Conservative message of unity is bad news for Alberta NDP

Rachel Notley’s success in 2015 election was largely due to split on the right

There is much to say about the historic votes for conservative unity in Alberta on Saturday beyond the fact that both the Progressive Conservative and Wildrose parties voted 95 per cent in favour of merging. Talk about unity. What are the chances of both parties voting the same percentage in favour of a United Conservative Party?

This merger is a tremendous accomplishment and most of the credit has to go to former federal Conservative Party cabinet minister Jason Kenney, who just over one year ago — on July 6, 2016 — announced he would seek the leadership of the Alberta PC party with the stated aim of uniting the right in his home province.

A little more than one year after declaring his intentions, Kenney, 49, first won the leadership of the Alberta PCs by a landslide and then, along with Wildrose Leader Brian Jean, worked diligently — and often together — to convince members of each party that it was time to focus more on what unites these two parties rather than what divides them. The number of church basement meetings, handshakes and kilometres covered that this feat represents is likely incalculable.

What is calculable, however, is just how worried the Alberta NDP should be.

When Rachel Notley led her New Democrats to victory over the 44-year PC dynasty in Alberta in the May 5, 2015, election, her party won 40.6 per cent of the popular vote and 54 of 87 seats. The PCs received 27.8 per cent of the popular vote and 10 seats, while the Wildrose got 24.2 per cent of the vote and 21 seats.

The math isn’t hard. Between the two parties, the PCs and Wildrose garnered 52 per cent of the popular vote under challenging circumstances.

The Wildrose Party had just chosen a new, green leader in Brian Jean when then-premier Jim Prentice called an early election.

While Prentice was widely respected, the level of scandal that plagued the PC party under Alison Redford’s government made the party extremely unsavoury and the electorate wanted to punish the PCs.

While it’s true that some PC party members may now decide to join the NDP rather than the newly formed United Conservative Party, the next election is the NDP’s to lose.

Crunch the numbers in more detail from the provincial election results and things look pretty grim for the NDP.

In essence, had the political right vote not been split in 2015 and assuming political choices remain the same, the NDP is really only safe in fewer than two dozen seats — mostly in the Edmonton area.

The UCP will choose a new leader Oct. 28, 2018, and will then have that momentum leading into the next election expected in May 2019.

Then again, leadership races can be extremely divisive and there is still considerable animus between the two now-merged parties and some of their members. If they can keep their eye on the end game — that is to ensure the NDP remains a one-term historical footnote and to remove from UCP ranks the bozo-erupting fringe elements — it’s difficult to see how they can lose.

So far, Jean has said he is running for the UCP leadership, as has Calgary lawyer Doug Schweitzer. Wildrose MLA Derek Fildebrandt says he will decide whether he will run for the top job only after he finds out what the new party’s rules are, and while Kenney hasn’t said whether he plans to run for the leadership role, it’s widely expected he will. He will be the person to beat. There are also rumours that former Alberta energy minister Diana McQueen is considering a run. Expect many more ambitious leaders to start kicking tires to see what kind of support is out there for them.

As for the NDP, expect them to possibly start looking at reining in spending a little bit and trying to label this new party with familiar past smears. But 95 per cent times two is an incredible message of unity, and it changes everything.