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Liberals pumped out an urgent-looking mass fundraising email hours after the throne speech. Uncertain and unstable situation. We could be back in another election any time, went the pitch.

It was a dire warning from new Technology, Innovation and Citizen Services Minister Jas Johal: The NDP are planning to take power with the support of the Green Party, and implement an agenda thats dangerous for jobs, families and communities throughout B.C.

But wait a minute. That dangerous agenda is the one the B.C. Liberals just ransacked and cut-and-pasted into their own throne speech. How can you ask people for help in fighting an ominous threat to jobs, families and communities throughout B.C, when you just borrowed huge gobs of that dangerous agenda and made it your own?

Any other time this would be a fairly significant question. But the Liberals have so many discrepancies and contradictions piling up, this one is just of passing interest.

As the import of Thursdays quick and dirty emergency remake of the Liberal government sinks in, its starting to look like the leadership of the B.C. Liberal Party is as uncertain and unstable as the situation itself.

It was pretty delusional to expect a quick course change would break an MLA or two loose from the deal the NDP and the Greens put together to unseat the Liberals. All 44 of them signed their names to it just 23 days ago.

The idea of someone bolting because Clark has seen the light was improbable. But that seems to have been the premise the speech was based on.

Clark could have bowed to the inevitable and surrendered on a few key things such as campaign finance reform and welfare-rate increases. That would have signalled that lessons were learned and serve as a marker for the new approach theyll be needing in opposition.

But to abandon positions they held for years and shoplift new ones from their opponents, then promise a billion-dollar spending spree on top of it, boxes them into some new corners.

Its increasingly likely the Liberals and NDP will switch government and opposition seats next week. How does Clark plan to critique an NDP throne speech this summer, after shes just finished adopting much of it?

The Liberals standard line of attack on NDP fiscal ineptitude is going to look a little weak, when she just promised to spend every surplus nickel at hand.

It will take some imagination to criticize NDP child-care policies, when she just promised a ludicrous expansion of programs that is likely physically impossible to come anywhere close to fruition.

And further out, how will she differentiate the Liberals, when everybody looks to be in the mushy middle now?

The one enduring characteristic of the party through 16 years in power is that the leader can do literally anything he or she wants. Party members dont spend a lot of time agonizing over policy or doctrine. They contribute time and money to maintaining a formidable political organization, then they entrust it to a leadership to use as they see fit.

Former premier Gordon Campbell made huge swerves on issues such as First Nations rights and climate change without consulting anyone in the party. Members scarcely batted an eye.

Its amusing to turn the tables and picture NDP Leader John Horgan attempting what Clark tried to do this week. The party would have a collective stroke. The purity of the doctrine committee, or some such thing, would be in emergency session and Horgan would be called up on charges before the provincial council.

But a B.C. Liberal leader has command and control of the whole enterprise. All they have to do is keep winning. Clark hasnt lost yet, but the remarkably grim array of faces on the government side during the speech made it clear they expect it to happen soon.

When moving day comes and they have to find new desks on the other side of the aisle, Opposition Leader Christy Clark might have to spend some time doing something Liberal leaders rarely have to do explain herself to her party and reassure members she knows what shes doing.

lleyne@timescolonist.com

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Les Leyne: Liberals boxed in as endgame nears - Times Colonist