There are some who deny the old adage about history repeating itself. I would say to them stick around until May 2013 and they’ll see one of the best examples of history doing an encore.

Winning three elections in a row has been a remarkable accomplishment for Premier Gordon Campbell and his merry band of not-so-liberal Liberals. A discredited and incompetent NDP government in the late 90’s paved the way for Campbell’s historic hat trick.

But the signs are looming larger every day that a fourth consecutive victory for Campbell and his reconstituted Socreds is fading into the mists. From the Rocky Mountains to Vancouver Island and the American border to Fort St. John, this is one angry province. And angry voters seldom re-elect the government that made them angry. It’s not rocket science. It’s politics. And politics that have been repeated all the way back to Plato.

The anti-HST fervour in Supernatural B.C. has galvanized this province like it has never been galvanized before. Not even in the days of W.A.C. “Wacky” Bennett when he exhorted the masses to keep the “socialist hordes” from storming the gates, has B.C. been in such a political tizzy. It will take more than “Flying Phil” Gaglardi to pull this one out of the fire for Campbell and Phil is not with us anymore. About the closest thing to the volatile mood the province is in now was during the Solidarity Movement in the 1980’s when the B.C. Federation of Labour was talking general strike against the government of Wacky’s son, former Premier Bill Bennett. But the strike fizzled and B.C. was made safe again for goodness, virtue and strawberry socials.

But this time it looks to be different and clearly the government is rattled.

How else do you explain the gong show last week when the solicitor general of the province resigned, unresigned then re-resigned again in less than 24 hours! Even by the zany standards of B.C. politics that set the bar to a new level. The handling of the Kash Heed affair did not show the usual deft touch that has been characteristic of the Campbell regime. Why was a lawyer from a firm that’s donated thousands of dollars to the Liberal cause allowed to be the “impartial” special prosecutor in the case? This is B.C., not Afghanistan.

Then there’s the “Fight HST” campaign – more than 500,000 signatures and counting, including some 56 ridings over – and many of them – way over the 10 per cent threshold including Kootenay East and Columbia River-Revelstoke. This campaign is on fire! And who says irony is dead when much of the credit for this must go to a former B.C. Premier who was once seen as the greatest right-winger in B.C. history.

The only way to describe it is faaaaantastic or bizarre, incredible, incongruous, unbelievable – you name it. Whatever your opinions are about Bill Vander Zalm, you can’t deny that the old charisma is still there and he’s put his finger on an issue that is resonating with British Columbians of every political stripe..

Speaking with the experience of a former premier, Vander Zalm insists the government couldn’t possibly have hatched its HST scheme only three days after the last election while they swore up and down through the campaign they weren’t going to do it. Governments just don’t move that fast, says The Zalm.

Put the politics aside and you have the economic argument with the government saying the HST will lower manufacturing input costs by millions of dollars and this will make the manufacturing sector more competitive, create thousands of new jobs and the savings will be passed on to consumers.

Some of this may well be true, but when was the last time you recall business savings being passed on to you? The anti-HST campaigners see it quite differently labelling the HST as nothing more than a $1.9 billion tax shift from the manufacturing sector to consumers and a tax that most consumers will pay every day of their lives.

Regardless of whether the HST is good or bad for the economy as a whole, the Campbell government has dug itself an awfully deep hole on the issue. Few in the province believe this proposed tax will benefit them and they are deeply sceptical it just fell out of the sky like manna from heaven.

And how do you win an election telling people that you’re taxing them for their own good?