After months, if not years, of speculation around his political ambitions, Mark Carney has officially announced his intention to succeed Justin Trudeau as the next leader of the Liberal Party of Canada. Should he prevail, the former governor of the central banks of England and Canada could become prime minister by early March. He held his campaign launch in his hometown of Edmonton, capital of Alberta, in a gesture meant to impart a message of national unity and pan-Canadian representation on behalf of a Liberal brand that has historically struggled to win seats in the Western prairie provinces.
Alternating between English and passable, rusty French, Carney cast himself as an outsider who could save the party amid cratering popularity and make it competitive once more against Pierre Poilievre’s rising Conservatives. Describing himself as “not the usual suspect when it comes to politics”, he bragged of his record of clashing with pro-Brexit populists in the UK. In an effort to reestablish the Liberals’ centrist pedigree, Carney criticised far-Left ideas, asserting that “we can’t redistribute what we don’t have,” an apparent jab at Trudeau’s fiscal record. He also called on voters to entrust him with the task of standing up to Donald Trump’s tariff threats.
The “outsider” narrative can be read as a counterpoint to Poilievre, who has been in parliament for most of his adult life. It is also a challenge more immediately to Chrystia Freeland, Carney’s only serious rival for the Liberal leadership, who served as a prominent cabinet minister and ally to the unpopular Trudeau for most of the last decade before turning dramatically against him.
However, the Conservatives are not letting the claim go unanswered, with their social media channels seeming to go into overdrive in the past few days, churning out aggressive anti-Carney content. The Tories like to point out that Carney has lately served as an economic adviser to the Trudeau government, pinning the sitting Prime Minister’s carbon tax on him — “Just like Justin” is a new slogan — while noting his status as a perennial member of the transatlantic Davos set. Conservatives have even uncovered footage of Carney speaking to one such audience and referring to himself “as a European”, an embarrassing faux pas that harks back to another cosmopolitan Liberal leader: Michael Ignatieff, who was famously pilloried for “just visiting”.
However, Carney supporters, if not the candidate himself, saw signs of hope in a Daily Show appearance earlier this week in which he displayed neither the celebrity airiness of Trudeau nor the academic dreariness of Ignatieff. Instead, as even those members of the Canadian political class not disposed to praise Carney acknowledged, he came across as affable and charming. While brandishing his credentials as Canada’s monetary policy chief in the 2008 financial crisis, he previewed a line of attack against Poilievre, describing him as one who “worship[s] the market [but] never actually worked in the private sector”. He returned to the theme again in his Edmonton speech yesterday, during which he painted the contest between him and the Conservative leader as one of “experience vs incompetence, plan vs slogan, calm vs chaos”.
But the fact remains that no matter how politically talented or inept Carney ends up being, he has been dealt an incredibly difficult hand by the outgoing Trudeau. Poilievre’s Tories now sit in super-majority territory after leading in the polls for more than 18 months. And while a change of leader will surely help the Liberals recover some of that lost ground, there’s a good chance it will not be enough.
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SubscribeHe is far from an outsider. He is the brain behind Trudeau’s disastrous policies. He is the godfather of a child of Chrystia Freeland, the executor of Trudeau’s policies. What a puppet show! Trudeau’s drama skills are finally peaking!
As to winning Alberta, good luck! An out of touch elite and textbook hypocrite, he was the one who blocked the Energy East pipeline and the Northern Gateway pipeline, while his firms invested billions in foreign energy in UAE, America, India etc., outsourcing Canadian emissions to achieve Canada’s net-zero goals and simultaneously destroying the Canadian economy.
A true globalist and opportunist with three passports, Ignatieff 2.0 is just visiting!
Carney is Trudeau v2.0 – albeit less glamourous. The Liberals are looking at decimation in the next election, which will come despite Trudeau’s desperate machinations to delay it. There’s still a faint home among some that “maybe a new face will make a difference”. I doubt it. And the polls doubt it too.
Carney is a card-carrying member of the WEF/Net Zero club that Trudeau and most of his cabinet belong to which makes him a laughable choice to take over just as the failed DEI, ESG and Net Zero ideologies are disappearing off the corporate radar. Freeland is a fellow traveler (famous for her post-pandemic bon mot “we have to restart the economy but it must be a green economy”) yet the word is Trudeau dumped her to make room for Carney as finance minister. The idea that Carney is selling anything like a “new direction” for the Liberals is a sick joke.
Conservatives pundits are correct when they say Carney went to the Daily Show simply because Stewart didn’t have the background knowledge to challenge his “I’m an outsider” baloney.
Carney also tried to sell the ‘just a regular guy from small town western Canada’ story but a western newspaper pundit knew better.
“For instance, he left out Ottawa and London, where he was governor of the respective national banks. He missed New York City, where he’s both the United Nations special envoy on climate action and finance and chair of the board of the huge international corporation Bloomberg. He also missed his community in Davos, Switzerland, where he and fellow Europeans (he also has U.K. and Irish citizenship) make up the Foundation Board of the World Economic Forum, and Toronto, where he’s chair of the Canadian multi-national Brookfield Asset Management, with its US$900 billion in assets. (my note- he’s since stepped back from Brookfield to run for leader) Carney has also said he sees himself he’s a member of the same social movement as radical climate activist Greta Thunberg.”
