This is not a column. The planned column, a vessel under full sail of exquisite logic, cruised majestically onto the rocks of chartless British Columbia politics.
In other words: something came up. It always does. B.C. politics don’t stand still for snapshots. They’re movies. One endless film noir.
Had this been a column, it would have confidently, not to say recklessly, declared – defying the polls, the pundits, the poli-sci professoriate, in short the unanimiti:
Christy Clark’s misfortunes have bottomed out. She will lead her Liberals to victory next May. You read it here first.
And note: I’m a natural fit for John Cummins. But this is politics. Brave, independent, principled don’t count. Electability does.
The argument begins (and ends?) with the point that, the election just a baby’s-birth away, only a corporal’s guard of voters would recognize the B.C. Conservative leader if he pinned a party rosette on their breast and kissed their dog.
Some of the political class could pick him out of a police lineup. But the belly-scratchers who have enough public duty to vote, but not enough to allow their stressed lives to rise and fall on the rhythms of the six o’clock news, know little of Cummins – except the mantra that he’d be the spoiler for the Liberals and the doorman for New Democrat Adrian Dix’s entry into the West Wing.
Image is important, but recognizability is essential. Seen Cummins’ mug much on the box? Front pages? Inside pages? How about among the ointment ads?
My suspicion: this may not be accidental. Business is business, and the media – forget any pinkish reporters – are business’ business. And if business must swallow socialism, it prefers the Social Credit/Liberal coalition variety. (Milton Friedman is not looking down kindly from the golden clouds on any B.C. party. They’re all too leftist. Consider Conservative Cummins’ obiter dictum that he prefers the NDP to the Liberals.)
That apart, there’s the Conservative team. Campaign director Hamish Marshall quit, pleading a crushing workload. Highest profile, apart from Cummins, 70 past, are former Newfoundland premier Brian Peckford, 70 this month, and saucy retired pot-stirrer Randy White, the kid at age 64. Federal Conservative veterans Preston Manning and Stockwell Day support Clark. Splitsville.
Notably absent: women. Shannon Kewley (a North Vancouver realtor who helped John Reynolds, yet another hall-of-fame politician) is a newly minted co-chair of the candidate recruitment committee. Other women? Making coffee.
Latest: a leadership review September 22. CKNW interviewed a party director. His dodgy response – ums, ers, uhs, which NW endlessly, delightedly rebroadcast – raised one’s respect for slick political lies. Damage to Cummins? Big.
Cummins’ 20% share in the opinion polls looks soupy soft.
“I don’t return calls when I can’t identify the caller,” says doubtless biased North Vancouver-Seymour Liberal MLA Jane Thornthwaite, convinced the polls are skewed by those so lonely they answer wrong numbers and scammers.
Only poll that matters: Adrian (Tricky) Dix smoked out, forced to cough up answers, and losing the aroused centre. Conservative support, just 5% to 10%, possibly not a single seat. In the last 10, even five days voters will be moved by Clark’s raw gutsiness. Result: a Liberal squeaker.
So that’s the column I didn’t write. A naïf after all, I thought that Christy Clark’s dance card with scandals had finally been filled, and she’d be too wary to go home with the guy who brung her.
And then … last week’s Insurance Corp. of BC pigs-at-the-trough disaster. Another salvage job on the listing Liberal ship. Glad I killed that column – for now. That was last week. •
