Fuck’s sake. What a misstep.
He’s either a massive idiot or it was deliberate. It’s too obvious a mistake to be a misstep I think. There was even opinion polling…
Eby has seemed burned out for a while. I don’t think he wanted to give the government over to the Conservatives, but a situation where he either wanted a clear majority or wanted out may have been the case.
And a clear majority for absolutely no reason! It’s not like they were doing anything wild and imaginative like public grocery chains.
Hopefully this is the slap in the face the BCNDP need to move left instead of staying centrist.
The slap in the face is around the NDP becoming disconnected from the people so much that they thought their clever little ruse of calling a snap election while the opposition was in disarray was a good idea.
Leftists should consider the top down approach doesn’t work, assuming a party that’s “more left” will automatically win is silly. You need to engage with the people and convince them of policies you want, not try to impose them from above. There is no “silent majority” that wants the same things you do. You aren’t going to scam people into accepting your ideas in the same way the NDP tried to scam their way into an easy election win through shenanigans.
You need to engage with the people and convince them of policies you want, not try to impose them from above. There is no “silent majority” that wants the same things you do. You aren’t going to scam people into accepting your ideas in the same way the NDP tried to scam their way into an easy election win through shenanigans.
That’s a pretty leftist approach. There is a silent majority though - on material issues that cut across party lines - like affordability. But even then the way to get people to recognize that and sign up for your solution is through otganizing at the bottom.
Scam? He called an election. He didn’t cause the unending chaos, infighting and disorganization of the BC Conservatives. They have been doing g all that to themselves for ages. Call it opportunistic, but calling it a scam is pretty ridiculous.
The governing party is entrusted with the power to call an election. There are valid reasons for calling elections such as when a new issue comes up and they need a mandate from the people to enact legislation that wasn’t in their existing mandate. There can be times in a minority government scenario where other parties are deliberately blocking legislation I could see it being necessary. And of course there’s No Confidence, but that triggers an election regardless of what the governing party wants.
The other party being in disarray and the governing party wants to take advantage of that is not an acceptable reason to call a snap election. Elections costs money, and having a healthy debate between different parties is a significant part of a democracy. The NDP tried to take advantage of another party being in between leaders to try to avoid debate and get an easy election win. The NDP chose an easy win over democratic principles and BC voters punished them for it.
If this is what a New Democratic Party is all about, I don’t want this “new democracy”. The NDP disrespected democracy and were rightly punished for it.
leftists should consider the top down approach doesn’t work
Yeah, that’s kind of the defining idea that a left leaning party would adhere to.
He could’ve resigned at any time if that was the case. Guy was just being opportunistic and people don’t like these kinds of shenanigans.
That doesn’t pass the sniff test. His party had 2 more years in power, which is plenty of time to choose a new leader ahead of the next election. If he wanted out, he could have stepped down.
No, I think this was the NDP senior strategists/leadership expectations that the opposition was in such disarray that they could cruise to an easy majority. We’re they not paying attention last election? BCU folded as soon as it was obvious they were unelectable; it wasn’t 4D chess to think the nascent right-wing parties would fold even earlier.
They also handed the BC Cons an excuse for not having an election platform—they were in disarray just trying to respond to their leadership turnover and the unfair election, so just saying “trust us, we’re better” seemed reasonable to voters.
I am so sad for BC. Good luck over there.
Didn’t they literally vote for this? I’m sad BC is so backwards. Conservatism is cancer.
Normally the cities vote NDP/liberal and the rural/small towns would vote conservative. This time, major parts of Vancouver voted conservative. My guess is homelessness was the major issue that turned lots of people, that and people pissed at Eby calling an election early.
and the Cons help with homelessness by doing what? Everywhere else they want to bulldoze the encampments, making people even more homeless.
They want them in treatment or in jail. But they don’t want them in treatment.
There you go, that’s the platform.
As someone living around Edmonton I think what conservatives want is for homeless to kill themselves or magically disappear out of sight without any help at all. They don’t die that quick though so there’s just more homeless than ever downtown, now without help or safe injection sites. A few years back the city shut off public water fountains. It’s been reversed since but it was pretty fucked situation, was handing out water bottles and blankets before winter as part of a volunteer gig with a friend.
Killing the homeless
and people pissed at Eby calling an election early.
Calling an unnecessarily early election seldom goes well for the party who caused the election.
Even worse if they were viewed to be doing it for blatantly opportunistic political reasons.
Yup, don’t disagree. However, like the other poster said, people are voting against their best interest because they’re annoyed they have to go vote. Seems shortsighted if BC ends up privatising healthcare or follows through with anything else they’ve talked about.
