I’m sure some jaws dropped when Ed Byrne announced his resignation. But mine wasn’t one of them. All you had to do was watch Byrne on his one and only appearance in the House of Assembly this session and you could tell that change was coming.
Of the 48 members in the House of Assembly, Byrne was without peer in his command and control of the legislature floor. He was a master parliamentarian in his ability to control debate, advance the government’s agenda, and — perhaps most importantly — in using the rules of procedure to protect Premier Danny Williams from overzealous opposition attacks. As an Opposition Leader, Government House Leader and Minister of Natural Resources, Byrne was at the heart of the action during every legislative session.
And that is why he had to go.
Byrne only sat in the House of Assembly for a little over an hour this session. He watched the banal routine of Statements by Members and Statements by Ministers. For what may have been the first time in his 14-year career, he spent a Question Period entirely on the sidelines. Byrne was still in the front row of the government desks. But he was a backbencher, and a backbencher without a role.
My sense of if then — and Byrne’s comments today reinforced this — was that this inaction only magnified the stress and frustration Byrne was feeling as the biggest name attached to the MHA spending scandal. Politicians can take pressure. They can take defeat. But irrelevancy is something else entirely.
It is a tragic end to what had been a promising and successful political career. By leaving public life, Byrne does not have to face the voters or the media anymore. But he must still deal with the far more serious challenges presented by the Auditor General’s findings and the Royal Newfoundland Constabulary’s subsequent investigation. Byrne’s political career may be into its final weeks. But those investigations are still in their early stages.