Nick Osmond-Jones is a former BC public servant and current entrepreneur in Victoria, BC.By any standard, the last three years have been a rollercoaster for the BC Conservative Party (BCCP).In February of 2023, the party had a lone MLA, leader John Rustad, who rode a wave of dissatisfaction with both the ruling NDP and the Official Opposition BC United, to the remarkable result of 44 MLAs in the October 2023 election, very close to defeating the NDP.But there was no honeymoon for Rustad. He struggled to manage an ideologically diverse caucus and was dogged by criticism. MLAs exited to the right and formed One BC, which then underwent its own implosion (a remarkable feat for a party with only two MLAs). MLAs also exited to the left, and Rustad was eventually pressured into resigning in December of 2025, and was succeeded by interim leader Trevor Halford. At that point, the party was down from 44 to 39 MLAs.That’s a crazy ride, but for the last three and a half months, things have been especially wild. By the time Kerry-Lynne Findlay was elected, the party was down to 38 MLAs. As of this writing, they are down to just 24 MLAs. The departed include 10 MLAs who have resigned citing concerns over Findlay’s leadership, and 3 MLAs removed by Findlay, including both recent leaders, Rustad and Halford.Findlay won the leadership based on her professed willingness to take strong stances on so-called “culture war” issues: ultra-progressive ideology in schools, sex-rejecting medical procedures for children, and the gospel of decolonization, which has thrown property rights into question, led to an avalanche of place name changes, race-based hiring, and invocations of land and treaty rights being inserted into everything from routine meetings to daily school announcements. The promise of a strong opposition on these issues was especially popular with the terminally online dissident denizens of X..I’m not ashamed to confess that I’m one of those denizens. I enjoy the uncensored, rough-and-tumble exchange of views on X. Far from being tangential issues, I believe the so-called “culture war” is a fight for the heart and soul of our province, and has profound impacts on our everyday lives. Former BCCP leadership candidate Caroline Elliot articulated it well: “Fixing what’s wrong with this province was never going to be a matter of tinkering at the edges of taxation and regulation, as important as those issues are. It requires a root-and-branch removal of an ideology that has been driven into every ministry, school, and institution — an ideology that is affecting our prosperity, our lives, and our future in very real ways.”I voted for Findlay, and looked forward to a leader that would take a clear stand against the ideology at the root of so many of BC's current challenges. But I also hoped for competent political leadership, and a strategic approach to meeting a skeptical BC public where they were at. As her tenure unfolded, it became clear that was lacking.On the PR front, Findlay came to the leadership battling a perception from large swaths of the public that she (and supporters like me) represent an alarming turn to hateful extremism. Left-wing activists and politicians have been very successful in this framing. For example, resistance to decolonization is characterized as hatred of indigenous people. And in a truly impressive deployment of the Motte-and-Bailey maneuver, opposition to sex-rejecting medical procedures has somehow been painted as homophobic. Substantive concerns about issues affecting British Columbians’ lives are widely perceived as an importation of American cultural battles. My hope was that Findlay would work to reach skeptical voters where they are at, explain the issues, articulate practical solutions, and distance herself from genuinely extremist positions.Instead, she seldom sat down for interviews with either traditional or independent media. What we got instead were short pronouncements from podiums and quick media scrums, and stunts like an AI-generated ad depicting Eby as a Soviet-style communist dictator. While this played well with Findlay’s base, it hardly allayed the concerns of middle-ground voters that Findlay represented a turn towards MAGA-style politics..Internally, the trickle of MLA resignations turned into a flood, with some sitting as independents and others coalescing around a new Centre BC party. Findlay was beset by a series of allegations that she and her senior staff had acted inappropriately. The BCCP not only lost MLAs, but they slipped in the polls, and rumours swirled that David Eby’s NDP were poised to take advantage by calling a snap election.Findlay denied any wrongdoing, but her defence was anemic at best. While she made vague aspersions about the motivations of the MLAs who resigned, or claimed lack of knowledge of the potential actions of her staff, the dissident MLAs levelled specific and substantive criticism, including that she failed to meet or consult with her