The Purity Test

Over the weekend the BC Conservatives picked the candidate the smart money had written off — and half the commentariat instantly called it a gift to the NDP. We're not convinced. A party that went from a rounding error to Official Opposition in a single election just told us exactly what kind of party it wants to be.

What we got into:

• The recession nobody can feel. Two negative quarters, a textbook technical recession — and the economists shrugged while Pierre Poilievre reached for the megaphone. We get into which number actually moves a voter, and why 0.1% of GDP isn't it.
• A conservative won the Conservative party. Less obvious than it sounds. Kerry-Lynne Findlay ran as the only "true" conservative in the field and made everyone else argue on her turf — a purity test, inside a party stitched together from the refugees of a rival coalition.
• "Half the province is tied to a tree; the other half is trying to chop it down." Andrew's field guide to why nobody wins British Columbia as a conservative — you win as a coalition, or you don't win at all.
• The transfers that didn't transfer. When the third-place candidate dropped off, a sizable chunk of his vote wouldn't land on either finalist. We dig into what that says about a party with a split personality.
• The seat she doesn't have. Can you lead an opposition you can't sit in? The Carney precedent, Andrew's parliamentary traditionalism, and the awkward family math of getting Findlay into the legislature.
• A gift to the NDP, or lazy analysis? Cometh the hour, cometh the woman. Or cometh the disaster. We make the case both ways.

Also discussed: a Postbag full of Alberta alienation, and the conviction out west that Ottawa abandoned them first; Carney quietly losing an MP over climate policy; Howard Anglin's contrarian case for a looser confederation (my Last Order, linked below); and Andrew rediscovering San Francisco after 26 years, with the brewery that justified the detour.

Beating the NDP is the easy part to imagine. The hard part is whether the right can resist its favourite hobby — fighting itself — long enough to get there.

Anglin's piece is linked here, and the Postbag's always open — find us in the YouTube or Spotify comments.