Europe's leaders must learn from Mark Carney's Canadian election victory how to outplay Donald

Canadians woke up the morning after our election to discover that the country was global news.

- Michael Ignatieff

The election winner, Mark Carney, had imposed retaliatory tariffs and he had been one of the rare western leaders to publicly rebuke the US president. His victory in last Monday's election vaulted our country into the frontline of global resistance to the Trump revolution.

What's happened in the Canadian election is a demonstration of the physics of politics. For every action, there will be an equal and opposite reaction. American nationalism has triggered a volcanic eruption of Canadian nationalism.

Donald Trump made the mistake of turning his nationalist economic policy into a campaign of insult. He told Canadians we were ripping off the US and free riding on its military. We should throw in the towel and become the 51st state. From that moment on, in the Canadian election, there was only one question on the ballot: who was best placed to fight back.

Historian Timothy Garton Ash heralds Carney's win as the rebirth of a liberal international. Former US allies in Europe and around the world can now team up together, under Carney's leadership, to stand up for liberal democracy at home and an open international economy and a rules-based liberal order.

Carney's vision is darker. He understands that the rules-based international order was in ruins long before Trump appeared on the scene, and the nationalist and protectionist turn in the US was already under way in the mercantilist policies of the Biden administration.