The knives may be out for Jason Kenney but at a news conference this week he donned his Kevlar vest and made it clear he’s not going down without a fight.

Rumours have been circulating for a couple of weeks that the bungling of the Alberta response to Covid would prompt a high profile resignation at the top of the provincial pyramid.

On Tuesday the resignation was announced — Heath Minister Tyler Shandro, who has taken flack from all sides through the pandemic, was shuffled off to the labour and immigration portfolio.

Kenney implied it was a voluntary leave-taking. Skeptics say it was a deflection by the leader to save his own skin.

Certainly Kenney made it clear he is not stepping down, despite the mounting criticism from his own party and beyond.

All camps in the UCP are griping about the premier. Not-enough-action on Covid and too-much-action on Covid camps are both up in arms.

Vaccine fan MLA Leela Aheer, who has already criticized the premier’s leadership, came out very clearly to a columnist this week saying he needs to be gone.

A United Conservative Party vice president penned an editorial in the right wing Western Standard calling for Kenney’s resignation after the imposition of a vaccination passport.

“Having listened to our party’s membership over the last several months, I believe the will of the membership is clear: it is time for Jason Kenney to go,” wrote Joel Mullan, policy vice-president the party.

A Calgary UCP MLA apologized on Facebook last week for not convincing the government to impose restrictions more quickly while remarking on the “lack of leadership at the helm”.

Kenney responded at the news conference with his trademark ambivalence.

He admitted there have been internal tensions about how to respond to Covid.

But he also said he has the confidence of  “the members of my party, of our caucus, of our party board.”

He said an immediate leadership review would be a political sideshow at a time when the government and party needs to be focused on solving the pandemic crisis.

The argument that a life-and-death crisis that he failed to manage should prevent a challenge to his leadership is galling for a chunk of the general population as well as a growing number in his own party.

Despite that, Kenney survived what could have been an Ides of March moment at a Wednesday caucus meeting. There was no confidence vote, MLAs departing the meeting told reporters, adding that the caucus is unified on focusing on the pandemic.

There is no doubt a number of federal Conservatives who would like Kenney to get his comeuppance. The Conservatives still hold the vast majority of Alberta seats federally after this week’s election, but their popular vote took a worrying hit.

Kenney’s record is assumed to have contributed to the slump.

The predicament the UCP is now in has spawned some bizarre developments. According to the Western Standard, country singer George Canyon is considering a bid for presidency of the party on the basis he would call an immediate leadership review.

The party’s state of disarray is further compounded by its inability to raise money. The opposition NDP is outstripping the governing party in terms of both the war chest and the popularity polls.

Already there has been some caucus splintering, with two former members sitting as independents and the increasing leakage of news from internal ranks making it to media headlines.

But the UCP is so much a creature of Kenney’s own devising that it will be difficult to oust him before he is ready to go himself.

He hasn’t been able to save Albertans from the pandemic. Now the question is whether he can save the party he founded from himself.

This entire leadership drama is a bit of a political sideshow as Kenney says. The much bigger issue is the pandemic. Lives are at stake in that much larger story. Twenty-nine Albertans died in one day this week and Wednesday the first Albertan under 20 years of age died of the disease.

A governing party flailing around is the last thing the province needs. It might take the resignation of a controversial leader to put the focus back on the much more important task at hand.