For Canada’s sake I’m praying for Pierre Poilievre’s rising Conservatives to win decisively in the next election.
The Liberal Party clearly thinks the problem is Trudeau – not their policies. I am not a Liberal supporter and would be pleased if Carney is their leader. He is very closely aligned with their current policies and general mindset and will have to convince voters he has turned a new leaf. What they really need is a newcomer who has a proven fiscally conservative and practical track record. Christy Clark (former Premier of British Columbia) – who dropped out of the race – would have fit that bill nicely. I think her French was too weak. I would have worried if she were their leader.
All I can say is that, as the theoretically apolitical Governor of the Bank of England, he was a thoroughly disingenuous and highly politically-motivated partisan player in the anti-Brexit camp. I happened to agree with him, but he acted in a manner of which he should still feel ashamed.
He will espouse the same smug progressive pro-immigrant, anti-business, anti-freedom and net zero policies that the uniparty has applied to the ruination of Europe and Canada.
His UN Net Zero investment club is literally falling apart in real time. A bunch of US heavyweights pulled out a few days ago and the Bank of Montreal pulled out today.
Another champaign socialist pushing the green agenda.
Perception is reality and this works very well for Carney. He can say he had nothing to do with Liberal Party over the last decade – something Freeland simply can’t do. He will probably support scrapping the carbon tax, which is very much hated in Canada, even though he was likely the architect of that very policy. Carney is very intelligent in the very worst way. He is an unwavering convert to the cult of climate change hysteria and has relentlessly pushed net zero behind the scenes. He believes in all the progressive ideas so in vogue with the technocratic intelligentsia today, like ESG and DEI. Carney will be an unmitigated disaster for Canada, but he’s infinitely smarter and more presentable than Trudeau, and that makes him very dangerous.
The Liberals are very good at spin however the Conservatives are going to have a field day with all the video of him endorsing the policies that are driving Canadians insane. Look for another 10 minute video called “Who is Mark Carney” or some such. One was circulating today where he says ‘as a European…..”. Shades of Ignatieff.
He is being nicknamed Justin Carney, also Carbon tax Carney.
Why would anyone want to save Canada’s liberal establishment? In 40 years Canada has gone from ~90% of the US per capita GDP in 1980, to 80% in 2010, to 60% today, while their average home price is double the US.
The liberal establishment and their war on natural resource extraction have devastated Canada economically.
So this guy’s never held any political office and never been elected to anything. But seems to think he can just rock up and become leader of a political party and even Prime Minister without any of this experience. Who does he think he is ? Donald Trump ?
Canadians would be insane to elect this man – or tolerate his presence in any public office. Take it from a Brit who has already experienced the consequences of his galloping dishonesty, incompetence and political naivety.
Looking at this man, you realize from his face and eyes, that he is dead and hollow.
The liberals are definitely not trading up.
Poillievre’s Conservatives are bound to rightly crow: He’s an outsider alright! A citizen of Europe, not Canada.
Trudeau’s dirt has hung on the Canadian scene for so long that it’s now covered his entire party, and anyone who looks or sounds like him. Carney is likely to serve as the Liberals’ sacrificial goat at the next election, much as Michael Ignatieff did 16 years ago, and as Kim Campbell did for the Tories back in the ?90’s. Canadians despise an unlelected incumbent. At least let’s hope that’s still true.
Does Carney not realise he is the symbol par excellence of an ideology and class that are now almost universally loathed – along with their annual festival of greed and narcissism that we will be forced to watch yet again next week.
I do hope Carney is not elected leader of the Liberals. He is the only member of that carnival of fools with an outside chance of beating Poilievre.
I have a good Canadian friend who is a retired GP. A few years ago, while Carney was still Governor of the Bank of England, he told me that Carney was disliked in his native Canada, and that Canadians were glad to see the back of him when he was appointed to the BoE by the Labour socialist Prime Minister, Gordon ‘Grim’ Brown.
Carney occupies a place at the apex of the Woking Class elite. He was bad news as Governor or the BoE – very political – pushed Net Zero, did everything he could to discredit and destroy the Brexit initiative, Climate Change fanatic, into the whole notion of transferring wealth from the developed nations to the developing world, socialist in outlook, DEI enthusiast, etc. I hope we never again see his like running our national bank. He did us no favours.
I hope he does not grab power in Canada as he will be bad news for you too!
As a Canadian, I can say that you are right on about Carney being disliked in Canada. A lot of Canadians felt sorry for Brits when he became the governor of BoE. However, Canada is as polarized as the rest of the western countries, and many diehard Liberals are cheering on Carney’s campaign. I hope that the wind of change is coming to Canada and the Liberal Party gets wiped out in the next election.
I will be praying for you, Joanne, and your Canadian compatriots!