Western Canada: Chaos in Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s UCP caucus means even a leadership-review win could be a hollow victory

Good morning. It’s James Keller in Calgary.

It might be shocking to political watchers anywhere else, but not in Jason Kenney’s Alberta: a cabinet minister’s chief of staff comparing members of the Premier’s own caucus to a band of dancing clowns.

Bryan Rogers, who is on leave from his job as chief of staff to the Infrastructure minister to work as Mr. Kenney’s issues manager while the Premier attempts to win a forthcoming leadership review, made the comparison in a Tweet. He included an animation of dancing clowns as he derided a group of United Conservative Party MLAs who have publicly challenged Mr. Kenney’s leadership.

The Twitter spat is just a small example of the level of chaos, dysfunction and infighting that has overshadowed Mr. Kenney’s government and his hold on the party he helped to create. UCP members are currently voting in a mail-in leadership review that will decide Mr. Kenney’s fate in less than a month.

Nearly a dozen members of the UCP caucus have spoken out against Mr. Kenney, including several who have outright called for him to resign. They include the Deputy Speaker of the legislature, Angela Pitt, and a number of relatively prominent backbenchers. Jason Stephan basically called the Premier a cheater in the legislature earlier this week.

Many of the complaints have focused on COVID-19 public-health measures – specifically from MLAs who believe the province went overboard in imposing restrictions such as mask and vaccine mandates. Mr. Kenney has asked for forgiveness from anyone who believes the government overreached, but has insisted he was making the best decisions among a list of bad options.

Carrie Tait has a story this weekend that looks at the deteriorating situation in Mr. Kenney’s caucus and the layers of problems this presents for Mr. Kenney. No premier wants to be fighting internal battles, much less during a contentious leadership review.

But it also presents a long-term risk in the event that Mr. Kenney wins.

The Premier has set an incredibly low bar of 50 per cent plus 1 to remain leader, far lower than leaders typically interpret as a mandate to remain. If that happens, Mr. Kenney will need to figure out what to do with the dissenters.

Last year, he and his caucus took a hard line when Drew Barnes and Todd Loewen were ejected from caucus after repeatedly criticizing the Premier. Leela Aheer was booted from cabinet. But since then, Mr. Kenney has attempted to shrug off the barrage of public complaints as the number of dissenters grew. It was even healthy, Mr. Kenney argued, to have free debate and allow people to speak their minds.

Mr. Kenney is now signalling that his patience may run out if he’s still leader on May 19. Earlier this week, he told a question-and-answer session on Facebook Live that it may have been a mistake to be “far too tolerant of public expressions of opposition” from within his party.

And the following day, he said a leadership-review victory would be a signal to his caucus colleagues that they needed to be “focused, united and disciplined” and warned that an unending “internal civil war” would be unacceptable.

He’ll also have to deal with a party membership where significant numbers oppose his leadership, and where some – including riding-association executives – have already said they don’t trust the results.

Many in the province think the results of the leadership review are a fait accompli and the Premier’s tenure is finished. There have been signs, however, that the Premier has a fighting chance, particularly if he’s intent on remaining UCP leader with a bare majority.

But there are also many signs that it would be a hollow victory, potentially creating more problems for the Premier and not doing much to solve his current ones.

This is the weekly Western Canada newsletter written by B.C. Editor Wendy Cox and Alberta Bureau Chief James Keller. If you’re reading this on the web, or it was forwarded to you from someone else, you can sign up for it and all Globe newsletters here.