United Conservative Party strategists are said to be in a panic about the possibility the federal New Democratic Party is pondering severing ties with the Alberta NDP.

Astute observers of Canadian politics say Avi Lewis has only been leader of the Parliamentary fourth party since Sunday night and almost everyone in the federal NDP is already sick of Mr. Nenshi, and that includes rank-and-file members in Toronto who didn’t even know there was an Alberta NDP.

The explanation for that is thought to be that while Toronto New Democrats hear about things the Alberta NDP says every now and then, they figure the initials must stand for something else in Alberta because a real New Democrat would never say stuff like that. 

New Democrats being New Democrats, the conventional wisdom appears to be that if the former Calgary mayor who now leads the Alberta NDP had just waited until after Mr. Lewis had finished his victory speech to start complaining, they probably could have forgiven him. Now they’re thinking maybe they’ll have to show the party’s Alberta wing some “tough love.”

In addition, since Mr. Nenshi is already talking about breaking ties with the federal party, and apparently has even been focus grouping party names, federal New Democrats may find it less embarrassing to cut Mr. Nenshi loose first.

Meanwhile, UCP election strategists fear a formal NDP split could mean they’d have to stop blaming Mr. Nenshi for stuff Mr. Lewis said 15 years ago and go back to the drawing board to come up with completely new stuff that Mr. Nenshi didn’t say to blame him for.

The big problem for the UCP, lots of Alberta political observers agree, is that Mr. Nenshi very rarely says anything that doesn’t sound as if a Conservative could have said it five minutes ago, although his jokes are funnier than Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s.

Of course, finding a new name for the Alberta NDP would be a problem since all the good ones have already been nailed down at Elections Alberta by new separatist and far-right fringe parties. 

“If they called it the CCF, their supporters might start making donations to right-wing legal nuisances, and they’re certainly not going to call it the Social Democratic Party of Alberta because that would be false advertising,” said a political scientist who cannot be named because he doesn’t exist. 

This is, after all, your annual AlbertaPolitics.ca April Fool story, and absolutely nothing in it is true except for the bit about the Alberta NDP running party names past a focus group, which Mr. Nenshi let slip to television journalist Sean Amato. Some shit you just can’t make up!