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Robert McGarveyEveryone is looking back on 2015 at this time of year, but it might be more instructive to peer ahead, at Alberta politicians’ New Year’s resolutions – and the juicy headlines sure to follow.

It’s hard to imagine a year more wild than the one Rachel Notley has just experienced. She went from being the newbie leader of Alberta’s perennial doormats to engineering a shocking upset victory over the dynastic Progressive Conservatives to being the first New Democrat premier of Alberta, just as the province’s train of prosperity slipped off the rails.

Notley’s New Year’s resolution would surely be something like, ‘Please let our political honeymoon continue so we can make our changes without hysteria from the press.’ Good luck!

As the new year dawned, NDP tax increases and populist policies started to be implemented. The gloves will soon be coming off. Columnists are already sharpening their pencils and sketching out their tax-and-spend editorial broadsides.

So what might Notley’s world look like at the close of 2016? After months of deepening recession and falling popularity, the NDP government – feeling they have nothing more to lose – might begin to shake things up.

So expect an embattled Notley’s next year-end address to be much more radical than it was as 2015 closed. In days just past, her look ahead was all about consensus and pulling together; in effect, dampening expectations of radical change. But the message for 2017 will be full speed ahead on raising royalties, taxes and minimum wages, affordable housing initiatives and other social support programs.

On the opposition side, Wildrose Leader Brian Jean must be pinching himself. He has also had roller-coaster-like swings in his party’s fortunes to deal with in 2015.

It was about this time last year that former party leader Danielle Smith shocked Albertans and the political establishment by leading eight other Wildrose MLAs across the floor in a kind of love embrace with then new Progressive Conservative Leader Jim Prentice.

Jean and his Wildrosers are, no doubt, still suffering a kind of political whiplash. Their party went from the ash heap of history in late 2014 to official Opposition status following the May 2015 provincial election. The Conservatives, instead, were left in ashes. Prentice is gone, as is Smith.

No doubt, Jean’s New Year’s resolution is ‘Let’s unite the right and keep the NDP from ruining Alberta.’ His rank-and-file members seem to think this is a good idea. They’ve handed Jean a mandate to try to accomplish this before the next provincial election.

But the Progressive Conservative party is not so eager. They remember all too clearly the moment their fortunes turned in the last election. The free fall started with the wedding-like front-page picture of a smiling Prentice and a giddy Smith, as they celebrated the Wildrose floor crossing.

I’m sure the PCs’ New Year’s resolution is full of positive (if somewhat wishful) thinking: ‘If Prime Minister Justin Trudeau can miraculously rebuild the third-place federal Liberal Party in one electoral cycle, let’s get a bright young leader and do the same in Alberta.’

They might be right. Uniting the right seems like an obvious choice for opposition parties, but the reality of Alberta politics has changed. At the moment, more than 65 percent of Albertans identify themselves as progressive, not conservative. And in four years, the electorate will be younger, more ethnically diverse and more progressive than ever.

What kept the PCs in power for so many decades was a big-tent political machine that had a place for fiscal conservatives and social progressives. Likely, one of the significant stories in the next year will be the failure to unite the right and – ultimately – lamentations of its demise.

But there are no guarantees in politics. This will be a difficult year in Alberta and the political sand is shifting rapidly. A break one way or another could open the door to another dynasty from any of the major parties. The game is definitely on in Alberta politics, and it will be intriguing.

Robert McGarvey is an economic historian and former managing director of Merlin Consulting, a London, U.K.-based consulting firm. Robert’s most recent book is Futuromics: A Guide to Thriving in Capitalism’s Third Wave.

Robert is a Troy Media contributor. Why aren’t you?

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