Les Leyne: From remarkable breakthrough to humiliating departure for Rustad |
Thirteen months of seething tension and raging arguments within the Conservative Party of B.C. caucus and membership culminated in John Rustad resigning as Opposition Leader on Thursday.
The day previous, a one-person majority of his caucus had urged him to quit because he was “professionally incapacitated,” which sounds like one of the boxes to be ticked under the new involuntary-care regime for distressed people.
He dismissed that with a double-edged response: “I’m not going anywhere.”
The mutineers joined — anonymously — to name Surrey-White Rock MLA Trevor Halford as interim leader, but Rustad rejected that as well.
So “His Majesty’s Loyal Opposition” spent a surreal day with two leaders of two different factions. It looked like the job-sharing arrangement from hell.
But an evening contemplating his only option prompted his reasonably graceful surrender on Thursday.
He went from one of the most remarkable........