Latest news with #CanadianConservatives
Spectator
3 days ago
- Politics
- Spectator
What is Robert Jenrick up to?
It has been another good week for Robert Jenrick. At a time when many of the shadow cabinet are struggling to make an impact, his video on fare-dodging in London has certainly caused a stir. The 58-second clip – in which Jenrick, like some Tory Batman, accosts Tube passengers walking through barriers – has now been viewed nearly 15 million times. It prompted a Newsnight discussion, acres of coverage and begrudging private praise from opposition politicians too. Such videos are not some mere fluke but rather, the product of much time and effort by Jenrick and his aides. He has learned from masters of the craft like Pierre Poilievre, the leader of the Canadian Conservatives. Polievre believed in trial-and-error, going from homespun YouTube clips in 2020 to producing slick mini-documentaries by 2023. Similarly, Jenrick has built a team sophisticated in identifying zeitgeist issues, crafting snappy narratives and packaging them online in a way designed to go viral on X, TikTok and Facebook.
Scotsman
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Scotsman
How Canada is showing why UK must stand up to bully-boy Trump
Sign up to our daily newsletter – Regular news stories and round-ups from around Scotland direct to your inbox Sign up Thank you for signing up! Did you know with a Digital Subscription to The Scotsman, you can get unlimited access to the website including our premium content, as well as benefiting from fewer ads, loyalty rewards and much more. Learn More Sorry, there seem to be some issues. Please try again later. Submitting... Last week I wrote that the only way to beat bullies is to stand up to them. This week the universe saw fit to prove the point, as the Liberals stormed to victory in the Canadian elections on a strong platform against Donald Trump's threats to their sovereignty. I am delighted for the Liberal Democrats' sister party on a personal level, but in truth all of us should be able to welcome this turnaround victory – and what it says about the resilience of our liberal democracy when we are willing to fight for it. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad There are deep and longstanding links between Scotland and Canada – family ties, historic friendship and a shared legacy of institutions and values. What happens to our Canadian cousins matters to us – and should be a model for how we respond to populism and aggressive authoritarianism. It would be a mistake to chalk up the Liberal revival in Canada to Trump's malign influence alone, but it would be hard to ignore his role either. At the start of the year, Pierre Poilievre's Conservatives were polling 20 points ahead – now Poilievre himself has lost his seat. Canada's Prime Minister Mark Carney won the recent election after promising to stand up to Donald Trump (Picture: Rich Lam) | Getty Images Amoral politics It is not hard to see why. The Canadian Conservatives (much like our own Tories, to say nothing of the toadying Nigel Farage) were all-too happy to tie themselves to Trump. That Trump has no political principles save his own self-interest of course did not factor into the equation – they saw his amoral politics as the ticket to success. The Canadian Conservatives' seemingly inevitable victory, however, was derailed by Trump's threats to annex Canada as the '51st state'. The Conservatives saw Trump as a role model for Canada, but he saw them as his next victim. The trouble with bullies, funnily enough, is that they have to have someone to bully. Trump's schtick really only works for Trump. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad By contrast, Mark Carney's Liberals have shown exactly how we can respond to the likes of Trump, Poilievre and Farage – with cool heads over populist rhetoric, with ideals instead of identity, and with confident patriotism rather than nationalism. Might isn't right That is the lesson that we should reflect upon as we look at our own politics today. Farage clearly sees Trump as a model and the Tories clearly see Farage as one for them (for all the good that is doing them). Labour and indeed the SNP are too afraid of Trump to squeak a word. That leaves Liberals to make the case for the opposition. After all, standing up to bullies like Trump matters on a practical level – it brings better results – but it also matters as a matter of principle. 'Might is right' – the mantra of the bully – is an ideology most of us thought we had left behind in the last century. Wars of conquest and open coercion of smaller states were supposed to be a thing of the past – but those darker times can return if we allow them to. Advertisement Hide Ad Advertisement Hide Ad This week has shown that we can take a better path. No one would ever accuse Canadians of being a belligerent people – but if they can stand up for their freedoms and against Trumpian bullies, so can we.
