Danielle Smith’s Big Pierre Poilievre Problem
Danielle Smith’s Big Pierre Poilievre Problem
A Conservative federal government would create political headaches for the UCP.
Abacus Data’s latest polling has the federal Conservatives out to their biggest lead in over a decade. Unless there is a drastic change over the summer, Canadians ought to prepare for a Conservative majority at some point in the next year or so.
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No one should be paying closer attention than Danielle Smith and the United Conservative Party.
A change of government in Ottawa would have a major impact on provincial politics in Alberta. With no whipping boy or scapegoat in Ottawa, the provincial UCP would need to shift focus and even rebrand.
At the same time, the Fair Deal strategy launched by the Jason Kenney government and accelerated by Smith has created a set of demands and expectations upon the next prime minister that may be difficult to walk back.
PP is so fake, it will be painful to see him as a prime minister, but Trudeau had his shot at election reform and lied to people, so he is ultimately to blame.
This will not be comforting to the vulnerable people who will inevitably be hurt by Pollievre's government.
No, it's no comfort at all. It also wouldn't be an issue if people didn't so quickly and consistently vote against their interests.
Everyone pointing to Trudeau and blaming him for breaking his promise on voting reform still voted for Trudeau when the NDP has been running on voting reform for decades.
People don't actually want it. They just want someone to blame.
To be honest, the Liberals don't want election reform, at least not the way you think.
If we have proportional representation, the Liberals (and the Conservatives, let's be honest) would never govern again.
As it stands, it's quite possible to form a majority government with ~35% of the vote, which suits the LPC and CPC just fine, as they can just swap chairs every four to eight years. Under PR, they'd need to win >50%, which hasn't happened in almost fifty years, and even before that was still very, very rare. The LPC or CPC would need to share power with the NDP or BQ to get anything done, which means that a) parliament would have to represent the electorate, and the electorate is much for left-of-centre than the people they vote for, and b) the LPC and CPC couldn't depend on the favour of their donors since buying them wouldn't really worth the money it is today.
The Liberals would sooner go through a twelve-year term in the wilderness than see a Canada that's run like a western European country. So yes, they'd rather lose, and lose hard, knowing they'd be back in eventually, then advance real electoral reform and lose their sole access to the levers of power forever.
So just like now then. The Liberals are backed by the NDP and maintain power.
Germany has been dominated by two parties since the war under MMP. And proportional representation has done absolutely nothing to inhibit the right wing authoritarians coming into power in much of Eastern Europe, and making gains in Western Europe.
In Israel, Netanyahu's Likud control government with the support of 24% of the electorate in the last election. He had to put together a dog's breakfast of even more extreme parties to do it, but that's always a possibility in that sort of system.
You know, this bad take about Trudeau having "lied to people" is part of the reason we are going to end up with a CPC majority government undoing good progress across a whole host of important issues.
Considering forest fires started in March this year, from hot-spots left over from last year's record-shattering forest fires...
"Unless there is a drastic change over the summer" is going to be videos of PP saying 'axe the tax' overlaid with videos of people escaping the flames and their homes burned to the ground.
The issue is Con voters don't care. Hell the Cons voted against adding 'climate change is real' to their platform.
Good luck everyone.
Why would Smith rebrand as PP will give her what she wanted. PP is not for federal power and jurisdiction over local affairs. He wants a weak federal government.