CKNW Editorial
for April 9, 2001

This is probably no time to be looking ahead to the B.C. Liberal Party a couple of years down the road. After all, they’re riding high in the polls 49 points ahead of the NDP. The world their oyster – what could possibly change that?

A wise man once observed that all it takes to turn cheers into jeers is the passage of time. How true that is.

If Gordon Campbell is a wise man – and he may be – he will look at ways to solidify his party’s position. He will try to establish it as the Social Credit Party of this political era. To do that, he must find his political niche. And presumably, that will be the center right of the spectrum.

He will have some work to do, however, and that will be because of what will surely be an embarrassment of riches after the next election, If he wins a landslide – and it’s hard to see how that won’t happen – he’ll have to find a way to keep a lot of backbenchers happy. If he wins, say, 70 seats – and on the present numbers that seems likely – he will have a lot of problems keeping the unemployed backbenchers happy. There will almost certainly be a split in the ranks.

Now this is a very difficult thing for a leader to admit. By the very admission he may create a self fulfilling prophecy. But he must admit it if he is to have a lasting presence on the scene.

What Mr Campbell must strive for is a split on the right. One might ask where else would a split occur but one must remember that, almost certainly, there will be a huge vacuum on the left. For middle of the road, unemployed Liberal backbenchers there will be an ongoing temptation to make common cause with the left from time to time and this Campbell must avoid.

There is, across the province but especially outside the lower mainland, a great dislike of the name "Liberal". Even now one hears this in the Interior as nomination meetings for the Unity Party draw fairly large numbers.

I will, I suppose, sound like a broken record on this but I think one of the things Mr Campbell must do, within the first two years of his mandate, is to have the party name changed. As the federal Liberals try to cosy up to Western provinces – and that’s already started – it will look more and more like Liberals getting chummy with Liberals than Ottawa with Victoria.

It is the center that has always held sway in British Columbia. When the Barrett NDP stayed in the middle they were fine. It was their forays into left wing dogma that got them into trouble. (It should be remembered that the NDP got a larger percentage of the vote in 1975, when they lost, than in 1972 when they won.) It was this large center mass that the Bennett’s thrived upon. It was the loss of this support that dealt the Socreds their mortal blow in 1991.

I don’t think Mr Campbell will have a name change as a priority. He hasn’t thus far and he’s been lucky. For it isn’t any love of him or his party that has him 49 points up on the NDP – it’s nausea with the NDP that’s caused that.

If Mr Campbell takes his election win not as an endorsement of him and his party, but a rejection of the NDP and moves to consolidate the center with a party name that doesn’t constantly remind people of the federal party he could be in business for a long, long time.

If he does not, he will learn just how little time it could take to turn those cheers into jeers.