We need a European Carney
"Our economic strengths based on close ties to America have now become our vulnerabilities," the Canadian PM told his citizens as he braced them for a fundamentally transformed world.
In a nationally televised address Wednesday night, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney warned his citizens that the world they have known is about to drastically change. It is now too dangerous to continue a system where Canada is dominated by America. The relationship must be urgently de-risked, and this will involve sacrifice by Canadian citizens. Hard times are in store in the short term, he said, but it is necessary for a safe and prosperous future in the long term.
“This decades-long process of an ever-closer economic relationship with the United States is now over,” Carney told Canadians. “And as a consequence, many of our former strengths as a country—more particularly, our economic strengths based on close ties to America—have now become our vulnerabilities…We have to take care of ourselves, because we can’t rely on a single foreign partner. We have to take care of each other, because we are stronger together.”
Carney’s words equally apply here in Europe, but none of our leaders have been willing to be honest with their citizens and say them. Instead, our leaders have been busy with obsequious flattery of the US president (even calling him “daddy”), so much so that Trump tells us that our European leaders “call me the president of Europe.” EU President Ursula von der Leyen gaslights us telling us that the transatlantic relationship is still strong. Asked a few months ago if the EU should “de-risk” its relationship with the US as von der Leyen has said should be done with China, she was incredulous that the question was even asked. Meanwhile, Keir Starmer is gaslighting British citizens by telling them that Trump’s America is still a “reliable ally" when everyone can see that it is not.
The difference between our European leaders and Canada’s leader isn’t just optics. Carney is