP supporters are asking is how each of the leadership candidates will win voters over to the NDP. Why do you think you are best positioned to win back voters?

Rob Ashton: I come from the shop floor, Christo. I’ve lived this life for 32 years as a longshoreman, and I’ve represented longshoremen for the last 10 years as their national president. I know what they need and what they want. We’ve had NDP voters go Conservative this time, and others vote Liberal, worried about that self-appointed king down south and about Pierre Poilievre taking power. Under the NDP with my leadership, I can bring back those voters who went blue because I speak their language. I know the struggles they face. At the same time, NDP supporters who........

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