The UCP has too many Liberals In its Leadership

The United Conservative Party (UCP) since beating the NDP in the 2019 Alberta provincial election has been in a state of steady decline in terms of its popularity.

Recent polling shows Premier Jason Kenney’s popularity sitting at somewhere around 42 percent, and the UCP and NDP both tied at 38 percent in provincial election polling. 

It seems quite odd to those outside of Alberta that Albertans would roundly reject the NDP in 2019 in favour of the UCP and then begin to resent them soon after their election, but to conservative Albertans it isn’t much of a mystery.

The UCP has been moving back into the ways of the former Progressive Conservative Party (PC) and away from the influence of the old Wildrose Party who had seemed to have won the ideological argument in 2015 when they became the official opposition to the NDP and the PCs fell into a distant third place.

Leadership in the UCP is the main issue. Too many old liberal-lite PC members in charge of policy, and the organization of the party.

A great example of this is Cynthia Moore who is attempting to run for reelection as the Calgary UCP Director. Although she is supposedly a conservative Moore has been quite close to and supportive of federal Liberals like Kent Hehr and Harvie Locke who both ran in Calgary Centre. 

It would be interesting to hear Moore’s take on Liberal Party policy and what she liked so much about Hehr and Locke, or the federal Liberal Party, which caused her to split from the provincial and federal Conservatives to endorse them.

One of the negative aspects of Premier Kenney’s tenure, for conservatives, has been his lacklustre rhetoric towards Trudeau and the federal Liberals. Kenney opposes them, but in such a tepid way it makes him not seem very serious.

It would not be a shock if the more liberal people in leadership positions within the UCP, like Moore, because of friendly relations with many Liberal party MPs and party officials, do not want to be too harsh towards the federal government’s anti-Western policy.

Former PC Premier Allison Redford is currently helping Trudeau try and reach out to the West, of course Trudeau isn’t going to change any of his anti-oil and gas policy but that doesn’t seem to be a big hangup for old PC members.

It is people like Moore within the party who want the UCP to keep pushing more to the centre and like the old PCs. The more liberal members of the UCP leadership want the party to be only mildly fiscally conservative and pro-oil and gas, while moving away from the party’s socially conservative base.

If the UCP wants to recover some of its popularity and not end up splitting votes with the independence parties next election they better move more towards the old Wildrose Party’s policies and goals and ditch the old PC liberals who have taken over the leadership positions of the UCP.