The federal election-call has enormously complicated the political challenges facing newly-anointed B.C. Liberal Premier Christy Clark.

Her most pressing immediate tasks are to re-unite her strained centre-right coalition, and to get through the pummeling that awaits the government in the June referendum on the Harmonized Sales Tax. Beyond those issues she needs to determine whether an autumn election is politically feasible. Otherwise she must stand for election personally, probably in the by-election for Gordon Campbell’s vacated seat.

All of those tasks are now much, much more difficult.

Federal election and B.C. Liberal Party unity

In a provincial coalition of federal Conservatives and Liberals, nothing can be more divisive than a federal election campaign. This is especially so where the tone and intensity of the combatants are as poisonous as this one. Clark is a well-established federal Liberal, and a supporter of Ignatieff. Her runner-up for leadership (and now her Finance Minister) Kevin Falcon is an ardent Conservative.

It can hardly have helped things when Falcon lauded the Conservative budget tabled shortly before the Harper government’s defeat in the Commons. Hardly the stuff that makes for convivial feelings around the Cabinet table.

Federal election and the HST

The provincial government was already facing a daunting challenge with the pending referendum on scrapping its HST.  A recent poll showed a moderate increase in the numbers likely to vote to keep the tax but public feeling is still heavily lopsided on the “no” side.  Even more deadly for the government, many of those who vote “yes” to keep the tax will only do so because the cost of getting out — of unscrambling the fiscal egg — is so steep. The Liberals landed us so deep in the glue that getting out would make things even worse, the line goes.

Hardly a ringing endorsement of the government’s tax!

But now things have gone from bad to worse.  Any efforts by the provincial government to sway opinion farther onto the “yes” side will be drowned in the maelstrom of federal electioneering. The political airwaves will be saturated by the national campaign. This is a very difficult environment to try to get anyone’s attention long enough to dose them with the nasty-tasting HST message. And to make things even worse, the HST itself will play as a significant federal election issue, especially here in B.C. where the NDP is hammering Liberals and Conservatives alike for voting for the tax in the House of Commons.

Provincial election timing

The federal election will also complicate Clark’s efforts to generate an opportunity to win a general provincial election in September, her potential window between now and next spring, for a variety of reasons.

First, voter fatigue. Who (other than political junkies like me) will want yet another election, not required by law for a long time to come, sandwiched between the May federal vote and the municipal elections in November?

Second, the impact of the federal election on Clark’s big strategic problems: party disunity and the HST. Until it is clear that her caucus and Cabinet are firmly loyal to a leader who was supported in the race by only one obscure backbench MLA, and that the government has weathered the storm of the HST (and of the convulsions required in order to undo the tax, if that’s how the electorate votes) she cannot risk a general election.

The longer the government waits — the closer it gets to the fixed-date vote in May 2013 — the less credible any move to dissolve the legislature before its statutory “best before” date.

All of which spells a very difficult road ahead for the new premier.