A NARROW ROAD TO REDEMPTION WILL BE ONLY PATH BACK TO POWER FOR CLARK
Premier can fade out of the limelight or she can show B.C. she’s been humbled by loss
Christy Clark is entering her dying days as B.C.’s 35th premier. Her once-mighty Liberal government will soon be skulking off to the cramped and unglamorous offices of the official Opposition.
It’s going to be an easy time to kick Clark when she’s down, and maybe she and the Liberals deserve it. But it would be a mistake to count her out for good just yet. There’s still a possible road to redemption for Clark and she’s got about a year to pull it off — two, at the most.
Her first test will be the impending loss to NDP Leader John Horgan, who, with his Green power-sharing accord, has the required 44 votes to topple her Liberal government on a vote of non-confidence on the throne speech in late June.
Will Clark be able to transition out of power without appearing to desperately want to cling to the premiership? If so, it’s going to mean avoiding the procedural games around selecting a Speaker. Her Liberals will need to sacrifice an MLA to the job to avoid looking like they’re sore losers out to delay the inevitable.
It’s going to be a bit of a gut check for Clark, who allowed her ruthless partisanship to grow out of control in six years as premier.
A take-no-prisoners governing style, in which she only gave ground to opponents grudgingly and at the last minute, has meant she’s looked uncaring and aloof on issues like housing affordability, her party stipend, corporate and union donations, education, children in care, welfare rates and disability bus passes. The NDP, Greens and other critics made valid points about bungled policy decisions. She refused to listen until it was too late.
Candidates got an earful about Clark’s negative style on the doorstep in the May 9 election. Voters told them clearly that their leader was too partisan, too insincere and too focused on benefiting herself while they struggled to afford to live.
On the leader’s campaign tour, what had once been positive traits for Clark became liabilities. Her freewheeling ability to plunge into crowds and genuinely mingle with voters backfired into the I Am Linda moment where she turned her back on and walked away from a non-supporter. Her steadfast focus on creating jobs proved tone-deaf to the growing financial pressures facing Metro Vancouver voters who already had jobs.
A Clark looking for redemption must change to be courteous, caring and contrite.
It’s no surprise a TV news station that zoomed in on her speaking notes at a recent postelection press conference saw Clark had scribbled the word “humble” on her speech.
Luckily for her, she enjoys the confidence of the majority of her 43-MLA caucus — for now.
At a Tuesday caucus meeting, she received a standing ovation and calls to stay on. Even those with leadership ambitions — Andrew Wilkinson, Todd Stone and Mike Bernier — appear to know the time isn’t right to push her aside.
It helps that most of the caucus owe their political careers to Clark’s 2013 come-from-behind victory or were personally recruited by her for the 2017 election. There simply aren’t many dissidents or rebels, and she hasn’t bullied her MLAs as Gordon Campbell did before the internal uprising that cost him his leadership in 2011.
Within the ranks of the Liberals, there’s a growing view that their best bet might be to head to Opposition for a voter-mandated time out and sit back to watch the NDP- Green alliance implode.
With 43 MLAs, the Liberals will have the largest official Opposition in B.C. history.
Many will lose their $52,940 ministerial top-up pay (Clark takes a $42,353 pay cut in becoming Opposition leader) and access to government resources. But a Liberal Opposition will have as much money for staff and researchers to dig up partisan dirt as they did to defend themselves as a government caucus.
Even New Democrats admit that Clark could be a terrifyingly good Opposition leader. She was one of the most feared critics while in the Liberal Opposition in the 1990s on subjects like environment, children and families and public works. On numerous occasions she goaded, berated and mocked until NDP cabinet minsters lost their cool.
Clark will know where all the skeletons are in the new NDP government, in part because she just finished putting them there. And she’s always had the ability to push Horgan’s buttons, causing him to explode in frustration.
Most important, her bench of shadow critics will be filled with experienced former cabinet ministers who will know more off the top of their heads about their portfolios than any junior NDP cabinet minister could hope to know after studying for months.
The Liberals will also have all sorts of spies sprinkled throughout the ranks of the bureaucracy after 16 years in power.
NDP briefing notes, confidential memos and potentially embarrassing emails are guaranteed, somehow, to find their way into the hands of the Opposition Liberals. The good ship New Democrat will leak like a sieve in its early and most fragile days.
The ultimate hope for the Liberals is that the NDP-Green alliance falls apart in its first 12 to 18 months because of infighting, tension and the pressure of keeping a government going with a one-vote margin. After the twoyear mark, Clark’s chances of survival diminish significantly.
But in the immediate future, the Liberals want to be ready to pounce at a moment of opportunity. They’ll need a leader who has not only changed, but shown and convinced the public she’s changed. We’ll get our first glimpse at whether Clark is up to that challenge when the legislature resumes and her government falls.