After 16 years of leading our province the B.C. Liberals may have become so accustomed to victory they’ve forgotten how to lose.
As she readies Thursday’s throne speech, Premier Christy Clark seems prepared to say anything – so long as she’s still premier when the speech is over.
She ran a consistent campaign that offered voters a pro-business platform. Clark would keep taxes on a short leash, freeze welfare rates and put a referendum between her government and major transit improvements. The message resonated with a lot of voters but not enough for a majority.
But if the hints about this week’s throne speech are to be believed, there’s been a political deathbed conversion. Now, as our premier prepares to leave claw marks in the limelight, Clark has done a 180 on key policy issues. The Liberals are pledging a ban on corporate and union donations to political parties, and increases to welfare and disability rates – something the party staunchly opposed for the past decade.
Apparently the prospect of losing one’s grip on power has a remarkable ability to focus the mind.
All politicians hedge, revise and compromise as a matter of routine, but any leader who rejects most of what they previously stood for so easily and co-opts another platform following an election should have Caveat Emptor stamped on their forehead. More than likely Clark and the Liberals are moving to the middle – where they clearly lost ground -- in preparation for the inevitable next election.
Governing that blurs the lines with electioneering is already a well-established pattern in B.C., and under the legislature’s razor-thin margins, that doesn’t look like it’s going to end anytime soon.
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