Gulf Today
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Gulf Today
Canada votes Liberal in response to Trump's threats
The Canadian parliamentary election on Sunday witnessed the return of Liberals to power in the face of the threat posed by United States President Donald Trump, who has been trumpeting his intention and desire to make Canada the 51st state of the United States. It would be difficult to label President Trump as a conservative because he does not display the restraint and realism that one associates with conservatism. He is on an adventurous spree, a dangerous kind of political adventure. Till a few months ago, the Liberals were set to lose the election because they had been in power for 15 years, and former Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau turned out to be a wimpy liberal unable to resist the pressures of rising divisive politics at home. And the economy was in a tail-spin of sorts. Trudeau depended on Mark Carney, who served as the Governor of the Canadian central bank. He was earlier the Governor of the Bank of England. (It is to be noted that Canada is part of the British Commonwealth, and the British Crown appoints the Governor General of Canada.) When Trudeau had decided to step down as leader of the Liberal Party, Carney was his preferred choice. It turns out that Carney has been the right choice. It is rarely the case that liberals can beat conservatives, either at home or abroad in the face of assertive and intrusive nationalism of the Trump kind. The Canadian Conservatives were in a better position to beat back the Trump threat. And the Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre struck the Trump note in his campaign when he raised the slogan of 'Canada First' to counter Trump's Make America Great Again (MAGA). But the Canadians who were put off by the uncouth populism of Trump had decided to vote for a tough liberal like Carney. The Canadians were not happy with a weak liberal like Trudeau, and it seemed that a weak liberal meant weak liberalism. But Carney's tough position on politics and free trade showed that people are looking for the right kind of liberal, and they were in no hurry to jettison liberalism per se. Carney's strong post-election victory statement was predictably triumphant when he reasserted the liberal credo. He said, 'Canada is ready to take a leadership role in building a coalition of like-minded countries who share our values. We believe in international cooperation. We believe in the free and open exchange of goods, services and ideas. And if the United States no longer wants to lead, Canada will.' Carney's statement can be described as euphoric, over-optimistic. But it is a necessary gesture. Trump and his supporters believe that if the United States were to flex its muscles, the other democratic and liberal countries would shiver and cower. Carney had made it clear that there are other claimants to the leadership of the democratic, liberal world. Canada may be too small in terms of its economy and population to be able to lead the liberal democracies. But Carney's statement showed that if the United States vacates its liberal space, then there are others who are ready to step in. Surprisingly, Britain's Labour Party and Prime Minister Keir Starmer is sounding much too diffident to stand up to Trump's political arm-twisting. Political observers are now looking to the Australian general election next week, and the Canadian poll result has given rise to the hope that the Labour Party will come back to power in Canberra. If the English-speaking democracies like Canada and Australia were to go the liberal way, then the Americans would have to reconsider their choice of Trump's populist politics.
Bloomberg
30-04-2025
- Politics
- Bloomberg
Conservatives Praise Poilievre's Gains Despite Election Loss
Canadian Conservatives are backing Pierre Poilievre despite losing the election to Mark Carney's Liberals, saying the party made significant gains in the province of Ontario and among young voters. The party will face some soul-searching after it saw a 20-point polling lead crumble in the early months of this year, when Justin Trudeau's resignation and President Donald Trump's threats radically changed the Canadian political landscape. Poilievre also lost his own seat in the Ottawa-area district of Carleton in Monday's vote.
Yahoo
29-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
How the U.S. Lost the Canadian Election
Donald Trump pushed the Conservative Party of Canada down the political stairs. Yesterday, on Canada's election day, he tossed a farewell bucket of slop after the tumbling Conservatives, with a final Truth Social post urging Canadians to see their choice as a verdict on him personally. As Trump gleefully confided in an interview with The Atlantic posted that same day, he knew perfectly well that the overwhelming majority of Canadians hate him. 'I was disliked by enough of the Canadians that I've thrown the election into a close call, right?' In the event, it wasn't even that close a call: Canada's Liberals held on to power that, months ago, they were firmly forecast to lose. But on the principle of being 'the corpse at every funeral, the bride at every wedding and the baby at every christening,' as Alice Roosevelt Longworth said of her father, Teddy, Trump enjoys redirecting attention to himself even if the attention is hostile. As recently as January, the Canadian Conservatives held a 20-plus-point lead over the incumbent Liberals. The general verdict on Justin Trudeau's nine years as prime minister was overwhelmingly negative. Trudeau's policies of lavish government spending and higher taxes discouraged business investment. Low investment translated into slow growth of business productivity, lagging far behind the United States over the same period. Confronted by the problem that Canadians were not increasing their per capita output, Trudeau responded by accelerating immigration intake as an alternative way of boosting economic growth: If Canada couldn't use labor more efficiently under his leadership, at least there