Completely stupid reason to vote against your own interests.
Oh yeah I’m SO pissed that I have to spend literally less time voting than I do sitting at a Starbucks drive-thru for a $9 coffee every day.
No you’re not. Your pea brain is delighted to be fooled into thinking you’re some arbiter of political justice.
There is no justifiable reason to vote the conservatives into power. If the only reason is “Eby bad” the congrats, you now understand how MAGA is in power now. No ideas, lots of insults, attacks and criticisms with no firm solution offered.
Idk, if a coffee is more than $2 I about. I would never buy one over $5. That’s insane to me. I can’t fathom it.
I know I’m off topic, but do people really do that? No judgement, it’s your money. I’m just curious.
Lol I don’t but people absolutely do. Starbucks (I would never as its an american company) will run you 8, 9 even 10 dollars for a customized specialty drink, easy.
That blows my tiny little mind. I feel bad if I pay $10 for lunch lol
I wonder if the recent leftist sweep of the municipal election energized conservative voters.
Anecdotally, a few of my regular NDP voting family from Burnaby voted con because “the drugs and homelessness” - though they didn’t elaborate beyond that.
Hahaha like conservatives can fix homelessness
Technically, if there are no homeless people alive, that fixes the problem. Obviously I hope it doesn’t get to that point, but that seems to be the underlying message of the cons whenever they talk about the problem.
Me too
Doerkson will lead B.C.’s first Conservative government in nearly 100 years—while Eby announced he would step down as B.C. NDP leader.
You know you fucked up when you lose to a party that hadn’t had a majority in almost a century.
BCLiberals were a conservative party. Both Rustad and Lorne were former elected members.
Oh man this is terrible. Sorry to everyone in BC. I hope this somehow flips back before too much damage is done there.
Yeah, it won’t. We’re in it for 4 years, come hell or high water.
I wonder how many hours it will be before they lube up and bend over for the USA. The sweet talk will begin in no time.
No! Bad Canada! Cascadia wants to join you, not have you join Cascadia
Is a sad day for Canada, and therefore the word.
Oh great… Just what canada needed, to be even more like the US 🤮 Thanks BC, you shall henceforth be known as bullshit columbia
Just ugh, so disgusting
You know what could’ve avoided this outcome? Not calling a snap election.
New Dumbass Party helped make Bullshit Columbia possible. Blame them, not the entire province.
A snap election was a silly miscalculation. It was the electors who individually made the choice.
Blaming the voters for the failures of a political party is not a winning strategy.
Do voters bear no responsibility for whom they vote for?
Are voters the ones calling a needless snap election and playing sneaky games to secure power for themselves?
Did voters not elect NDP to lead BC in 2024?
Do voters owe their vote to the Left regardless of what they do?
Both have their roles and their corresponding fair shares
The grift and corruption is going to be savage. It took us many years to recover from the Krusty Clark years, now the circus is back in town. It’s going to be a cluster fuck.
Damn, another province I can’t move to
Oh goodness. I felt that they were the one provincial government who put up a fight against environmental destruction.
Quebec was also against pipelines but for their own self interest and they have also had a change in government. I’m not sure where they stand now.
Nope, many would-be supporters (I’m not just talking greens, I’m talking NDP too) said the BCNDP wasn’t good enough, super liberal, destroying the environment because they compromised on a southern pipeline expansion to avoid a northern lng project and somehow fighting against indigenous rights on behalf of the Musqueam in the Cowichan case. So, here we are, welcome to the government of BC’s dreams, principles and conscience.
So you’re blaming the voters who went Green rather than the party that should be reading the room and shifting to where the voters are if they want their votes?
No I’m not. I saw the diagram in this post:
https://mastodon.social/@GarrickWinter/117502400402320684
A first order estimation, take 275k ndp voters that chose not to vote, subtract 23k new green voters that could have moved from ndp (so excluding them from blame), it’s around 250k people that sat it out for the ndp I’m blaming for this the most giving the Conservatives the win.
Green splitting is a reality, particularly on Vancouver island but it’s the same as every FPTP election. It’s not the fact people voted for greens that I blame them for. It’s the promotion of the idea that BCNDP and Conservatives are no different, which helps depress turnout, rather than a yes/and. We’re about to see very clearly what the difference is. I tried to get the vote out but to no avail it seems.
Also shoutout to @Sunshine@piefed.ca you did your part, I can tell you were a Greens supporter but I won’t blame you or be snarky because you recognized the difference and helped try to turn things around despite the BCNDP’s bad snap election decision.
