After Gordon Campbell -- le deluge

By Gerry Warner
Cranbrook Daily Townsman
Nov. 4, 2010
Did he jump or was he pushed? In truth, it doesn’t really matter because in any political party there’s always a willing Brutus with his knife drawn to perform the coup de grace when the leader can no longer stand on his feet.
And ever since that fateful day when soon to be ex-Premier Gordon Campbell told the people of B.C., ‘by-the-way, I’ve got a new tax for you’ his fate was sealed. The fact that he made that statement after the last election and not before, broke trust with the voters of British Columbia. And trust once broken is seldom repaired.
And it was surely an act of towering irony that a Premier and a party ideologically opposed to taxes – at least taxes on them and their supporters – turned to a provincial tax cut in their dying days in a futile attempt to bribe the voters to support the hated HST.
It didn’t float. Duh. Neither did the Titanic. As for the future, it’s now time for realpolitik in B.C. politics, both for the Liberals and the NDP.
Let’s begin at the very beginning with the Liberals. It’s time for the party to end the charade and give themselves an honest name. Don’t laugh! A party in as deep doo doo as the Campbell Liberals has to begin at the beginning. Call themselves the New Socreds, or the Disgraced Socreds, the Not-NDP-Party, the Free Enterprise Party, the We Know What’s Best for You Party. Call themselves anything they want, but not “Liberal” because they manifestly are not. A true liberal party would not have the lowest minimum wage in the country and the highest rate of child poverty. Eunff said.
As for who will succeed Campbell, a few things are brutally obvious. With the possible exception of one party member, and only one, the new leader must come from outside the party. The HST isn’t just Gordon Campbell’s tax. It’s the preferred tax of the Liberal Party of B.C. Every current member of the Liberal party supported it and for that reason they’re unfit to be the next Liberal Party leader. There’s no way around it. However one former Liberal Party member had the strength of his convictions to quit the Liberal Party over the HST several months ago. He didn’t wait until his leader was fatally wounded before letting his displeasure be known.
And that, of course was Peace River South MLA Blair Lekstrom, who is worthy of serious consideration to be the next leader of the Liberal Party of B.C..
But the Liberals must do something else to have a serious chance of winning the next election no matter who they choose for leader. And this is absolutely critical. What they must do is move up the date for the HST referendum as soon as possible. January 2011 would be nice. Think about it. If they leave the HST referendum until September 2011, not only will the new Liberal leader have to fight the HST Bogy Man but the entire province will stay in a development freeze on major projects because no one wants to do anything major in Beautiful B.C. until they know whether or not they will have to pay the HST. And if the HST was defeated in the referendum, what a weight that would be off the new Liberal leader’s shoulders.
It’s not rocket science.
Then there’s the NDP. I really have some empathy for Carole James. She took the party from two seats to more than 30 in the last two elections and pushed its share of the popular vote high in the 40 per cent range where it had never been before. But politics is a cruel business and it’s also true that James lost two elections to Gordon Campbell.
In baseball, it’s three strikes and you’re out, but in politics two usually does it. The NDP, which has largely been on the sidelines throughout the HST debacle, can’t afford to be on the sidelines while the Liberals go though the excitement of electing a new leader.
The party, which specializes in eating its own, is going to have to sharpen its knives unless James, like Campbell, decides to take a bullet for the party and gracefully steps out.
Going into the next election with a leader twice defeated by the disgraced former Liberal leader is a recipe for yet another NDP defeat.

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