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Ian Explains: How political chaos in the UK, France, & Canada impacts the US
Big political changes are coming in Western democracies, is the US ready to deal with the fallout? Voters in the United Kingdom and France will head to the polls in the coming weeks after UK Prime Minister Rishi Sunak and French President Emmanuel Macron called snap national elections. Both political gambles could have a huge impact on everything from the West’s collective ability to deal with climate change to the AI revolution and countering China’s growing influence.
On Ian Explains, Ian Bremmer breaks down the tumultuous landscapes of French and British politics right now, with an eye on upcoming elections in Canada and the United States.
In Britain, Rishi Sunak’s Conservative Party is almost guaranteed to lose control of the government. In France, the far-right National Rally Party is highly favored to win the most seats in the National Assembly. A similar story is playing out in Canada, setting the stage for a potentially brutal electoral defeat next year.
So why should Americans care about all this political chaos so far from home? Watch Ian Explains for more on what’s at stake with so many big elections on the horizon.
Catch GZERO World with Ian Bremmer every week at gzeromedia.com/gzeroworld or on US public television. Check local listings.
- G7 meeting: Ukraine and Meloni take center stage ›
- Macron-Meloni spat spotlights Europe’s left-right divide ›
- Ian Explains: Will foreign policy decide the 2024 US election? ›
- UK Prime Minister Sunak's push for early election will hardly boost his chances ›
- Macron's snap election gamble will have repercussions for France and EU ›
Canada's New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh speaks to journalists before Question Period in the House of Commons on Parliament Hill in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada February 26, 2024.
Who are Canada’s semi-witting foreign interference accomplices?
A lingering foreign interference affair in Canada has the country asking who’s on who’s side – and when they’ll find out. A recent, heavily redacted report by the National Security and Intelligence Committee of Parliamentarians alleged that some unnamed federal politicians have been “semi-witting or witting” accomplices in foreign efforts to shape Canadian politics.
The unnamed bit has politicians scrambling and Canadians guessing as to who’s done what. Those in the know are withholding the names, citing a lack of sufficient evidence for making public accusations – and leaving it up to law enforcement to decide. New Democratic Party leader Jagmeet Singh says he’s confident his party and its members are clean, even though the report alarmed him. Singh went so far as to claim the report reveals some members of Parliament are “traitors.” But Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said leaders ought to be “wary” of any such claim.
A separate, ongoing foreign interference commission, led by Justice Marie-Josée Hogue, has decided to take up the issue and will investigate – a move Trudeau welcomed. The inquiry’s report is due by Dec. 31, 2024, and may involve a deeper investigation into the matter, adding evidence and context. But it may also choose to withhold names. According to the commission, it has a duty “to respect the principles of procedural fairness and the fundamental rights of any person affected by its work, in compliance with the rule of law.”
Now, amid opposition claims that Trudeau is going light on foreign meddling, the questions turn to whether party leaders will deal with potential threats within their caucuses and whether Canadians will learn the names of those involved, which for now seems unlikely.
The upcoming 2025 election further complicates matters as parties try to distance themselves from the “traitor” label and, presumably, prefer that foreign countries don’t influence the outcome of Canada’s vote. But the wheels are turning slowly, testing the limits of a country that’s used to government opacity.
Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and US President Joe Biden face a summer of discontent.
A summer of discontent
Facing elections and down in the polls, Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau have a lot of bogeys on their radar, but three are starting to stand out: the election call in Britain, Labor strife in Canada, and the rising and potentially self-defeating political popularity of tariffs.
1. Rishi Sunak’s Soggy Snap Election Surprise: Comeback Miracle or Cautionary Tale for Incumbents?
After 14 years of Conservative rule in Britain, Labour now has a chance to take the helm. Beleaguered Prime Minister Rishi Sunak held a rain-drenched (read: pathetic) fallacy of a media conference yesterday to announce a surprise July 4 general election. Why did he do it? Most analysts expected Sunak to drag it out until late fall, giving himself at least two years as PM – 14.8 times longer than the wilting 49-day head-of-lettuce term of Liz Truss, who Sunak replaced in 2022. They were wrong. The Tories are down 20 points in the polls, so when Sunak saw inflation finally fall to the target rate of 2.3% – a rare win – he reckoned it wouldn’t get much better in the months ahead. A summer election could mean low voter turnout, which usually helps the incumbent.