I wish leftists were as consistent at voting as conservatives. It doesn’t seem to matter where you live, the hateful asshole vote is nearly guaranteed but any disagreement will cause their opposition to stay home
100%
The conservatives hadn’t won in 100 years. That’s at least, somewhat consistent
Stop letting people over 50 vote. Boom problem solved. Outdated people with outdated views and outdated opinions have no business picking how the current generation and the next one do things.
Seniors are now more left wing than right wing.
Wow. Legitimately thanks for clarifying, I actually really appreciate it.
I don’t know if I’m missing sarcasm here? Or maybe I know fuck all about the BC conservative party (definitely true).
The last sentence was 100% sarcasm but you can find opinions that effectively say the stuff above that, within this thread and in the BritishColumbia lemmy community here and there over the last months.
There is no peaceful solution to conservatism. Never has been.
Barrels of nitric acid are too peaceful.
Wonder who the premiere will be!
All kinds of crack pots to choose from in that party I suppose. Spin the roulette wheel of conspiracy truther racists and let’s see where it lands.
Out of the pan and into the fire.
The Socialist Enviro-Lesbian Revolution has been cancelled and the celebratory barbeque will serve hot dogs and no, there will be no kosher halal or vegan option. Cooking will be done over propane and musical choices will be Hedley and Three Doors Down.
BC you chose some Alberta level shit. This is bad mmmkay?
The Cons did it yet again. No platform? No problem!
This is a good thing. Voters need to punish political parties when they play games and misuse their power in opportunistic ways. I’m no fan of the Conservative Party, but the NDP deserved to be punished for their shenanigans.
This should create a chilling effect throughout the country on using power in ways to benefit political parties at the expense of democracy. Every party will be worried about pulling an Eby, and it’s good for democracy when political parties are nervous.
Nothing more quintessentially Canadian than voting against someone as opposed to for someone.
No one is going to learn anything from this. No lessons will be retained. The cycle will continue.
No, it isn’t. It’s idiotic. This is the equivalent of being unhappy with the manager you hired for your business and deciding to replace them with a bunch of incompetent, untrustworthy, disorganized, bigoted morons fighting over how to run a lemonade stand out on the curb.
Government is not a business FFS.
Unlike a business, replacing the management is a normal thing in a democracy. Sometimes it’s necessary. Gotta send a message when they get too arrogant and out of touch.
And the NDP just put on full display some really massive incompetence here. Are you really trying to claim that they didn’t completely fuck things up with their clever little election strategy?
Do you not understand what an analogy is? Also, do you not think that replacing management is common in an actual business?
The NDP certainly screwed up badly, but the BC voters screwed up worse.
You really don’t have a good understanding of democracy at all do you?
When the leader of the government screws up, you remove him from power. If the NDP cabinet was on the ball, they could have either convinced Eby not to do this stupid thing, or they could’ve done a cabinet revolt and removed him from power themselves.
Since the NDP failed to do their jobs, the voters had to do what they needed to do to remove him from power.
Democracy isn’t like business. It’s not like Burger King where you get it your way, right away. It’s a process, and it’s mostly about having the capability of removing idiots from power. Over time things get better, but it doesn’t work if you’re 100% loyal to a party not matter how badly they screw up.
The leadership of the NDP was bad, they need to change their party because the level they screwed things up indicates they aren’t fit to run a government competently. You should prioritize having people who are competent, over some ideological bullshit. Most of government is a bureaucracy which is ideologically neutral. Most of it will be the same under any party as long as the party leaders are competent.
There’s a few edge issues that will change, but you can blame that on the NDP for choosing idiots to run the party. But that’s how it goes when you think ideological purity is more important than competence.
Changing the party doesn’t always mean opting for a worse solution and letting the disadvantaged people bear the consequences of your discipline. You can always choose a better option like the Green party, which obviously the electors didn’t.
The guy has cowboy in their name, don’t waste your breath.
The guy has cowboy in their name
Says the delusional commie…
Yes, let’s punish ourselves, to teach people who will do just fine, a lesson.
If you don’t punish parties that step out of line, you risk democracy. If you lose democracy, that’s really punishing yourself.
As it is, there will be another election, in the Conservatives screw some things up in that time another party can be voted in. Maybe that party will be the NDP, if they show the people that they’ve learned their lesson from this.
The Conservatives (or any other party) won’t dare do any shenanigans because they don’t want to risk provoking the ire of the voters. At the end of the day, all political parties suck, so you need to keep them all afraid of the voters to keep them in line.
