Oh, Canada
A question to election candidates: will you defend our nation?
Mark Carney and Donald Trump have one thing in common. One, and that’s it: they are both heads of government. By all accounts, they are at loggerheads on every other point on their agendas.
The former is a former central banker, in both Canada and the UK, whose public remarks in relation to ongoing political matters (notably Scottish independence and Brexit) introduced a new kind of leadership at the Old Lady of Threadneedle Street. The latter weighs in regularly on matters that are not ostensibly political, for us only suddenly to discover that they are. We can therefore count on any matter raised by either of them, be it financial, political or whatever, to be of acute interest to observers as the days and weeks unfold before us.
Donald Trump has had four years of prior experience in the job as the most powerful man on earth; Mark Carney is not even an elected member of parliament. His popularity ratings, however, have turned the prospects of a Conservative victory in Canada’s upcoming general election (which must be held before October) from 99 per cent to less than those of the Liberal party, which Mr Carney now heads up.
These are quite extraordinary goings-on in Ottawa, with Mr Carney already conducting a whistlestop tour of important diplomatic partners: France, the United Kingdom (and tea with the King). Of a trip to Washington, we are yet to hear.
Does this all mean that Canadians are a truly fickle lot? Eh? Rooting for Conservative Pierre Poilievre’s Axe the Tax initiative only a month or so ago, before shelf-life expired Justin Trudeau decided to quit the premier job, a fact that actually boosted his popularity rating, as he railed in public speeches about the threat posed by the United States.
In a way, it does (mean they’re fickle), but it’s an interesting fickleness, which belies something within us all. Whether a man with a heck of a lot of financial track record but no parliamentary record can prove an election winner must be seen. His ecological advocacy at the United Nations makes for interesting reading: whilst even the UK is backtracking on environmental commitments, it would be a sour irony if Carney did the same, even though, like Trudeau who introduced it, the carbon tax targeted by the Conservatives has now been declared shelf-expired as well. And, with that, Carney has effectively denied his opponents any grouse against him: it seems the Conservatives were a one-policy party. And, in a way, the Liberals are as well. The Conservatives rode high on their opposition to one single tax, but are otherwise identified as populist, the kind of party that should feel fraternal proximity to the Republicans in the United States: nationalistic and isolationist. And that now makes Canadians uneasy.
Carney’s removing that fiscal objection, which had propelled the Conservatives to a position of near-certain election victory, has literally burst their balloon, because it goes hand-in-hand with a realisation that should not escape anyone observing these things, be they in Canada or wherever: that the nationalists of any country may do just fine as long as the hands and embraces their brotherhoods exchange reach across an established, recognised, firmly defended border. As soon as that gets threatened, every nationalist knows that the hand extended toward them cannot be trusted farther than it can be thrown. And, so the polls say, what Canadians have seen Trump is capable of in the US has proved shock therapy for their own choice of politician at home: anything but Trudeau turned in a trice into anything but Trump.
In two months, Donald Trump has severed the warm relations his country had with just about anyone in the liberal world. Yes, he retains amicable relations (through his car dealer) with the AfD, a minority German party, and with Reform, a minority British party. With Italy’s sweet Giorgia, and Hungary’s Viktor; and with El Salvador, who for a paltry six million dollars will accept what Trump describes as gangsters, in a deal in defiance of his own judiciary that Trump sees as law and order restored. The rest of the world has now seen his ugliness exposed. The poor in Africa, military allies in Ukraine, trading partners in China, Europe and the rest of North America.
What Canadians now need to bring to fruition is a Liberal victory in the imminent election. That will constitute three loud messages.
First, that Carney is the right man for the job, and would be wherever he was, bringing extraordinary competence to the position as well as sense, and sensibility. (Worth about £1,000 to anyone these days—reflecting on a comment he once made in England about Jane Austen).
Second, that Canada truly is not for sale, that anyone who ever imagined it was has no understanding of the country or its people. Britain may not have come off the victor in 1812, but Mr Carney will have no intention of allowing his bombastic southern neighbour to chance its arm at a repeat. Disarming those ambitions will be his first task.
Third, and perhaps most importantly for those outside Canada and the United States, it shows that nationalists may be keen to rule the roost and issue the orders, but only within secure, non-threatened borders. When the frontier is so much as a subject of banter from someone across the way who doesn’t appear to know what they’re doing, you want someone in charge where you are who does.
Canadians may be disappointed to not yet have had any forthright commitment to their defence from their King (who can’t constitutionally say what he might be thinking in any case), the British prime minister (who’s trying to save Ukraine’s relationship with Trump and sees such questions as a distraction to that), or David Lammy (who, as the UK’s top diplomat is, unsurprisingly, remaining diplomatic about the question). None of them wants to engage in bluster.
But bluster is Trump’s style: he makes a vague threat, backs it up with taunts (at one point calling Trudeau the Governor), and has all other players treading on eggs with him. They have no choice, since they can’t afford to be seen as escalating a potential issue as long as there is something they want to achieve diplomatically. But it does mean Trump might later still revert to his previous reserved position. As the party directly aggressed by Trump’s threats against Canada, Mark Carney is the only one who can directly reject them.
The prime question for any voters, wherever they might be, is increasingly becoming: do you want a leader who can bluster, in whom you don’t believe yourself; or do you want a leader in whom you can believe, and who will defend you if it comes to threats against your sovereignty?
Does global security start to look more reassuring with Volodymyr Zelenskyy on one side of the world, Mark Carney on the other and Sir Keir Starmer in between them? Are these men who look as though they can hold off a Leviathan?