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BC’s Conservatives Got the Last Laugh

The NDP wanted a bigger mandate. Voters delivered a brutal correction

The worst politicians achieve and retain power through cynical manipulation of voters, exploiting populist impulses, and seizing upon opportunities to deny the electorate the right to make informed decisions. Eventually, they get called out.

British Columbia premier David Eby just received a bitter lesson in the limits to such antidemocratic behaviour. Voters may not always pay enough attention to their politicians, but, when they finally tune in, they show they’re not stupid. When a premier calls a snap election only halfway through a four-year mandate on the thinnest of excuses, even the most lackadaisical of voters can’t help but notice.

The New Democratic Party premier’s gamble has led to interim Conservative leader Lorne Doerkson—a virtual unknown—becoming the next premier of the province with a majority of sixty-four seats to the NDP’s twenty-seven. And Eby is out of a job.

Eby has no one to blame but himself for the NDP’s unmitigated electoral disaster and the Conservatives’ phoenix-like emergence from the ashes. At a time when he should have acted with grace and consideration for the chaos occurring in the opposition ranks, Eby saw instead an opportunity to exploit.

It was an epic miscalculation.

Troubles began almost immediately after the election call when a wide range of British Columbians demanded to know why there needed to be an election now. Eby made the almost laughable claim that he called the election early because of threats posed by trade issues with United States president Donald Trump. “We need to build a firebreak . . . against Trump’s economic attack,” he argued in an early campaign speech. Later in the campaign, he also pointed to troubles getting legislation passed with just a one-seat majority (Eby’s NDP held forty-seven of the legislature’s ninety-three seats at dissolution). It was a constant........

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