Joe Biden and Justin Trudeau are watching closely. Both are also incumbents facing low polling numbers and an electorate that believes (facts be damned) that things are worse than ever. If Sunak can somehow turn it around – and that’s a big “if” – it would answer a core question: Can falling inflation rates reinflate incumbent popularity? Will people ever believe things are getting better? Biden and Trudeau hope so.
Sunak’s July 4 election will likely end in ashes, not fireworks, for British conservatives, but Biden and Trudeau will pick through the coals and see what they can learn from the fire.
2. How to Fight Your Own Base Without Losing Their Vote?
Everyone reading this column will be familiar with the return-to-work debate. How often are you required to go back to the office post-pandemic, and how much do you want to work from home? Two days, three days, or more? I would be interested to hear your thoughts on that, and you can send them my way here.
In Canada, the debate has been reignited by the federal government’s decision to get public servants back in the office … wait for it … three days a week starting in September. Currently, they work two days a week at the office.
This is not a pay cut. This is not a downsizing. This is simply a back-to-work policy that is in line with almost every other industry. But the unions have gone ballistic, threatening a “summer of discontent” that could include disrupting borders.
File this one under the department of “With friends like these …” After all, the Liberal government has increased the size of the federal civil service by 42% since 2015. Last year, the feds signed a deal with the union leading the call to protest, the Public Service Alliance of Canada, giving them a pay increase. But here is the kicker: The deal both agreed on gave the federal government power to decide on back-to-office schedules. The same union that agreed to that is protesting it now.
There is no such thing as a permanent friend in politics, only permanent interests, but this is a classic stab in the front. Trudeau needs the public sector unions to win a federal election in the next year, and like Sunak he is nearly 20 points behind in the polls. He does not want to pick a fight with a powerfully motivated base. Except for one problem: This is a fight he can win because this is a fight the public supports.
In a new poll out today, Angus Reid found that 50% of Canadians agree with the Federal government and want workers back in the office. Voters over age 55 — the kind who show up at polling stations – really can’t stand the union position, with 79% of them saying “get back to the office.”
Meanwhile, 28% of Canadians “view federal government employees as overpaid,” while 75% say federal workers “have better working conditions than others,” including 73% of Liberal voters. In other words, Justin Trudeau could win this fight and would have the support of the electorate, but he needs every part of his base possible, so he is desperate to avoid this one as well.
The same is true for his main opponent, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre. You might expect him to be taking huge swings at unions and entitlements as his goal is to cut the size of government, but he’s staying out of this one as much as he can. His own riding is in the Ottawa area, the ground zero of public servants, and he doesn’t want their ire turned on him, which could hurt his electoral chances and take the pressure off Trudeau. So who is afraid of public servants going back to work three days a week? Everyone.
Like Biden, who supports Israel’s fight against Hamas but is now losing the support of young voters, Trudeau has to be careful about the battles he picks. Since 2022, he has had a supply and confidence deal with the far-left NDP in order to remain in power. That means the public servants are core to his survival. Despite the polls, if the union folks do have a summer of discontent, Trudeau will be in the worst possible position for a politician: fighting a two-front battle, with Conservatives on the right and the union on the left.
Finally, a half note on tariffs, as Biden is also caught in a pincer move here. As Donald Trump pushes for more trade tariffs to protect American workers, (remember he put a 25% tariff on steel imports), Biden is keeping up the tariff pace, especially with ones directed at goods from China. This week, he announced tariffs on EVs, batteries, and other Chinese exports.
Protectionism is clearly good politics in the US, especially when it comes to China. That is as much about geopolitical rivalry and security as it is about economics, but in general, tariffs are self-defeating economics that lead to higher prices and inflation.
No amount of political hustling on talk shows is going to upend the logic of basic economics. Biden is jammed: On one hand, the average American believes things are worse than ever, but on the other they want him to stand up to China and protect the American worker. Does he risk higher prices and lingering inflation with more tariffs or does he risk alienating his labor base by pushing back against economic isolationism that is suddenly so faddish? For now, he is tiptoeing toward tariffs and trying to avoid the price blowback.
The summer of discontent for Biden and Trudeau is just getting started.
