The Liberals back in Canada

In the run up to both the 2016 and 2024 presidential elections in the US, Donald Trump branded himself as the anti-establishment candidate, the man who could do it all and achieve it all. There was a sense of cynicism in his campaign which was hard to miss: the establishment in both parties, Republican and Democratic, had been at the top for so long that he just had to win. When he did win, on both occasions, the second despite several felony charges, it seemed like a vindication of a self-evident trend: the rise of a different breed of politics, of anti-politics if you will, exemplified strongly in the growing influence of a new billionaire class, of which Elon Musk remains the shining example.

- BY UDITHA DEVAPRIYA

Yet if Trump and his officials thought that his rhetoric and actions would empower the right across the Atlantic, and in the rest of the Americas, last week’s elections in Canada proved otherwise. Pierre Poilievre, the Conservative candidate who positioned himself as a sort-of Trumpist candidate in the country, lost to Mark Carney, the former Central Banker who had never been an MP before but had succeeded Justin Trudeau in what many now note as a crucial, strategic leadership change in the Liberal Party. Poilievre got off to an early start, parroting Trump’s divisive rhetoric, trying to claim his place in the sun. Yet by Wednesday's close, he had not just lost his premiership bid, he had lost his seat.

The Canadian elections brought out what had until then been a painfully visible elephant in the room: that Trump had become a liability, not just to progressive politics, but to conservative right-wing politics elsewhere. From the word go, he and his officials made the cardinal mistake of empowering his ideological rivals in Mexico and Canada. His claims, outrageous as they are by the standards of international law, of annexing Canada as the 51st State, his repeated jibes at Justin Trudeau as the Governor rather than Premier of his country, fuelled much nationalist sentiment. That sentiment did not, as the Conservatives in Canada felt, benefit them, but rather cost them popularity, especially when right-wing commentators — enter Gad Saad and Jordan Peterson — aligned themselves more with Trump than with the backlash his statements provoked among Canadians.