Wednesday August 28, 2024 | VICTORIA, BC [Posted at 2 pm] – [See August 28 announcement analysis]
by Mary P Brooke | Island Social Trends
Today at 2:40 pm BC Conservative Leader John Rustad is expected to announce that the BC United Party is folding up shop.
That means a lot of BC United candidates (currently about 57) will be set free, including BC United Leader Kevin Falcon who it’s now rumored will not run at all.
Some BC United candidates in ridings where there is already a BC Conservative candidate may not have anywhere to run in the upcoming 2024 BC Provincial election on October 19 (for which the official campaign period starts on September 21).
For now without a campaign that would include BC United candidate Meagan Brame in Esquimalt-Colwood, Sean Flynn in Langford-Highlands, and Herb Haldane in Juan de Fuca-Malahat. Brame could shift to BC Conservative, but for Flynn and Haldane the Conservative slot is already taken.
This freezes out long-time high-profile BC United (former BC Liberals) candidates Shirley Bond and Todd Stone.
Nominations of BC United candidates will be withdrawn to enable the Conservative Party of BC to draw from BC United’s pool of incumbent MLAs, the party said in a statement this afternoon.
BC NDP will have to work harder:
For the BC NDP this must be a joyous victory, for now seeing the former BC Liberals cleared right off the political map in this province. This brings some grace to the long fight that John Horgan led from back in 2005 when he was first elected as an MLA; his passing the torch to now Premier David Eby has continued a lit flame for the progressive NDP movement.
But there’s no room for complacency. The BC NDP will have to further strengthen their game to counter the ‘momentum for change’ that the BC electorate seems to be driven by in this election cycle.
Handling the BC Liberal legacy so badly was all about Falcon. He never found resonance with people who are sensing that the ways of nasty politics need to be left behind. He also seemed to fully believe that a party name-change would fix all things. It only caused more confusion.
Kudos to John Rustad for having his finger on the pulse of change, though his policy direction may not appeal as broadly across BC as he thinks. “The goal is to give people of British Columbia a common sense change choice,” said Rustad today.
While the BC Greens actually become a stronger third-party force now, this 2024 provincial election is now about the NDP keeping the fast-building Conservatives at bay. BC Green Sonia Furstenau will hold a media conference at 3:45 pm today at her 1010 Fort Street campaign office, to comment on the BC United’s decision to fold their provincial campaign. [See comments by BC Green Leader Sonia Furstenau – link to come]
This is a seismic change in BC politics, in some ways perhaps likely but nonetheless coming as a major logistical shock to candidates and a larger shock to the political scene as the election approaches. All the progress ‘for people’ is at stake if the BC NDP fail to maintain their strength in government.
[See August 28 announcement analysis]