FILE PHOTO: Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX and Tesla and owner of X, formerly known as Twitter, attends the Viva Technology conference dedicated to innovation and startups at the Porte de Versailles exhibition centre in Paris, France, June 16, 2023.
Atwood and Musk agree on Online Harms Act
Space capitalist Elon Musk and Canadian literary legend Margaret Atwood are in agreement …. on warning that Canadian legislation to bring order to cyberspace threatens freedom of speech, which suggests that Justin Trudeau may have to go back to the drawing board.
The Liberals unveiled the Online Harms Act last month, proposing a digital safety commission to target hate speech, child porn, and other dangerous content. Advocates like Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen have called for governments to pass similar laws, and both the EU and the UK are doing so.
But the Trudeau government got a black eye from its last attempt to regulate cyberspace when Meta yanked Canadian news from its platforms rather than pay a so-called “link tax.”
So far, big American tech companies have not reacted as forcefully to this bill, but Atwood, Musk, and many experts have objected to the draconian laws around hate speech, which would include life prison sentences and the use of peace bonds for potential hate speech.
Given the precariousness of Trudeau’s government, the humiliating defeat of its last big online law, and the criticisms coming from even those predisposed to support the law, the government will likely have to accept amendments in the legislative process if it wants to get this passed.A "Help Wanted" sign hangs in a restaurant window.
Jobs are up, but Biden and Trudeau still risk losing theirs
January was an encouraging month for job growth in the US and Canada. The Bureau of Labor Statistics reported 353,000 new jobs stateside with unemployment holding steady at 3.7%. Meanwhile, Statistics Canada says jobs were up by 37,000 during the same period and unemployment was down to 5.7% – a modest drop of 0.1%. Both countries exceeded expectations.
You might think better-than-expected economic news would herald brighter fortunes for President Joe Biden and Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, but you would almost certainly be wrong. Both men’s polling numbers are nowhere near where they’d like them to be.
Biden’s favorables are flat with roughly 40% of Americans approving of his job performance compared to 55% who disapprove. Meanwhile, 86% of the country thinks he’s too old to run again. North of the border, Trudeau continues to trail Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre by double digits, and his party is stuck in the mud.
There’s a chance numbers will improve for the incumbents, but the December jobs report in the US also exceeded expectations and didn’t boost Biden’s ratings. The Canadian numbers were softer in December, so Liberals have some hope the latest good news will give Trudeau a boost this time.
But so far, and perhaps counterintuitively, their political fortunes do not seem directly tied to economic performance.
A pipe yard servicing government-owned oil pipeline operator Trans Mountain in Kamloops, British Columbia, Canada.
Will Trans Mountain Pipeline expansion pay off?
“It’s been quite a journey,” he says of the many weekends, nights, and early mornings he spent visiting Indigenous communities to secure their consent. By the time he retired in April 2022, more than 60 communities were on board. Barring disaster, the $23 billion project will be completed this year, and Canada will have access to tidewater for an additional half a million barrels of crude a day.
Ottawa stepped in to buy the project when Kinder Morgan pulled out in 2018, and the construction costs have increased sixfold, leading some to call it a “catastrophic boondoggle.”
Justin Trudeau’s government believed the project would add tens of billions of dollars in national revenues by allowing more Canadian oil to reach Asian markets and command a world price. Western Canadian Select crude has typically traded at a discount of up to $16 per barrel, compared to North American benchmark prices, because it all goes to the United States.
The expansion of TMX will end that stranglehold, and most analysts expect the discount to fall to closer to $10 a barrel. The upshot could be more expensive diesel in the US Midwest.
Will Ottawa get its investment back? Pipelines generally trade at around 10-12 times cash flow, which in this case could see Ottawa raise more than $20 billion. But the government, or its successor, may decide to take a lower price to ensure a material Indigenous ownership stake.
“It was not a terrible decision at all, and it was one that only the government could have seen through,” Anderson says, noting the political, regulatory, and legal risks.
Canada produced a record 4.19 million barrels of oil a day in December. The prospect of higher prices, thanks to the Trans Mountain expansion, is likely to see new records set in the future.
Dem bias in Ottawa has Trudeau targeting Trump
The most intense debate in the Canadian House of Commons of late has been about a humdrum trade deal update between Canada and Ukraine. It is being disputed by the opposition Conservatives because it contains reference to a carbon tax.
