Has Danielle Smith just relegated the United Conservative Party to the Boneyard of Broken Alberta Political Brands?
This is not yet clear, but it’s sure starting to look as if it could happen.
Thanks to Ms. Smith’s stupid and divisive separation referendum election last Monday, which from the government’s perspective more or less flopped, the premier appears to have alienated much of the three quarters of Alberta voters who wanted no part of separation and plenty of the perpetually disaffected crowd who did want to separate as well.
As we saw yesterday, pro- and anti-Smith secessionist factions have already fallen to squabbling over the carcass of the Alberta Prosperity Project, one of the most prominent fund-raising and campaign organizations on the separatist side. Since that battle is taking place on social media, it is far from clear which side will emerge victorious. It probably doesn’t matter.
Worse from the perspective of her United Conservative Party, that portion of separatist hard-liners sticking with Ms. Smith for now isn’t helping either. “I encourage Alberta independence advocates to recognize the importance of maintaining conservative unity and working with the UCP to prevent an NDP government from taking office,” separatist leader Keith Wilson pleaded with his followers on social media Thursday. “Such an outcome would risk setting back the progress we have made and delay another referendum for many years.”
So if you want to delay another referendum for many years, dear readers, vote for the NDP!
If the separation referendum and its noxious nine sub-referenda achieved nothing else, their defeat or tepid passage and the resulting fallout for Ms. Smith and the UCP illustrates the profound risks for politicians in a representative democracy who try to use direct democracy schemes to achieve goals that require broad consensus.
Ms. Smith, who has enough brass for a cheap Russian samovar, has always believed she can talk her way out of any blunder. And often she can. Still, the fact that at least one of her loyal MLAs thought it wise a few days before the vote to ensure his constituency association “passed a unanimous motion declaring our unwavering confidence and continuing strong support for Premier Danielle Smith” is not the endorsement Mike Ellis thought it was.
Ms. Smith, meet Baron Cameron of Brexit and Chipping Norton. No one likes him very much nowadays. Alas, thanks to Tubby Black a generation ago, there will be no baronetcy for you.
Readers with long memories will recall how back in December 2014, Ms. Smith attempted to get her entire Opposition Wildrose Party Caucus to join the venerable Progressive Conservative dynasty then led by the late premier Jim Prentice. On Dec. 17, nine of them crossed the floor and five stayed behind.
When that gambit went over with supporters of both parties like the proverbial lead balloon, it started both the Wildrose Party and the PCs on a path to the political extinction that came to an end with the creation of the UCP by Jason Kenney and his comrades in July 2017.
To have destroyed two conservative political brands in one career is a remarkable achievement. To ruin a third might be a world record!
To be fair, the PC brand might still have some life left in it were it not for UCP legislation making it illegal for any other political party to call itself “conservative.” Legal wrangling continues over the use of the name by Airdrie-Cochrane MLA Peter Guthrie’s Progressive Tory Party.
Other broken Alberta political brands include the Alberta Liberals (the walking dead), the Alberta Party (now the legal body that serves as host to the Progressive Tories), Social Credit (now possessed by an entity called Pro-Life Alberta) and my personal favourite, the United Farmers of Alberta, a political party that achieved new brand life as a chain of gas stations.
Meanwhile, back in the present, the fall sitting of the Alberta Legislature commences on Tuesday and will run till Dec. 3. Look for plenty of “culture war garbage,” in the words of the NDP Opposition, and not much of substance. “We’ll fight any attempt to rig or gerrymander electoral boundaries because we believe that voters should choose their politicians,” NDP House Leader Christina Gray vowed.
As for the referendum vote, only one poll remained uncounted just before midnight. With more than two million Albertans voting, 1,544,819 Albertans voted to remain in Canada and 513,885 voted to hold a binding referendum later, although what motivated them is unclear at this point since the seppie side pushed several arguments for the vote. As a result, the true secessionist vote is likely much smaller.
The government’s five confusingly written immigration referenda all passed by narrow margins and its four constitutional questions all failed, leaving the government with very little to show for its $130-million vote and its propaganda campaign to sway voters to its side for the nine referenda.