NDP should assume that the B.C. Liberal leadership race is underway

Today, Malcolm Parry's gossip column in the Vancouver Sun features a photo of former B.C. finance minister Carole Taylor with her husband, former Vancouver mayor Art Phillips.

The caption questions whether or not Taylor will return to politics.

Until she definitively and publicly declares that she's not interested in becoming the next B.C. Liberal leader, the NDP should assume that she's already running for the job.

Taylor is the only high-profile B.C. Liberal who has condemned the harmonized sales tax, which will jack up the price of many services by seven percent.

Premier Gordon Campbell's decision to introduce the tax with no public consultation has doomed his chance of ever getting reelected. He's a dead duck.

Taylor, a former Vancouver Board of Trade chair, has been appointed to numerous boards. The corporate bosses who fund the party will trust her not to tinker too much with campaign-finance reform, which would diminish their hold over B.C. politics.

From 2005 to 2009, she also didn't get in the way of Campbell's privatization agenda, which included selling off control of B.C. rivers.

And she kept quiet about cost overruns on the Canada Line and the expansion of the Vancouver Convention Centre. That will have further endeared her to the Vancouver Board of Trade.

As a former broadcaster and former CBC chair, Taylor has an unmatched ability to solicit positive media coverage.

Another plus from a political standpoint is her strong support within the Chinese Canadian business community. Her biggest drawback? The right-wing ideologues don't trust her, as demonstrated by her longstanding opposition to a harmonized sales tax.

Looking around the cabinet table, the only serious opponent to Taylor would be Health Services Minister Kevin Falcon.

He has the organizational skills, media savvy, combativeness, and a sufficiently pro-business orientation to attract a great deal of financial support.

Keep in mind that Falcon was the guy who advanced Campbell's deregulation agenda after the 2001 election.

Falcon also organized the Total Recall movement when Campbell was in opposition.

And Falcon has probably been the strongest proponent of public-private partnerships in government.

If Falcon can tap into B.C.'s rising religious right and cobble together some support in B.C.'s ethnic communities, he could easily move to the front of any B.C. Liberal leadership contest.

Surrey, where Falcon lives, is a hothouse of right-wing religious fervour and immigrant voters, so don't think for a moment that this isn't already on his mind.

The rest of the field would be no match for Taylor or Falcon, who has sometimes been derided as a "punk" by Burnaby's colourful mayor, Derek Corrigan.

The minister of aboriginal relations and reconciliation, George Abbott, might have the intellect for the job, but he's too boring to light any fires during a leadership campaign.

The transportation minister, Shirley Bond, is nearly as dull, which rules her out. If she runs, it would only be to throw her support behind the eventual winner and preserve her spot at the cabinet table.

Attorney General Mike de Jong is occasionally mentioned as a possible successor to Campbell, but he probably isn't close enough to the downtown Vancouver business community to get the job.

Environment Minister Barry Penner is too earnest. Education Minister Margaret MacDiarmid is too inexperienced.

Energy, Mines and Petroleum Resources Minister Bill Bennett is too clumsy, as demonstrated by his intemperate e-mails and by a campaign ad that inflamed aboriginal people by implying that they don't pay tax.

The minister of everything, Rich Coleman, is likely serving out his last term in the legislature. If all this was happening in 2005, he and Chilliwack-Sumas MLA John Les would probably be among the front runners.

Peace River South MLA Blair Lekstrom doomed his chances by walking out of the caucus. This probably won't be forgiven for a while by his colleagues.

One dark horse could be Iain Black, the minister of small business, technology and economic development.

If Falcon were to stumble, Black could emerge as a right-of-centre alternative in an anybody-but-Taylor movement. He's a former high-tech executive who lives in Port Moody, which is one of Vancouver's more upper-crust suburbs.

Much is being made of Surrey mayor Dianne Watts's chance of becoming the next B.C. Liberal leader.

Watts probably doesn't even know where the washroom is in the legislature, let alone any of the house rules or the pressing issues in other parts of the province.

If the party chose her, it would be a sign of how desperate the B.C. Liberals have become in the wake of the HST fiasco.

NDP MLAs find themselves in a difficult position because Taylor or Falcon could make mincemeat of their leader, Carole James, in 2013.

But if the Opposition members state the obvious, they'll be branded as disloyal. So they'll probably sit on the sidelines until it's too late to do anything about it.

Those on the left who worry about the prospect of Kevin Falcon becoming premier and further privatizations can take action.

One option would be to buy a membership in the NDP and try to oust James as leader next year.

There are many potential successors in the NDP who could probably compete more effectively against Falcon or Taylor than the current leader.

On the leftish side, they include Mayor Corrigan or his wife Kathy (who is the MLA for Burnaby-Deer Lake), Vancouver-Kingsway MLA Adrian Dix, Vancouver-Mount Pleasant MLA Jenny Kwan, Vancouver-West End MLA Spencer Herbert, Skeena MP Nathan Cullen, and Burnaby-New Westminster MP Peter Julian, among others.

On the right side of the party, Port Coquitlam MLA Mike Farnworth, Cariboo North MLA Bob Simpson, anti-HST rabble rouser Bill Tieleman, former acting NDP leader Joy MacPhail, Juan de Fuca MLA John Horgan, and Vancouver mayor Gregor Robertson would all likely provide the NDP with a better chance against Taylor or Falcon.

If the NDP wanted a really lively campaign, it would install populist Delta North MLA Guy Gentner as the next leader. He's a bit like a left-wing version of Ralph Klein in that he understands how the average person thinks about politics.

Will the NDP take out its leader in time for the 2013 election? Only if someone gets the process underway this year.

Follow Charlie Smith on Twitter at twitter.com/csmithstraight.

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