Mark Carney shows how to do centrist patriotism

Times

4 days ago

The odds were always against the new centre-left PM running a popular government. He might have had a big election win, but could a technocrat ever hope to prosper in an age of populist anger over borders and national identity? He'd never been tested, after all, in a front-of-house leadership role.
Yet somehow, he's made a successful start. Polls show the PM is by some distance the most popular politician in the country. Voters approve of his shift to the centre, most recently seen in a decision to end government funding for hotel rooms for asylum seekers.
Overall then, Mark Carney can be quietly satisfied with his first months in office as Canada's premier. He might also be able to give Keir Starmer a few tips.
On a recent trip to Ontario, I was reminded of how much Carney and Starmer have in common — and how differently they have approached their late-life moves into electoral politics. After a postgraduate degree at Oxford, Starmer became a successful KC before running the Crown Prosecution Service; he became an MP at 52 and PM at 62. After a postgraduate degree at Oxford, Carney became a Goldman Sachs banker before running the central banks of Canada and the UK; he started his first job in politics — prime minister — two days before he turned 60.
Both men are essentially technocrats; sensible managers who see politics as being about improving systems and processes rather than arousing passions or channelling emotions. Some of the populist backlash against establishment politics can be blamed on such clever political types who know better than the great unwashed what is in their nation's best interest. I say this as someone who used to run a Westminster think tank dreaming up clever ideas for centrist politicians.
Immigration is the best illustration of this, and also where Carney's approach has been so interesting. For years, the technocrat consensus held that liberal immigration policies were in rich nations' best interests, lubricating labour markets and raising productivity. Opposition to this was something to ignore or manage — because the people complaining did so out of social prejudice or economic ignorance.
Canada, with vast territory and a long history of liberalism on migration, would appear to be an unlikely place to embrace the politics of border control. And Carney, who has a PhD in economics, is an unlikely champion of such politics. Yet there is growing public unease about rapid population growth and the number of asylum seekers — Canada has roughly twice as many claimants per capita as Britain. Much as British public concern about migration has been rising again, a majority of Canadians now believe immigration levels are too high.
Carney has responded decisively, and not just by ending federal funding for asylum hotels. His Strong Borders Act would give the government significant new powers to stop people entering or remaining in the country, most notably by denying refugee hearings to asylum seekers who have been in Canada for more than a year. This has outraged liberal activists but won him support elsewhere. The right-leaning Globe and Mail recently praised Carney for ditching the liberalism of his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, a leader so unpopular that bumper stickers insulting him can still be seen even in metropolitan Toronto.
Other Carney policies appealing to Canadian conservatives include personal income tax cuts, higher defence spending and promises to sack underperforming top bureaucrats.
All this comes wrapped in red and white. Canada in 2025 is a country of new flagpoles. The Maple Leaf flag is everywhere. Any business that can do so advertises itself as Canadian-owned, distinct from US competitors. Donald Trump has transformed Canadian politics with his alarming talk of making Canada the 51st state. That's allowed Carney to surf a wave of polite Canadian nationalism, but we shouldn't underestimate the agility that requires; as the polls show, Carney's response to growing public focus on the nation-state, national boundaries and the national interest has been more deft than Starmer's.
International comparisons are easy to overstate and there are obvious and big differences between what faces Carney and Starmer. Carney is lucky that the populist challenger he faces is a foreign one. Starmer's populist adversary is very much a domestic one, Nigel Farage in his Union Jack socks. Such symbols are easy to dismiss, especially for the British left. There is still truth in George Orwell's observation that 'in left-wing circles it is always felt that there is something slightly disgraceful in being an Englishman'.
If Carney is winning, it is because he has unashamedly wrapped himself in the flag. The Canadian writer Stephen Maher marvels at the way a globe-trotting banker has repackaged himself as 'Captain Canada'. To play that role convincingly, he had to understand that nations and their trappings still matter in a globalised world. Here, Carney was ahead of the centrist pack, writing in a 2021 memoir-cum-manifesto about liberal politics' need to embrace national identity, hailing patriotism as a force for good and calling for societies to retain 'common values'.
Starmer has advisers who understand the power of patriotism well, but none has ever persuaded him to embrace it fully. If the PM finds himself looking across the Atlantic with envy at Mark Carney's surprising success, he should reflect that it is not just possible for sensible centrists to wrap themselves in the flag, but necessary too.