McNeil’s dominance limits contenders’ profile
HALIFAX — In the month since Premier Stephen McNeil told us he’s leaving just as soon as Nova Scotia’s Liberals can find a new leader, potential successors have been dropping faster than COVID19 cases at the White House.
When you survey what lies ahead for the next Liberal leader and premier, it makes some sense that sensible people have decided to forego an expensive, grueling leadership race for a shot at a job that’s mostly thankless and quite possibly short-term.
Nobody knows what the pandemic has in store for Nova Scotia, but it’s a sure bet that it will dominate government long after the Liberals provide the province with its 29th premier soon after choosing him or her as leader on Feb. 6.
The next premier will have to take the province through the ongoing health crisis and, even in the fortunate event that he or she gets us to the other side, cleaning up the economic and fiscal mess left behind doesn’t exactly promise good times ahead for the provincial government.
On the political front, the next premier will take over a few months shy of the fourth anniversary of the Liberals’ 2017 election win. With the fifth and final year of the mandate looming large so does a provincial election.
Most Liberals seem to think that Stephen McNeil would have won that election, so anything less from his successor will be viewed in the party as a failure, and political failure at the top can make for an uncomfortable, if not short, tenure for party leaders.
There’s five days left before Friday’s deadline for candidates to get into the race and, as of this moment, only one would-be leader has officially declared. That’s Labour and Advanced Education Minster Labi Kousoulis from Halifax Citadel, the riding that engulf the city’s centre and south end.
Lands and Forestry Minister Iain Rankin from suburban Timberlea-Prospect has an “exciting announcement” coming later today.
While it would be truly exciting if he announced that the Liberals were actually protecting the places designated in the province’s parks and protected places plan, he’s actually going to announce that he’s in the leadership race instead.
The Liberal grapevine says Health Minister Randy Delorey is also about to take the plunge and, like Rankin’s, his Facebook page promises an announcement is upcoming.
Immigration Minister Lena Metlege Diab’s certain entry a week ago has become less certain now, leaving Liberals facing the awkward optics of an all-white-guy contest.
The lack of star power in the Liberal leadership should come as a surprise to no one who’s kept even a cursory eye on provincial politics over the past seven years.
For almost every day of those seven years, the premier and the government have been one and the same.
The trend toward leaderdominated politics in our parliamentary system — where the leader of the government was once said to be just the first-among-equals in cabinet — was well-advanced long before Stephen McNeil became premier of Nova Scotia.
But McNeil’s dominance of his government is so absolute that none of the other 17 members of his cabinet have achieved much public profile, and when they have it’s often been amid controversy or trouble in their portfolios.
The premier made all the big, positive announcements himself.
A friend assured me the other day that if I stopped 10 average Nova Scotians — if there is such a thing — on the street, nine couldn’t name more than one member of McNeil’s cabinet.
I don’t intend to conduct such a survey but can’t argue with the thesis that our governments have become much more leader-centric over the past few decades, leaving ministers to toil mostly in obscurity.
That dynamic — the lack of public profile from which to launch a leadership bid — may well serve to winnow the field when it comes time for succession. It could also be argued that it creates a level-playing field for cabinet ministers because none has assumed the kind of profile reserved for a leader-inwaiting.
It is a testament to the extent of McNeil’s dominance that, during a protracted health crisis, his health minister is about to enter the leadership as a relative unknown.
But the reality is that whoever got into the race, it would be their introduction to most Nova Scotians, and even then voters won’t really get to know the next premier until he or she is in the office and during the election campaign that will soon follow.