Since Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre has made “axing the tax” in Canada his number one priority, he has removed his party’s support from the deal, even though Ukraine has had a carbon tax since 2011.
But the governing Liberals say they detect an ulterior motive: the rise of right-wing, MAGA-style conservatism in Canada that has undermined the Conservative Party’s support for Ukraine.
Trudeau’s camp takes aim at MAGA bull's-eye
The Liberals ran an online ad on Monday, ahead of a Canada-Ukraine free trade deal vote in the House, that featured a photo of Justin Trudeau shaking hands with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky while claiming Poilievre’s party is “importing far-right, American-style politics and refusing to stand with our ally in their time of need.”
Conservatives say they support Ukraine and have just called on Ottawa to send surplus weapons – specifically 83,000 CRV7 rockets slated for disposal – to Kyiv. But the Liberals need to disrupt Poilievre’s momentum and seem convinced that comparing him to Donald Trump might do it.
After the former president won the New Hampshire primary in January, the Liberals made a direct comparison between the two men in an online ad, which said that Trump was one step closer to the White House and that Poilievre was ripping a page from his playbook. The ad noted that both men referenced “corrupt media,” their countries being “broken” and used the slogan “bring it home.”
Trump’s eye-for-an-eye approach
This is a dangerous game, given Trump is ahead in most polls and is an Old Testament-style politician, more inclined to take an eye for an eye than to turn the other cheek.
Why would Trudeau risk baiting the man who could be in the White House this time next year, where he would wield the power to enervate the Canadian economy?
The prime minister knows Trump takes note of every slight and pays everyone back with interest. After the G7 meeting in Charlevoix, Quebec, in 2018, Trudeau gave a closing press conference in which he said Canada would not be pushed around in trade negotiations by the US. According to Trump’s former national security adviser, John Bolton, in his book “The Room Where It Happened,” the president raged against Trudeau, calling the prime minister a “behind your back guy” and ordering his aides to bad mouth Trudeau on the Sunday talk shows.
But Trudeau’s Liberals are trailing the Conservatives by up to 16 percentage points in every public opinion poll, and this tactic may work.
An Abacus data poll from Jan. 28 suggested there is some evidence to suggest that associating Poilievre and Trump correlates with voting intentions, with those who feel that the two men are different more likely to vote Conservative. Tying the two men together in a pejorative fashion is good for the electoral fortunes of the Liberal Party, so the thinking seems to go.
That remains to be seen. Attacking a political rival is always a challenge when the target is held in more esteem than the source of the attack, which is the case here, according to another Abacus poll that found Poilievre much more liked than Trudeau.
Canada’s former man in Washington says to hold fire
The risk is amplified in that the Canadian public may well see through such a transparent tactic and decide that Trudeau is putting his party’s interests ahead of the country’s.
That was the warning issued at the weekend by David MacNaughton, whom Trudeau once appointed as Canada’s ambassador in Washington. He told the Toronto Star that Trudeau is taking a risk by taking indirect shots at Trump.
Doing so will make it harder to fight Trump’s promised 10% tariffs on US imports if he comes to power, he said.
“We used to be seen by the Americans as a trusted friend, ally, and partner, and right now, I don’t think that feeling is as strong as it used to be,” he said.
That MacNaughton has been forced to say this in public suggests he is being ignored in private.
Trudeau revives Team Canada
Trudeau has revived the Team Canada approach to relations with the US that served his government well during the renegotiation of the North American Free Trade Agreement that yielded the U.S.-Mexico-Canada deal in 2018.
The new effort will be led by Kirsten Hillman, Canada’s current ambassador in Washington, Francois-Philippe Champagne, the industry minister, and Mary Ng, the trade minister (notably not Mélanie Joly, the foreign minister, or Chrystia Freeland, the deputy prime minister who fell foul of Trump during the USMCA negotiations. “We don’t like their representative,” Trump said at the time).
Municipal mayors, provincial politicians, and business leaders will all be urged to reach out to their contacts to sell the message that the two economies are more integrated than ever. Trade statistics based on the first three years of the new USMCA show that total US trade with Canada and Mexico totaled $1.78 trillion in 2022, a 27% increase over 2019 levels.
When not criticizing “ideologically driven MAGA Conservatives” in Parliament, Trudeau has tried to sound civil.
