Canadian politics has recently been turned on its head. As Prime Minister of ten years, Justin Trudeau announced his resignation in January, a leadership contest was triggered. Most of the big shots in the Liberal Party did not run, preferring to focus on their ministerial duties in a turbulent global climate. As a result, Mark Carney, the central banker who had steered two different banks through two different crises, emerged victorious in a landslide. Now he must persuade Canadians over a five-week election campaign that he is the man to lead them through one of the more turbulent periods in the country’s history.
Carney’s Potential
The similarities between Carney’s and Gordon Brown’s rise as leader of the Labour Party are striking. Both spent at least a decade with their heads buried in the world of economics. Then, an initially popular leader, now at the end of their rope and a possible electoral liability, resigns after ten years in power. And so enter the former economic supremos without really breaking a sweat, with the following choice: call an early election or let the parliamentary term run its course.
This, however, is where the similarities end. While Brown had a free choice over the timing of the next election, Carney has not been afforded the same luxury. Unlike Brown, he is not an elected official. Delaying an election would leave him vulnerable to attacks on his legitimacy, whereas Brown’s ascension was perfectly organic and gave him room to see out the term. Then there is the parliamentary arithmetic. Brown had the use of a 66-seat majority won under Tony Blair’s leadership in 2005. Conversely, Trudeau has left Carney a minority government that had to fend off two no-confidence votes last year. Carney’s ability to govern, therefore, is heavily restrained. With elections due this year anyway, there is only the illusion of free choice as to the timing.
Carney is also much more of an outsider compared to Brown. In this instance, he can credibly claim to be a candidate of change, with his only formal role in Trudeau’s government being his appointment as chair of a Leader’s Task Force on Economic Growth that was set up last year. Brown, in contrast, ascended to the throne after spending ten years as Chancellor of the Exchequer and could not escape either the positive or negative legacies of the Blair era. This gives Carney a good fighting chance. The cross of causing the cost-of-living crisis is not one that he must bear. By promising to scrap such policies as the consumer carbon tax and the proposed rise in capital gains tax, he can position himself as the candidate with the economic know-how and clean slate needed to fix the country. This would help reassure Canadians that he is committed to tackling the cost of living and it would neuter some of the Conservatives’ most potent attacks.
The Ball’s in Carney’s Corner
Much like Brown, international affairs have offered Carney the chance to project strength in a time of global uncertainty. Brown’s Mansion House speech in 2006 advocated for ‘light touch regulation’ for the City of London. This imprudent attitude allowed banks to hysterically inflate a housing bubble that popped with dramatic consequences in 2008. Hurricane Trump, on the other hand, is different. His bombastic statements about Canada becoming the 51st US state have provoked a strong response from the Liberal government both in the last days of Trudeau and the early days of Carney.
Meanwhile, Carney’s participation in government has allowed him to demonstrate his ability to take concrete steps to stand up for Canada, such as by pronouncing his intentions to remove internal trade barriers. Whereas his principal opponent, Pierre Poilievre, can only say what he would do in such a situation, opening him to the criticism of being ‘Trump-lite.’ It’s also likely that Donald Trump may be the issue that almost single-handedly takes the Liberal Party from near-certain defeat to a potential majority government. Around his inauguration, they lagged at least 20 points behind the Conservatives in the polls. Now they have a slight lead. On the other hand, Brown never had such a resurgence following the 2008 financial crisis, with Labour stubbornly trailing the Conservatives as payment for being partly complicit from the public’s point of view.
So is Carney Canada’s Gordon Brown? On the surface, yes. Like Brown, he is replacing a more charismatic leader who has become damaged goods. And like Brown, he has vast amounts of economic experience. But Carney is not Brown. This is a candidate with a much better chance of winning the election compared to Brown’s odds in 2010. Brown’s problem was that his political profile was already too big for him to present himself as a fresh new face leading a changed party. Carney doesn’t have this obstacle. He can distance himself from the last ten years that saw the Liberal Party slowly lose support and use the current tariff wars to assert his leadership.
The outcome of the election is still very close. But Mark Carney’s unblemished leadership, combined with the threat of Trump, gives the Liberal Party a fighting chance.
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