Good morning,
Canadian politics doesn't often command many column inches this side of the Atlantic but Europe’s populists will keep a close eye on the next five weeks in Canada where snap general elections on 28 April will be one of the first test cases of whether an anti-Donald Trump backlash decides the result.
Prior to US president Trump’s inauguration on 20 January, Pierre Poilevre’s Conservatives were so far ahead – boasting an opinion poll lead of between 20 and 30 points – that his election was considered a formality.
That was before Trump started talking about making Canada the 51st state of the US, calling now former prime minister Justin Trudeau ‘governor’ and aiming the most aggressive trade tariffs in Ottawa’s direction. Fast forward two months and Trudeau’s Liberal party, now led by former Bank of England governor Mark Carney, are neck-and-neck and slight favourites to win a fourth term. Poilevre, a populist who had been campaigning on a ‘Canada First’ tagline that promised to replicate MAGA north of the Niagara, has floundered. He has chosen to join the other Canadian parties in attacking Trump, but lacks conviction.
It was noticeable last week at a European Parliament hearing with trade commissioner Maros Sefcovic that right-wing MEPs, many from the populist school of politics, were urging Sefcovic not to hit back with retaliatory tariffs on the US after Trump’s 25 percent levies on steel and aluminium.
Many in the parliament were gleeful at Trump’s victory last November.
Yet opinion poll data in Europe suggests that most people are horrified by Trump’s handling of Russia and Ukraine and deeply alarmed by his equally bellicose threats of a trade war. If and when European businesses and consumers start to feel the pain from Trump’s tariffs it is hard to imagine that voters will blame the European Commission for their higher grocery bills.
- Benjamin Fox, Africa editor
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