The following is an excerpt from a speech Don Braid gave to a service club this week.
Jason Kenney. What an incredible story — from the peak to the pit in three years. How does that happen? Here’s a man who left federal politics to come back to Alberta, win the leadership of one provincial party, merge it with another, form a new party from the merger and win a thundering majority in an election. How does that man get ejected from power by his own party?
It has a lot to do with COVID, a plague perfectly designed to split the United Conservative Party — more than any other government party in Canada. The UCP embraces just about every shade of conservative thought, including the emphasis on personal freedom, which Kenney has always said he champions. Then came the rules and the near-lockdowns he said he would never impose.
To many party members, especially in low-population rural areas, it was a betrayal never to be forgotten or forgiven. But Kenney believed, and so did I, that this feeling would fade along with the pandemic. It did not.
Kenney was also seen by many UCP people as weak on Ottawa, despite his blasts at Trudeau. He saw ground for compromise and progress on some issues and said so. The people who think no dealings with Ottawa are possible or desirable are a force in the party. And they had the vote during the May 18 leadership review.
It all produced the most bitter public split and hostility to a premier that I’ve ever seen, and I’ve written about every single revolt in Alberta against a conservative party leader from Don Getty through Ralph Klein, Ed Stelmach and Alison Redford. Kenney’s people often blasted me for writing too much about his opposition. They said it was a minor element. But it wasn’t — not when nearly 30 riding associations demanded an early leadership review, when so many of his own MLAs (17 in one case) wrote letters disagreeing with him, and when some publicly demanded his resignation.
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