BC United suspending campaign, merging with BC Conservatives

good evening we begin tonight with an extraordinary day in BC Politics as the BC Liberal Party which governed British Columbia for almost two decades before changing its name to BC United has collapsed just weeks before the provincial election campaign was set to begin there is a lot to cover here so let's bring in Rob Shaw at the BC legislature wow Rob tell us exactly what happened today yeah a big day Stacy we saw the BC United party suspend its provincial election campaign release its candidates and throw its support behind the BC conservatives urging everyone to unite together behind one party to defeat the NDP in the October 19th provincial election United leader Kevin Falcon standing side by side with conservative leader John rustad the two have been bitter enemies for more than a year but today Falcon say he said he will bow out of the race and support rustad comes after months of conservatives surging in the polls United members defecting and donor switching teams a realignment of the center right opposition vote in BC but still stunning as it marks the end of a party that fielded Premier like Gordon Campbell and Christy Clark it wasn't an easy call and I knew it wouldn't be this is hard it's really hard and I accept all the responsibility good and bad all the Opium should rest on my shoulders that's what leadership's all about but I also believe this this is the right thing to do for the province of British Columbia I think Kevin has uh shown himself to uh to really you know put the interests of the province first uh and I can't thank him more for the work that he is doing so Rob for voters looking to pick a candidate to support in this election what does this shakeup mean for them well there's going to be a scramble and a realignment on ballots including the 10 United candidates here on Vancouver Island you have 52 United candidates to combine with 84 conservative candidates in 93 writings in under four weeks to the RIT drop some United members will switch over some won't the parties are agreeing to pick the best of the two teams in a new process that will unfold in the days ahead we will likely see a few veteran United mlas like perhaps Ian Payton and Delta South and Peter milbar and cam loops consider making that leap to the conservatives but in other areas there are names like Shirley Bond and Prince George Mike Bernier in the peace region who might get left behind in the Shuffle or even thrown under the bus if you want to call it that but at the end of the day most ridings in BC will simply have a BC Conservative candidate on the ballot in October with potentially no United option at all for voters in politics uh especially when you're fighting each other this fight would have continued right into the campaign and uh all I will say is this uh that I appreciated John's willingness to recognize that let's agree on one one thing and that is to field the best possible candidates in the next election all right Rob so finally what does this mean for the bcnp it is not great news for the bcnp in the sense that if you take the United and conservative supports and polls at least and you push them together you get more than enough potential support to maybe defeat the NDP uh in the upcoming election the merger prevents the threat of a vote split among center-right voters which could have given the an easy path to a majority uh we're now back to really a two-party choice in most of the province a third if you count the greens in some places and it also dilutes a little bit the np's ability to criticize the conservatives as the party of wackos because this merger will let the conservatives potentially push out some of those people in favor of United candidates and folks with uh known names so just one final thing here today there was more drama we happened to have an emergency Caucus meeting from SBC United mlas who aren't happy with this development a lot of moving Parts behind the scenes Stacy to try to prevent some of this from happening we'll be watching what that means uh in the days ahead as uh another wild day in BC Politics reshapes the election with just a couple of months to go