Trudeau brings curtain down on world woke show

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s decision to jump before he was pushed after almost a decade as the smug, woke-inspired poster boy of global political liberalism could not be more portentous. His political demise has significance beyond Canada. It comes at a time when, as the past year has shown, the progressive politics that has dominated most industrialised countries for more than two decades is clearly, in country after country, shifting to the right, fuelled by working-class anxieties over economies and immigration, and growing fatigue with issues from climate change to identity politics.

It may be, as Washington correspondent Joe Kelly reported, that it was Donald Trump’s vow that on his first day back in the White House he would impose a 25 per cent tariff on all products entering the US from Canada and Mexico that drove the final nails into Mr Trudeau’s political coffin. With the US president-elect contemptuously mocking the Canadian leader as a “governor” rather than a prime minister, and sneeringly referring to Canada as America’s 51st state, polls reflecting deep “Trudeau fatigue”, and showing voters frustrated by high inflation and crippling housing costs, and especially anger over Canada’s liberal, open-door immigration policies, left little doubt that Mr Trudeau’s centre-left Liberal Party was careening towards disaster in a general election due by October.

That left the man Vogue magazine frothed over as a “Canadian politician-dreamboat” when he became Prime Minister in 2015 with no alternative but to quit. Now, however, the dream appears to be well and truly over for Mr Trudeau, and his spectacular fall from grace has profound significance for democratic political leaders everywhere, and especially those such as Anthony Albanese ahead of an election.

The impact of the Trump effect cannot be overstated. As Kelly wrote: “In an election year, Anthony Albanese must watch this episode carefully – it shows Trump’s willingness to make life uncomfortable even for the leaders of great friends of the US.”

Pierre Poilievre, the leader of Canada’s Conservative Party, which has a 20-point poll lead, has taken up much of the populist rhetoric used by Mr Trump and leaders of other right-wing movements around the world. Mr Poilievre is not personally popular but his demands for the curtailing of many of Mr Trudeau’s policies on climate change, including a carbon tax, and immigration have given him a strong chance of winning in October. He has also opposed vaccine mandates and Covid lockdowns.

The Canadian Conservatives’ strong upward trajectory in the polls has been seen elsewhere – not just in Mr Trump’s triumph in the US but also across Europe, where economic growth has largely stalled, enabling conservatives and populist right-wing parties to make unprecedented gains.

German Chancellor Olaf Scholz is expected to suffer a heavy defeat in February’s election, with Friedrich Merz, leader of the right-of-centre Christian Democratic Union, set to win. Italy already has one of the most right-wing governments in its history, with Mr Trump lauding Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni as a “fantastic woman” when she met him in Florida last week. Even in Britain, the left-wing Labour Party government led by Keir Starmer, elected last July, is already in deep trouble, with polls showing it having lost much of its electoral support. For the world at the start of 2025, the Canadian leader’s decision to quit signals that the progressive moment, for which Mr Trudeau was such a pivotal woke icon, is over – at least for now.