Uniting the Right in BC, with not a supporter in sight!

The news slipped in under the radar so much that hardly anyone noticed, nor seemingly did they care. While we were all watching the ravings of the Republicans gathered in New York City, BC’s own right wing zealots were busy taking care of some housekeeping.

The BC Unity Party and the BC Conservative party apparently decided that it’s better to be ignored collectively, than as separate entities and so chose to merge. The Unity Party’s Chris Delaney made the announcement on September 1st, receiving little more than a side bar box in the Vancouver Sun and a couple of mentions on CKNW.

Other than that, the creation of a Right wing colossus was met with a collective yawn! Of course the fact that the Conservative Party of BC registers somewhere in the zone of 0% and the Unity flag bearers only collected 3% of the vote last election, may have something to do with the less than excited coverage of this momentous event.

Delaney says that members of the two parties will hold a meeting on September 25th to set in motion plans for a leadership convention in December. Delaney did take the time to issue the usual bon mots about the new adventure, things like how the new party will be appealing to the grassroots and would be more than capable of taking on both the NDP and the Liberals in the next election.

It would seem the party is designed to appeal to the old Socred Guard who of course ran off and basically took over the BC Liberal party a number of years ago, considering the fact that they are government in power at the moment, its doubtful that many of them would be leaving the embrace of the Gordon Campbell crew any time soon.

And while the current Liberals and general public may be keeping their distance, the new collection of the right has at least received some attention from an unusual spot in the media. Charlie Smith of straight.com has suggested that the new merger might threaten the Liberal hold on power. And while I would not argue with many of his suggested points about the new venture, I’m afraid I just don’t see Gordon Campbell staying up late at night planning ways to put the new collection of right wingers in their place.

When push comes to shove and X goes to paper, the folks on the right are not likely to throw their lot in with yet another combination of interests on the right wing, when they can keep their power base alive with the current Liberals.

Instead the Libs are probably more concerned about any eventual merger or accommodation between the Green Party and the NDP. With the Greens still hoping to flex their muscles in BC, they will only take votes away from the NDP. A merger of the Greens and NDP would send off some alarm bells for the Campbell followers and certainly solidify the NDP’s claim to be representing a good portion of British Columbians. But to achieve that, the party would need some leadership and at the moment there seems to be a bit of a void happening there.

Carole James, who still continues to run the lowest profile leadership style of any Canadian politician, should make getting the Green vote back on side as her main priority. She’s been the reported leader of the NDP for months now, but yet has absolutely no public profile, should you happen to cross her path in the streets you might never have a clue that she is a possible Premier in waiting.

As a matter of fact, the NDP should seriously consider purchasing some space on Milk cartons and getting her picture out there like a missing person. If you're an NDPer, here's a little experiment for you, try typing in your leaders name into a Google (or pretty well any other) search engine! The results will give you cause for thought about the leaders relevance to the province.

There are folks across BC, who probably still think Joy McPhail is leading the party and for all intents and purposes she and Jenny Kwan are still the face of social democratic beliefs in BC. Ms. James, if she is to be taken seriously needs to be far more visible and engaged with the people of British Columbia.

Until that happens, Gordon Campbell really has nothing to worry about from either the right or the left.