The political circus will be leaving town

By Lethbridge Herald on March 24, 2022.

Editor:

Sometime over the next couple of weeks, or during the ensuing leadership race, someone is sure to trot out the old line about the UCP being a big tent party.

Not true, of course.

From where I stand, down by the whack-a-mole pitch, the phrase “big tent” can only be used in reference to what Jason Kenney et al cobbled together in a paragraph like: “The big top tent’s caught fire and the clown cars are spinning in circles through a storm of blazing elephant dung.”

The truth of the matter is, the old PCs and the Wild Rosers who dislike and distrust each other with a visceral passion were only brought together by their mutual fear that they were no longer the only show in town and if they didn’t hang together they would, assuredly, hang separately.

So they shook hands and embraced for the cameras and it was business as usual for a while.

Except it wasn’t and, while there’s some fun to be had in watching the equilibrialists shaking the tightrope on one another and the clowns giving the hotfoot to the Ringmaster, it’s really no way to run a circus.

Which brings us to where we are today.

It’ll be a grand spectacle but, in the end, the circus is leaving town.

Ken Sears

Lethbridge