Move over Champagne Socialists, here come the Lucky Lager Conservatives. The British Columbia election itself was an astonishing act of political self-immolation for the @BCNDPCaucus. Premier Eby’s defeat reflected frustrations that went well beyond industrial policy, but rodeo cowboy turned Premier-elect @LDoerkson's victory speech revealed something more enduring than an election campaign's immediate grievances: a changing conception of which party speaks for the people who produce British Columbia’s wealth. “It happens in Kitimat, where B.C. natural gas leaves to power the world. It happens in Fort St. John, where the gas comes out of the ground. In Prince George, Quesnel, and Williams Lake, where a mill job should still pay a family nicely.” He continued his tour through the orchards of the Okanagan, the fishing fleets of Vancouver Island and the century-old smelter in Trail, before arriving in Surrey and, finally, Vancouver, “where the ideas and the head offices are.” The ordering was evocative. Vancouver, the province’s financial and cultural capital, came last. This political geography had an almost Hunger Games quality, with the prosperous metropolitan Capitol resting on the productive capacity of the surrounding districts. Yet Doerkson’s account went beyond the familiar populist denunciation of urban elites. He described an integrated industrial economy in which a mill running in Quesnel supports a trucker working in Surrey, while a mine opening in the north keeps a port busy in Delta. It was a celebration of productive labour that might once have been delivered by a socialist trade-union leader. Instead, it came from the newly victorious leader of British Columbia’s Conservative Party. So how have populist conservatives become the voice of industrial labour? Part of the answer lies in the changing nature of the threats facing industrial employment. When environmental restrictions threaten an industry’s continued operation, employers and employees can find themselves on the same side of the barricades. A logging company and its workers may disagree over profit sharing, but they share a powerful interest in keeping the mill running. The merchant right need not promise workers a larger share of the pie when it can present itself as the defender of the bakery. Read the full essay on my s\/bst@ck. link in replies.