Will the real Kevin Falcon please . . .sit down?
That’s the Kevin Falcon who said he wanted nothing more than to see the BC NDP defeated. That’s Falcon, the official Opposition leader who made that defeat his mission ahead of any desire for personal political gain.
And that’s the BC United leader, fast becoming the largest impediment to an NDP defeat.
Falcon was until recently the NDP’s Public Enemy No. 1. Now he is the NDP’s greatest asset in the campaign. In stubbornly staying, in splitting the right-of-centre vote, his meagre portion may be just enough to peel BC Conservative votes away and succeed in getting David Eby’s team reelected. He is inadvertently the kingmaker.
Much as Falcon would wish it otherwise, much as it must be exasperating and the cause of sleepless nights, it is the rejuvenate Conservatives – and not his renamed BC Liberals – that have emerged in recent months as the clear choice for change.
Elders of Falcon’s party have spoken in public and lobbied in private for him to step aside so the full-fledged right can unite – even warned of the impact his resistance is having on his post-political career.
For the time being, he has become B.C.’s Biden, only without the eventual change of heart – holding rallies, releasing policies, collecting donations, outwardly confident he can turn the ship around and that only he is the Goliath to defeat David.
But it is distressing to see someone who can’t see what most everyone sees as the obvious: that victory for his party, that even returning as Official Opposition, is an impossibility.
Falcon returned to politics promisingly two years ago after a decade-long stint in the private sector. Despite the hard work of the former deputy premier and finance minister, sometimes it’s true that you just can’t go back. The negatives outweigh the positives in the polls on his leadership, and those are numbers hardest to turn around.
It is a truism that campaigns matter, and that British Columbians are still familiarizing themselves with BC Conservative Leader John Rustad, who has benefitted – at least for now –from brand association with the separate federal party under Pierre Poilievre bearing the same name. But it is delusional to believe Rustad and Falcon will be trading poll places by October.
Of course, BC United has its own nomenclature problem. It’s asking Elections BC to put both United and its former Liberal name next to its candidates on the ballot because nearly one in three voters don’t know about its name change more than a year in. No matter the name, the party hasn’t persuaded voters it is the distinct opponent that satisfies their calls for change.
There have been other signs of desperation: hiring a new campaign manager, touting a favourable poll that was quickly discredited, proposing a massive tax cut and pretending it won’t mean a service cut. It’s the stuff you do in panicked late-campaign straits, not in the pre-campaign preliminaries.
Falcon is banking on having his Gordon Wilson moment – to ignite BC United as Wilson’s leaders’ debate performance did for the 1991 BC Liberals, rising above the onstage bickering of the NDP’s Mike Harcourt and the Social Credit’s Rita Johnson to deliver the famous line: "This reminds me of a couple of kids in a sandbox. I'm not interested in what happened 10 years ago; I'm interested in what happens tomorrow.” Falcon should worry less about getting to a debate and more about standing in the way of change tomorrow.
His party’s understandable bitterness about snatching defeat from the jaws of victory ought to be set aside if the BC United team is serious about ending the NDP reign. If it wants to oust government, it ought to lend its experienced election machinery to the party in the best position to properly optimize it in the approaching campaign. It ought to cut a deal for some of its MLAs to run as Conservatives, then thank the recruited candidates and spare them a dispiriting Oct. 19.
But it depends on the guy at the top – the guy who must regret dispatching Rustad from BC United on his birthday two years ago – to do what in his heart he must know by now is best for his province.
If he is interested in change, he needs a Biden moment.
Kirk LaPointe is a Glacier Media columnist with an extensive background in journalism.
