The timing of Brad Wall’s retirement is strange. Wall is only a year into his most recent term, and while the party had delivered a bad news budget he was still reasonably popular. There should not be any real rush to retire, even if it was always in the plans before that term is up. There’s still plenty of time to select a new leader, and it would be to the party’s advantage to put that off for a year at least.
Strategically, it makes sense to wait until after the NDP is done selecting their leader before the Saskatchewan Party starts even suggesting they want a new one too. That way, they know who they’re up against, and are better positioned to have someone who can make a positive impression against their new opposition. It also throws a wrench into the opposition’s campaigning, since they’re going to be focused on Wall as much as they are the party as a whole. It would force them to re-adjust.
Whether or not it’s going to be a good term, it’s also better strategy to hold on for a bit. If it’s going to be bad, and this year’s budget wasn’t exactly popular, it makes sense for the current premier to take the hit. He’s not going to be in public life anymore, so he can take the blows to his reputation and set up his successor as the new blood the party needs to go forward. If the next three years are going to be great, the campaign can focus on the party’s legacy rather than the person in charge, and the new person can use Wall’s continued popularity to their advantage.
If the next three years are going to be marked by tough budgets and unpopular decisions, you’re setting up your successor for failure, they’re going to be the person most associated with any bad news that comes from the government, instead of selecting the next leader you’re selecting a scapegoat. If the remains of the term is good, they’re going to be fine, but they would be fine either way in that case.
The only strategic advantage to the retirement is that it actually gets the more ambitious members of the government to start making their way to the top. One of Wall’s strengths as leader of the Saskatchewan Party has been his ability to unite the people in his government, and that means that there’s not a feeling that there’s someone in the wings waiting on him to fall. Great, if you’re running a province, which they have been doing, but not great if you need to find a political successor. An early retirement notice might just be a way to get a feel for who would even want to be a successor. The opposition NDP has never had this problem – Trent Wotherspoon, for example, has been waiting in the wings for a long time. The Saskatchewan Party, meanwhile, has been largely unified under Wall, making it difficult to tell who would even want to be their next leader. A retirement announcement tells the rest of the party that gunning for the top job is now okay.
Maybe politics shouldn’t all be about strategy, and when a leader leaves we shouldn’t question the timing quite so much – people retire for lots of reasons, after all. But given that strategy is an integral part of politics, one immediately questions the strategic reasons for leaving so soon.
