How truly the United Conservative Party lives up to its name is an open question..The Western Standard approached three pundits for their perspectives and found opinions vary..The Wildrose and Progressive Conservatives came together in 2017 to form a United Conservative Party to get the Rachel Notley NDP out of power. Duane Bratt, political science professor at Mount Royal University in Calgary, says that electoral objective remains the glue that keeps the pieces from falling apart..“The thing that united the UCP was to get back into power and to defeat the NDP. They did that in 2019, and soon after is when the infighting started. COVID was obviously the biggest spark, but there were other issues at play, as well. As we start to get closer to an election, they're unified again. So I wonder just how united the UCP is, win or lose,” Bratt said in an interview..“I'm not convinced that they're an entirely cohesive group. They are right now because as the analogy I like to use is, they're our sports team and the trade deadline has passed. This is the team they're stuck with and they have a common enemy. But if they vanquish that common enemy, then what?”.Geoffrey Hale, professor emeritus at the University of Lethbridge, said the approach of UCP leadership left some in the party feeling left out..“My sources inside the Alberta government indicated that there was an enormous amount of dissatisfaction because of the perception of the closed circuit circle around the leader during much of the pandemic,” Hale said..The handling of Jason Kenney’s leadership review did the party few favours either..“The party executive started playing games about the location and the methodology of the leadership review vote, because it wasn't just the people who were robbed because of the pandemic whose noses came out of joint, but many of the people who make the riding association run felt they were being disrespected, irrespective of where they fit within the ideological spectrum in the province.”.Kenney received just 51% support in the review, prompting his resignation. Smith won on the sixth ballot with 53% support. Despite the thin margin of victory, Hale believes Smith recognized the need to unite her party and has risen to the challenge..“That message got through to Premier Smith during the leadership campaign, and she has been very good about reaching out and connecting with the people who are not on her side during the leadership campaign, as well as trying to create room quite naturally for those who helped get her elected,” Hale said..“That was a critical issue from the standpoint of internal party cohesion that Ms. Smith had to deal with and I think she has been focused very, very carefully on that both in her public statements and in her work inside the caucus.”.Marco Navarro-Genie, founder and president of the Haultain Research Institute, said internal rivalries and disagreements are part of politics..“The reality is no party is ever truly united. There are always factions inside parties. And the level to which we see them united depends on the level of care to manage those differences in smoothing them that the leader and his entourage do,” Navarro-Genie said..“I don't know that Danielle has personally the acumen to manage them, but she doesn't have to if she gets good enough advice and capable enough people to help her do it.”.Navarro-Genie believes electoral victory and attentive leadership can keep the UCP united..“Power has a way of controlling dissent. And the premiers on their face tend to be powerful individuals, regardless of personalities. And so I don't think that we're going to see a resurgence of the squabbles, necessarily, if Danielle manages the differences in caucus well enough.”.Bratt believes the UCP would boot Smith if the NDP wins the election, and nothing but a resounding UCP victory could silence internal squabbles..“This is a party that threw out Jason Kenney that won a massive majority in 2019. What if Smith wins, but wins with 48 seats, so loses 15 seats from the previous time? Do those old cleavages start to roll in? And quite frankly, if she loses, they're gonna dump her as well,” Bratt said..“This has always been a fragile party. There are so many divisions and cleavages within the conservative movement, social conservative versus fiscal conservative, urban versus rural, moderate versus more conservative. And the glue that unified them was, we need to be united to beat the NDP. And what happens when you do that, then those old divisions start to emerge again.”
