The Written Word
for June 20, 2001

Mark my words, within two years probably less, Gordon Campbell will rue the day the voters gave him 77 out of 79 MLAs.

The numbers are staggering. After you deduct the Cabinet, the Speaker and the Deputy Speaker you have 47 MLAs left over!

Mr Campbell has acknowledged his problem in several ways. First he has expanded his cabinet by about 8 positions. He has put – in an ingenious move – several backbenchers on Treasury Board. He is reviving the Parliamentary Committee and he has, I’m told, set up a number of caucus committees on a number of items. Premier Campbell knows he must keep idle hands from doing the devil’s work.

But he won’t succeed. There are just too many of them. After a year, maybe two maximum, backbenchers will see that for all the serious words that accompanied their appointments, they are really involved in a gigantic make work policy designed to keep their minds off the fact they’re not in cabinet.

A lot of things will happen to that band of 78 ere the term of office is over. Many backbenchers will have personal problems – that’s just a matter of mathematical probabilities. Some will be involved in scandals of some magnitude or another. They will develop cliques as they start to make both friends and enemies in the caucus. Some of them will be elevated to cabinet meaning while those dropped will go onto the backbench very cross indeed and will be perfect as unofficial leaders of back bench stewing and smoldering.

Cabinet ministers and indeed cabinet and the premier himself will make mistakes and this is the perfect breeding atmosphere for disgruntled backbenchers who, to a person, see themselves as eminently better qualified for cabinet than those inside it.

The legislature will become the dullest place in the world. The opposition, which always adds yeast to the mix, will be tiny and muted. Government MLAs will sit through session after session without anything to do … not even a little well placed heckling. Their opinions will mean nothing to the legislature or the media reporting. It will take awhile but the light will go on in the backbencher’s brain. What the hell am I doing here? will be the growing refrain.

Before the next couple of years have passed, Gordon Campbell will ruefully wish that about 20 of his backbenchers were members of the Opposition.