Nova Scotia's Premier Is Stepping Down & Now He Can 'Stay The Blazes Home'

This Atlantic province will have a new leader soon. The Nova Scotia premier is stepping down and leaving public office. Now he can finally "stay the blazes home" as one of his fellow politicians pointed out.

Stephen McNeil announced on August 6 that he would be stepping away from public office, just a day after he celebrated his 17th year as an elected official.

He's been Nova Scotia's premier for seven years now.

McNeil spoke about his departure during a press conference and also posted about it on social media.

In a Facebook post, he said that he will stay on and govern until the next leader can be chosen.

He gave a shout out to all the elected officials he works with.

"We've made some tough decisions and we stuck together because we believed we were doing the right thing for the future of this province," McNeil said.

He also thanked the people of Nova Scotia for letting him be their premier.

"We are better together and being kind matters," he said.

The Liberal Party of Nova Scotia already knows about the stepping down so that a leadership campaign can be planned to figure out who the next leader will be.

McNeil thinks that could take months.

After he announced his departure from public office, fellow politician Elizabeth May reached out to McNeil on Twitter.

In a tweet, she thanked him for his service and quipped about them not always agreeing.

"Now, you have earned the ability to stay the blazes home," May said.

Back in April, McNeil was talking about the importance of physical distancing and why it needs to be done when the hilarious phrase came about.

"We don't need online graphs to tell us what we need to do," he said. "We need to stay the blazes home."

People then started sharing the phrase on Twitter, hashtagging it and giving it the meme treatment.

After McNeil said the phrase, someone actually made a "stay the blazes home" t-shirt and sent one to the premier.