Brock Stephenson is a political commentator from B.C.Just like Christy Clark in 2017, David Eby in 2024 lost the election. Unlike her, maybe he knows it already. He has some difficult choices ahead this week.Just eight short months ago, David Eby could have been on the path to a seventy-to-eighty seat massive majority and a divided opposition of the husk of the BC United/BC Liberal Party and a few Conservatives. With a few stray polls to report and pending hand-recounts in a south island and a pair of Surrey ridings, he sits shy of a majority for the aspiring third term BC NDP government.Eby has sown his own demise. He stepped into the Premier’s chair with an asterisked acclamation as BC NDP leader and quickly made bold, unachievable promises from housing affordability and healthcare to education and public safety. He ran on almost nothing — neither accomplishments or future vision. He didn’t promote his fresh blood Liberal MP or Global/News 1130 news anchor as star candidates. (One of them went down to defeat.) He copied involuntary treatment, carbon tax and resource policies from the centre-right Conservative opposition. He flung a lot of dirt. Almost nothing worked. His campaign promises did not resonate. He lost a lot of ground in Surrey — the municipality that made the current BC NDP government in the first place. His fate sits in the hands of the Green Party!Sonia Furstenau, the fringe activist turned Green leader, is without a seat after the massive blunder of switching from her Cowichan power base to a BC NDP stronghold in the capital city. Her party also dropped her old seat to the BC NDP — a double-win for BC voters. She plans to mentor the new leader — one of two rookie MLAs in Saanich and West Vancouver. If the new leader takes wise counsel, she will play a minor-to-no role in the hostage negotiations over the governing benches. If final ballots and recounts do not move the numbers, the Legislature will begin sitting with a one-seat BC NDP minority with the fringe Greens holding sway over the province’s future. The Greens will be in this position after seeing a decrease of over 40 percent from 2020 vote totals. Dealing with two newcomers in a fringe political party could lead to anything from a shakedown to a cake walk to get their votes to govern. The October 2024 BC NDP with its policies on involuntary treatment and backtracking on the carbon tax is a far way from the John Horgan-led party that negotiated an agreement with the Andrew Weaver-led Greens. The unknown commodity of the two Green MLAs may open the door to John Rustad becoming Premier in 2024 as opposed to at some future date. David Eby will have to tread carefully.Meanwhile, John Rustad, who Kevin Falcon had left for dead, winds up in a near ideal scenario. First, he did not lose so badly that calls for his head did not surface immediately. (Had he won under 40 seats, he’d be getting a very rough ride already.) With good relations with the Greens, he may not have lost at all and could be premier in the coming days. That would leave Rustad with choices of who to reward and how to build a cabinet while also navigating cordial relations with a much less antagonistic Green Party and figuring out how to staff up a government and senior civil service. On that trajectory, he could be a multi-term Premier and leave a lasting legacy or the minority could go sideways and the BC NDP government could return in a matter of month.Most likely, John Rustad could be in the third scenario where he is not Premier and cannot be removed by caucus or membership because an election could be called within the quarter. In this position, Rustad is strongest. He’ll be keeping the BC NDP to account — something that has not been done consistently since they won in 2017. He’ll be building up his party’s base with all but the most jilted BC United/BC Liberal Party supporters coming to accept the inevitable realignment. He’ll be able to raise significant donations, build a party office, and legislative staff. He’ll be controlling how well behaved his caucus will be on a go forward basis instead of reacting to dirt about them from Eby or CKNW. He can focus on solidifying the largest opposition caucus in BC history while trying to find spots in Vancouver, the North Shore, and other Lower Mainland communities where the party may breakthrough and form a stable, majority government. He can recruit a strong team of candidates to run in the non-held ridings and to renew where there may be a retiring incumbent. He can communicate a stronger case for common sense change rather than leaving it to a former BC Liberal Premier and Anthem Properties and Lululemon executives to make the strongest cases for change. John Rustad may just yet execute the biggest political realignment in BC in over seven decades.This election has many losers from Sonia Furstenau to the people of B.C. who wait to see how soon the Lieutenant-Governor gets a visit from whoever’s the Premier asking for an election. The next few weeks will determine if David Eby is among one of the losers or very, very lucky. Brock Stephenson is a political commentator from B.C.
