Mark Carney is on a roll.
Canadians are hearing that he is the adult in the room, the sophisticated fellow who arrives triumphantly to protect the country from Donald Trump. The Liberal Party is in full-time gloat mode, and X is full of polls crowing about the electorate’s infatuation with Carney, and how Carney is bravely standing for all of us and confronting the orange southern bear.
Much of the Canadian press appears taken in. But hold on - before we conclude that public enthusiasm equals Carney being wise or right, we need to look at history.
When we do, it ought to make us significantly more humble.
Neville Chamberlain returned from Munich in 1938 proclaiming “peace for our time” and was greeted by a rapturous public. Britain desperately wanted peace, and Chamberlain was popular because the alternative was terrifying. It did not make his policies wise. Within a year, Britain was at war, and the errors of the 1930s would sadly be paid for in Russian, British, Canadian, and America…