caucus, that they routinely learned of new developments on social media rather than from her office, that Findlay accused an MLA of links to the Chinese Communist Party, and most recently, that Findlay’s staff hired a private investigator to investigate party staff, MLAs, and a journalist. Maybe these allegations were unfounded or trumped up, but if a terminally online, anti-woke political junkie like me didn’t get that message, the public sure didn’t.On X, Findlay’s core supporters were unfazed. The resignations and allegations were framed as a plot by leftists and disgruntled former members of BC United, who refused to accept Findlay’s leadership, and instead set themselves to thwarting the will of the people through a backroom coup. The former MLAs were characterized as traitors, backstabbers, and closet socialists who the party was better off without, and Findlay loyalists seemed confident that after this necessary purge the people of BC would rally behind the strong conservative leader they had been craving. They don’t seem concerned with Findlay’s lack of communication with the public: when Findlay pulled out of a much-anticipated radio interview at the last minute, supporters questioned why she would want to appear on a station that was perceived as left-leaning, or on radio, which they perceive as outdated.Never have the dangers of living in a bubble been more apparent. Like Findlay, many of her supporters seemed blissfully unconcerned with what some might take to be an important role for a party leader: to sell the party to the public. Some of whom lean left. And listen to the radio. And don’t live in a right-wing bubble on X..Nor did Findlay supporters seem concerned about Eby’s rising approval ratings, while public impressions of Findlay remained largely unfavourable, even among BCCP voters. When polling was discussed, it was generally dismissed as a product of biased polling companies, or blamed on left-wing conspiracies beyond Findlay’s control.To be fair, it wouldn’t be surprising if there have been backroom shenanigans and dirty tricks aimed at Findlay. There are even unconfirmed allegations that some MLAs threatened to release a recording of Findlay’s husband unless Findlay resigned. If it’s true, that sounds a lot like extortion. And it might be true that the caucus Findlay inherited wasn’t actually a workable long-term coalition. But when a leader stumbles from PR disaster to PR disaster, with apparently zero PR strategy or effort, it's weak sauce to blame it all on the other side. It's politics. The other side is always out to get you. If people need to be removed from the party, it’s up to the leader to manage that process, and manage how the public perceives it. And this didn’t look like a managed house cleaning; it looked like spontaneous combustion.It all came to a head Sunday, when Ms. Findlay announced on social media that she had resigned as leader, effective immediately. To her credit, she recognized that she had made mistakes, and internal fights over her leadership had overshadowed the fight against the NDP. While she hinted that unnamed people had failed to respect the decisions of party members and had crossed lines with respect to her family, she stated that: “Our party needs a reset. We need to respect our members. We need to respect one another. And we need to respect why this movement exists in the first place.”Perhaps unsurprisingly, her supporters on X aren’t responding with calls for unity or respect, or self-reflection to try to figure out what Findlay and her supporters (including myself) got wrong. Findlay's departure is being blamed on Establishment plotters who couldn’t bear to see the rise of a true voice of the people, and used the extortionary threat of releasing the recording of her husband to squeeze her out. Many supporters are vowing to leave the party, which they feel has betrayed them. Few and far between are the Findlay supporters willing to entertain that her message and leadership style just wasn’t popular, and regardless of what dirty tricks may have been played, her continued leadership was untenable.It’s going to take a big coalition of people who don’t always agree with each other to defeat the NDP, and you don’t build that by playing to your base, firing critics and calling them names, and ignoring the people in the middle. While the party needs a leader who can define clear principles and fight for them, it also needs someone who can persuade, find common ground, and build bridges. It needs a leader who can push back on the extreme woke ideology which crept into our public institutions, while avoiding scaring a skittish public, which has been conditioned to associate any attacks on woke ideology with either bigotry or Trumpism. It’s no easy needle to thread. Findlay wasn’t able to do it, but she has made room for someone who can. Let's see if the party is ready.Nick Osmond-Jones is a former BC public servant and current entrepreneur in Victoria, BC.