The lesson is, you don’t fuck with democracy in Canada, not even in the slightest. You try to fuck with democracy, the voters will fuck you up. The NDP just learned this lesson the hard way, but all political parties will remember this.
Yes, we’re teaching them BY VOTING IN THE PARTY THAT WAS LITERALLY RECORDED ACTUALLY FUCKING WITH DEMOCRACY.
Political opportunism isn’t “fucking with democracy”. It’s something people dislike for sure but let’s not conflate that with something like openly discussing bribing people to step down as MLAs.
Honest to god it’s no wonder things are going the way they are.
What you said seems like something that might’ve swayed some votes in 2028, if whoever involved in that was still running for the Conservatives.
But I just checked the calendar, and it’s not 2028. Here in 2026, the NDP called an unnecessary election and their opportunism and misuse of power was overt and obvious to anyone that can read a calendar.
Honest to god it’s no wonder things are going the way they are.
Things are the way they are because too many people have blind loyalty to sleazy politicians that misuse and abuse power. We shouldn’t look the other way when a party does these things. Political parties need to be sent a message, and they all just got a pretty big message from this. The voters are paying more attention to these shenanigans now. No party is more important than democracy.
OK big brain, I’ll bite. Please explain how rewarding the conservatives with power is a punishment for their objectively more sleazy actions? Or are you just going to ignore that part of reality?
I don’t think you’re using the word “objectively” correctly. It’s not a word that’s supposed to be to denote emphasis, but to indicate that something is quantifiable.
Here are things that are actually objective. The NDP was the governing party. The previous election was on October 19, 2024. The latest election was just five days more than two years after that.
This is not the norm. Whatever you’re considering to be objective has to be proven, and it could be debated. But there is no debate that the NDP called an election two years early because they’re opportunistic. You can quantify the cost of an election, prorate it for having an election every two years instead of four, and that’s basically going to come out to what the NDP cost the taxpayer with their shenanigans. Shenanigans that was all about benefiting their party. That’s actually objective. We can measure what the NDP cost the taxpayer in an attempt to secure an easy win and extend their term by two years at the expense of the taxpayer.
Now are you ignoring the objective reality that the stupidity of the NDP is the reason why the Conservatives are in power? Why don’t you ask them why the NDP did what they did to put these sleazy people in power?
Seems to me they’re all sleazy. It’s better to have sleazy politicians that are forced to respect the voters rather than sleazy politicians that don’t. The BC NDP are sleazy politicians showed disrespect for the voters. Maybe set aside the NDP kool aid you’re drinking and you’ll better understand why what they did at the party leadership level was wrong and the only way for the party leadership would change is if they lost the election.
Bottom line is when you have a Premier that’s making stupid decisions (like Eby did) you have to remove that guy from power.
Nothing to say about the conservatives except saying “all of them are sleazy”. Says everything you need to know.
Say it. Say what the conservatives did and why it’s less egregious than calling an early election. Coward. Own up to your allegiances.
More like a silver lining. 😄 Don’t know if it’ll go Canada-wide but it’s definitely going to resonate within the BC NDP.
It will go Canada wide in terms of the leaders of every political party. The next time someone suggests a snap election for opportunistic reasons, someone will say “let’s not pull an Eby!”
There was an election in Saskatchewan (I think? it was a very long time ago) many decades ago under similar circumstances with a similar result. I heard about it in my Poli Sci class in the Maritimes a few decades after it happened. I guess eventually people forgot about that (it was a very long time ago) and covid might’ve had something to do with it. There were a bunch of snap elections which increased the number of seats for the governing party. There was some justification for those through, the governments didn’t really have a mandate to do all the lockdowns they were doing, so calling an election wasn’t totally out of line, even if we know the parties were most likely doing it because of good polling number.
Though when Trudeau did it, there wasn’t any change, which should’ve been a big clue for Eby. Now with Eby taking a massive L, it seems Canadian politics is going back to the norm of parties being punished if they use their power to call elections in opportunistic ways.
Misuse of power for political purposes always seems to benefit conservatives, regardless of who does it
They’re better at it because they have more experience doing it.
I look at the US where the Democrats are now talking like they should start abusing power like Trump is. I think the “both sides” arguments are generally false, but if both sides actually are abusing power, that makes that kind of narrative become true.
There is wisdom to “they go low we go high.” People are now talking like that’s weakness, but really it’s about distinguishing yourself from the other side. If everyone is going low, then what’s the point?
Please stand by for MANY, many more LAMF moments in BC politics!
Fuck you BC!
