The Federal Election and its impact on BC provincial politics

So not only is the NDP leadership race an ultra-marathon that needed to wait for the BC Liberal race to be over, now the race is going to be pushed off of the front pages by a federal election.

I am not sure how the candidates for the NDP leadership are going to deal with this new twist to their campaign.    The Federal NDP is going to need all the resources of the BC NDP to hold onto the seats it currently has in the province.   The policies of the federal NDP are in sync with the BC NDP.   With a leadership race in BC and a federal election, there is going to some danger of a clash of policies.

The BC NDP will also have to contend with the fact they are a serious government in waiting while the federal NDP is an amateurish operation with the leader being a gadfly on the federal scene.

Meanwhile we also have an impending HST referendum.   Nothing can really happen with this until the federal election is over.   This one is a big problem for the BC government because of the nature of the governing coalition in this province.

The federal election will split a lot of people in BC that work together in the BC Liberals.  It also means that the new premier is going to have most of her media honeymoon sucked up in a federal election.   She will also have to deal with her party brand name being sullied by the federal Liberals unless we get Ignatieffmania.

The BC Conservatives will have closed their nominations for leader shortly which means they will have a new leader coming in soon but much of this will be lost in the federal election.   Though they are the only provincial party that could benefit out of being strongly connected to the federal campaign.    It would be a good time for them to get their core people involved on the federal level and recruit new people for the BC Conservatives.

Ultimately for BC, 2011 is an awful year for there to a federal election.