A major hurdle towards uniting the right in Alberta – perhaps the biggest hurdle – was overcome at a downtown Edmonton hotel Thursday with the signing of a merger agreement between Wildrose Leader Brian Jean and Conservative Leader Jason Kenney. The pair hope to form the United Conservative Party before the end of July.

The agreement, which is eight pages long and enumerates no fewer than 14 founding principles, still faces one last hurdle – ratification by a supermajority of Wildrose party members.

Of course, the Progressive Conservative membership must also ratify the agreement before it can go ahead. Each party will hold a separate ratification vote on July 22.

But getting the PCs to go along won’t be as hard as getting Wildrosers to agree.

The PCs threshold for ratification is just 50-per-cent-plus-one of their members. And given that the current membership is dominated by people who signed up to vote for Jason Kenney for leader in March precisely so he could merge with Wildrose, ratification by the Tories would seem a foregone conclusion.

Getting Wildrosers to sign off on the agreement will be a little tougher – but probably only a little.

I still expect Wildrose members to get behind the merger. Hatred for the NDP and the desire to throw the Notley government out of office will exceed all other considerations.

Still, Wildrose buy-in is less of a slam dunk.

Some Wildrosers remain bitter over the way (as they see it) the Tories under former premier Jim Prentice tried to break up their party.

Add to that the reality that Wildrose has a greater number of socially conservative members and I think merger will find more opposition in Jean’s party. The new party offers little encouragement for those opposed to abortion, gay rights and same-sex marriage.

Also, in order for merger to pass in Wildrose, 75 per cent of members in good standing most vote “yes” – not just a simple majority like the Tories.

It’s hard to imagine a full quarter of Wildrose rank-and-file permitting their distaste for the Tories and their commitment to social issues to override the need to rid Alberta of the NDP government. But it’s not impossible.

Perhaps the most encouraging sign at the announcement Thursday was happening at the back of the room, away from the lights, cameras, microphones and notepads.

Tory and Wildrose MLAs were genuinely relaxed and seemingly happy to be one step closer to sharing the same caucus. The first joint caucus meeting would be sometime after the July 22 ratification votes, assuming both parties give their okay.

Even Tories and Wildrosers who had won election in part based on pledges to never get together with the other side – such as Calgary-Greenway Tory Prab Gill — were shaking hands and patting one another on the shoulders.

Of course others are going to try to spin Thursday as a dark day in Alberta politics.

Entirely predictably, NDP Premier Rachel Notley said the new party would only offer “extreme” policies, marked by “massive cuts to service” and “tax breaks for people at the top of the one per cent.”

Yawn! You would think the Leftists themselves would be as tired of uttering these old talking points as voters are of hearing them.

And Alberta Party Leader Greg Clark was on hand at hotel where the announcement took place to predict that as soon as voters figure out the United Conservatives are not the party of Peter Lougheed, they will flock to his centrist party.

Frankly, I expect Albertans to see very quickly that the UCP is a moderate, big-tent party committed to balanced budgets, lower taxes, free enterprise, sensible environmental protection, publicly funded health care, school choice, private property, public safety and the rule of law.