would be more labor to use. Canada already had very high levels of immigration pre-Trudeau; he raised the targets even higher, while failing to make provision for more housing construction. The result was a steep climb in home values and apartment rents, pricing young people out of the major job centers. Conservative Party leader Pierre Poilievre counted on the housing issue to elevate him to the prime ministership. Instead, Poilievre lost his own seat in Parliament. This was Trump's doing. Trump's tariff war against Canada's economy, aggravated by his repeated threats to annex Canada, upended the Canadian election. An election that would otherwise have punished the Liberals for Trudeau's bad economic management was transmuted into a referendum on Canada's continued national existence. The transmutation favored the Liberals for three big reasons. First, over the past half century, the Liberals identified as the more America-skeptical of Canada's two major parties. When Canadians feel warm toward the United States, they look to Conservatives to bind the two countries more closely together. When they feel afraid, they look to Liberals to lock the gates against their southern neighbor. Second, some elements of the contemporary Conservative Party had imported Trumpy-sounding, MAGA-styled themes into Canadian politics. Poilievre endorsed the so-called trucker convoy that illegally closed streets in downtown Ottawa in early 2022. He mimicked Trump's 'America First' slogan with his own 'Canada First.' Third, Trump's trade war with Canada created a demand for a Canadian leader who looked adept, accomplished, and safe. Poilievre gained the Conservative Party leadership as a kind of mirror-Trudeau: He is also the father of a young family, a master of social media, and an ideological leader in a nonideological country, but from a humble background rather than Trudeau's princely one. Even as Trump's self-insertion into the election crushed Conservative poll numbers, Poilievre's personal rating held up when pollsters asked about his capacity to help Canada's young people with their problems. But as Trump kept menacing Canada, the desire for a sympathetic leader was rapidly replaced by the clamor for an effective one. The Liberals deftly replaced Trudeau with Mark Carney, a former governor of the Bank of Canada and then governor of the Bank of England. Since leaving public service, Carney accumulated a fortune as the chairman of a Canadian asset-management company that had shifted its operations to New York. In another political moment, that elite background would not have been an asset, but now Canadians have turned to this 'cutthroat capitalist,' as one publication put it, to defend them against Trump. [Read: The Liberals who can't stop winning] Along the way, Canadians have sent a strong message to Americans. Trump vows to make America great again, to raise respect for America in the world. His effect on next-door Canada, however, has been to demolish America's reputation. That has also pushed Canada away from free markets, and back to the statism and protectionism of the Canadian past—which will be to America's detriment. Under the long tenure of Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau in government (from 1968 to 1984, with a break in 1979–80), Canada restricted U.S. investment, discriminated against American companies that operated in Canada, and invested public funds to create state-owned industries, especially in energy. Those policies were repudiated and reversed by the Conservatives in the 1980s—a reversal that was sustained by the Liberal governments of the 1990s. All the way until 2025, then, both parties maintained a consensus in favor of open trade and a limited role for government in markets. Trump shattered that consensus. During this election, both Carney and Poilievre promised new interventionist policies to promote Canadian industry. This change of course is not yet a full return to the 1970s, but the retro mood is gathering. Neither is Canada an outlier here: Other countries are also responding to U.S. tariffs not only with retaliatory tariffs, but also with subsidies and other forms of preference to domestic producers. As supply chains are chopped, local favoritism flourishes—and everywhere, American influence lessens. The United States once led the way in creating global rules of trade that tied together all free economies. Under Trump, the U.S. is retreating from that leadership, isolated and friendless. The American domain is no longer the whole planet, just one continental corner: Fortress America. Some of the people in Trump's orbit—Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent and Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick are of this faction—seem to imagine that the United States' Mexican and Canadian neighbors can be bullied into an enlarged Fortress North America, subservient tenants submitting to whatever terms their dominant landlord imposes on them. The Canadian election result cautions against the Fortress North America concept, at once so domineering and so naive. Other countries have politics, too. Trump's determination to create a protected and controlled U.S. economy invites other nations to follow the same mutually impoverishing path. Even the weak have weapons. The targets of Trump's economic aggression will accept greater hardship to preserve their dignity than American voters will for the privilege of acting like arrogant menaces. In the years after the Second World War, Canadian diplomats played an outsize role in the reconstruction of the global economy. The new Canadian government ought to find inspiration in that history, rather than rummage through the self-harming choices of the Pierre Trudeau years. In the absence of U.S. leadership, those whom America once led must turn to one another for encouragement. They can only wait and hope that America will soon regret its deviation into corrupt, authoritarian, predatory trade politics, and return to its formerly inspiring role as economic freedom's global champion. Article originally published at The Atlantic
