Carney and Starmer

As I write this, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney is announcing his new cabinet. I often find this process distasteful because of the telltale, familiarly smug look on the chosen grits’ faces as they beam for the Ottawa photogs—bourgeois upper middle class carpetbaggers—lawyers, consultants, broadcasters—who ran for the Liberal Party of Canada not to serve their local constituents, but to get into what is fast becoming a kind of Canadian politburo and essentially play model UN in real life.

Ahem.

What is more interesting to me is the political universe Carney is entering, and the living cautionary tale on what to expect from “centrist” governments in the G7 in the Trump Era. As the former Bank of England, the PM is assuming power right as UK PM Keir Starmer and the Labour Party are making a run at becoming the Conservative Party, with predictably poor results.

Attacking immigrants, villifying trans people, embracing austerity, Starmer is the living embodiment of the scratched lib, bleeding fascist. None of this has improved his standing in the polls, a few points behind Farage’s Reform.

Some believe Starmer is trying to poll chase, or worse, curry favour with England’s calvacade of right-wing media orgs. Others believe Starmer is doing these horrible things because he believes they’re the right thing to do.

There are no signs that Carney will follow in his footsteps, but power does funny things to a person. The pressure of a bad-faith right-wing press and dropping approval numbers tends to break centrist brains, and we can only hope Carney make the same mistakes as his UK counterpart. Canadians (and presumably at least three NDP MPs) need to keep the pressure on.