Like this article? rabble is reader-supported journalism. Chip in to keep stories like these coming.

The crowd may have seemed grey and paunchy via the TV feed from Calgary, but there were plenty of fresh young faces lined up behind Jason Kenny yesterday as the 48-year-old former Harper government cabinet minister made it official he's about to attempt a rare double reverse hostile takeover of both the Progressive Conservative and Wildrose parties.

rabble is expanding our Parliamentary Bureau and we need your help! Support us on Patreon today! 

It was a cartoonish proposal to punish provinces that get in the way of oil companies' plans and pipelines that prompted most of the mocking laughter about the agenda for member policies to be considered at the Wildrose Party's imminent annual general meeting.

Chip in to keep stories like these coming.

Say hello to Rob Anderson, newest member of Alberta's political blogging elite.

Rob Anderson?

The very same. The storm toss'd former House Leader and finance critic of the Wildrose Party, one of the few politicians to duplicate Winston Churchill's notorious feat of crossing the floor twice in opposite directions, has announced he has taken up blogging.

Doug Horner, who was clearly the best qualified of the three frontrunners in the 2011 race for the leadership of the Alberta Progressive Conservative Party, pulled the plug on provincial politics yesterday.

Given the shabby treatment Horner has received from Premier Jim Prentice, it's hard to see how a man who was once a 900-pound gorilla in the Legislature and member of the party's once-powerful 4H Club had much choice.

Indeed, although it's not been made explicit by anyone, Horner may well have been given no choice at all by Prentice. Who needs a thoughtful, intelligent potential rival who is known to have made a credible run for your job in the not-so-distant past when you have the unthreatening likes of Danielle Smith to put in your cabinet?