BC NDP leader David Eby suffered a grim and sobering victory in Saturday’s election.
He remains premier. He will likely still get to govern—for as long as he can convince the two new Green MLAs to support him, and as long as his own party leadership remains viable, anyway. But the clock on his future, and the future of his government, is already ticking.
The preliminary results indicate a near-tie between the NDP and BC Conservatives at 46 to 45 seats, respectively. The BC Greens, with two seats, are once again holding the balance of power, like in 2017.
On paper, perhaps, that looks like a technical victory for the NDP.
But in many ways, the Oct. 19 election was a loss for the New Democrats. Not just the literal loss of its majority government, or the 11 seats lost or the five cabinet ministers turfed from office. But a larger loss of confidence in the myth of the all-knowing premier and his powerful office of unelected special advisors having the best read on how to solve the complex problems facing the province today.
Despite running with all the advantages of government right up until the writ drop on September 21—in the form of near-infinite money—resources and power, the Eby administration managed to squander the massive majority and record popularity left to it by predecessor John Horgan.
The NDP was brought to its knees by a BC Conservative party it argued was full of racist, homophobic, science-denying whackos, unfit to even run for public office, let alone hold it. Turns out, not everyone sees the world through the lens of moral superiority that New Democrats do.
Eby argued the province was “turning the corner” on the major issues of health care, cost-of-living, crime and addictions. The electorate refused to reward him with another majority to continue that turn. The NDP election campaign, built upon the frame of ‘you have to elect us because the other guys are worse,’ was bowled over by the desire for change.
All eyes are now on how Eby responds.
It would be a mistake for New Democrats to assume the two new BC Greens MLAs, Rob Botterell and Jeremy Valeriote, will partner with them for another four-year Confidence and Supply Agreement (CASA).
Sonia Furstenau remains leader of the Greens, despite being defeated by the NDP for a seat Saturday. She knows full well how the NDP reneged on the 2017 CASA agreement a year early, ripping it up and turning on the Greens in a snap election. And she knows the chances of the NDP pulling that exact same move again in a new deal sit at around 100 per cent.
What’s left, then, is a very narrow window of cooperation between the Greens and NDP on some core issues, such as transit, healthcare and the environment. It might be enough to give Eby a year of power, maybe two, before the province plunges into another election.
How Eby chooses to use that time will be fascinating to watch.
Much of the NDP’s troubles in this election can be traced back the 22 months of centralized, top-down, unilateral decision-making that occurred within Eby’s premier’s office.
A close-knit group of strategists and a handful of unelected, highly paid special advisors, were slow to recognize and respond to the public outrage over decriminalization, the inadequate financial aid offered during the cost-of-living crisis, the overly-aggressive Indigenous reconciliation changes that were poorly introduced, the worsening healthcare closures that could not be explained away, the public fatigue with permissive drug policies, and a variety of other key files.
Over two years, they ran unchecked alongside Eby. They didn’t notice as they drifted further and further out-of-touch with public sentiment. They dug a hole from which the NDP campaign was unable to climb out of.
Can Eby go back to this governing strategy? Are cabinet ministers and MLAs willing to take marching orders from an all-powerful premier’s office that it turns out isn’t quite as brilliant as everyone thought it was? Does the NDP even want Eby as its leader for the next election?
Those are just some of the many unanswered questions facing the NDP in the days ahead.
But we already know the bottom line: David Eby lost this election, even if he won.
Rob Shaw has spent more than 16 years covering B.C. politics, now reporting for CHEK News and writing for Glacier Media. He is the co-author of the national bestselling book A Matter of Confidence, host of the weekly podcast Political Capital, and a regular guest on CBC Radio.
