After weeks of heated rhetoric in the United Conservative Party leadership race, the perceived front runner, Danielle Smith, is trying to cool things down by embarking on a charm offensive.

There might be seven people on the track, but UCP leadership hopeful Danielle Smith seems to be the only one with a steering wheel and she's leading everybody in circles with no off ramp.

Who will win the UCP leadership? Who is the front-runner? The two questions might sound like the same thing but they are vastly different, writes Graham Thomson.

Premier Jason Kenney insisted for months hed be satisfied with getting the most simple of majorities of 50 per cent of the vote plus one ballot in the leadership review. But, after receiving a paltry 51.4 per cent of the vote, he decided to step down as leader. It now means that Alberta is set to have its sixth premier in 10 years.

May 18 is supposed to be the day when the fighting over Premier Jason Kenney's leadership stops. That's the day we will know whether Kenney has survived the United Conservative Party's leadership vote.

Alberta politics needs a new dictionary, or maybe a thesaurus a source for words to better describe the provinces political landscape that is beginning to resemble a badly written soap opera.

Brian Jean who wont be sworn in as an MLA until April 5 and thus will be unable to be a thorn in Jason Kenneys UCP caucus for another three weeks. But theyll be battling behind the scenes by proxy if not actually in the streets.