But as professional diplomats who have worked with Republicans in the US point out, “no amount of Team Canada can overcome those ill-advised MAGA statements.”
Libs and GOP on different planets
Another problem is that the two are on different political planets.
The Liberal government is not keen on engaging with Republican politicians and officials, in part because of an aversion that dates back to the Jan. 6, 2021, attacks on the US Capitol.
The lack of readiness evokes memories of November 2016, when Trump was elected and the Canadian government was caught completely off-guard. The professional bureaucrats who are meant to advise governments had provided no contingency plan for a Trump administration and Trudeau had even invited the sitting Democratic vice president, Joe Biden, to Ottawa for a state dinner the following month. “They were so excited at the prospect of Hillary (Clinton), even better than Obama because she was a woman. They couldn’t wait for the transition,” said one person involved in the planning process. After Trump was elected, the Canadian government couldn’t even reach him to arrange a congratulatory call.
Louise Blais, a former Canadian ambassador to the United Nations, was consul general in the southeast US at the time – MAGA land – and had built up an array of contacts among Republicans that proved invaluable. Among other things, she secured a phone number for the president-elect.
As she wrote in the Globe and Mail last weekend, even the most conservative Republicans are friendly towards Canada, realizing the relationship is a net positive for them. But they value a rapport built up over the years, not arranged in a panic, and they cherish mutual respect.
Blais recalled how former House Speaker Newt Gingrich told her in 2016 that Republicans were hearing what Canada was saying about then-candidate Trump. “Be careful because you are picking sides,” he said.
Trade deal no protection against Trump’s tariffs
The long-standing Democratic bias at the official level is a luxury Canada can ill afford. Ottawa has a free-trade agreement with the US, but if the new president wants to impose a double-digit tariff on everything that crosses into America, Canada would be dragged into an expensive, retaliatory trade war.
Veteran Conservative MP Randy Hoback wrote on his Substack that the Canada-U.S. relationship is too critical to be jeopardized by domestic political concerns. “Trudeau’s actions are hazardous to our economy and national security,” he said.
Trudeau’s current emissaries don’t speak the same language as Trump’s party. A real Team Canada needs to include some people, like Hoback, who can speak Republican.
Puzzle map of Canada
Is Canada coming apart at the seams?
If Canada’s provinces weren’t squabbling with the federal government, it wouldn’t be Canada. But lately, these tensions seem to be cropping up more forcefully at every turn, and they couldn’t come at a worse time.
The Alberta factor
In recent weeks, Alberta Premier Danielle Smith has launched an effort to take half the money in the Canada Pension Plan and set up a separate, Alberta-only pension scheme. The feds, unsurprisingly, say “no way” and have warned of significant economic pain if the province splits from the national plan.
At the same time, energy-rich Alberta is threatening to use a legal loophole to ignore proposed nationwide clean electricity regulations that are part of Canada’s pledge to have a carbon-neutral grid by 2035.
Albertan grievances with the federal government are nothing new, of course. Albertans, whose natural resource wealth contributes significantly to Canada’s GDP, have always felt a little taken for granted. And now, with climate policy hitting at the heart of their economy and culture, they are in a particularly plucky mood to fight back.
But it’s not just the Albertans. As the struggle over pensions and electricity regulations plays out in the West, provinces across the country are fighting with Ottawa over carbon pricing.
Since 2019, Canada has had a federally mandated price on carbon for any provinces that don’t have their own local emissions taxes. It is one of the government’s signature climate policies. But now, with inflation high and his political fortunes in question, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is suspending the carbon tax on home heating oil for three years in a bid to give consumers a break.
It just so happens that home heating oil is used primarily in Atlantic Canada, where the Liberals are doing particularly badly in the polls. Now, some other provinces want carve-outs for the fuels that they use too.
In the federal Parliament, Conservative leader Pierre Poilievre leveraged the broader provincial outrage over the carbon tax carve-outs to pitch a motion of his own to exempt all home heating from the tax, but the Liberals defeated it with help from the Bloc Quebecois.
Meanwhile, the premier of Saskatchewan, Scott Moe, says SaskEnergy, the provincial-owned natural gas provider, won’t collect the carbon tax on natural gas home heating at all for the federal government. That set up a direct legal challenge to the feds’ tax authority.
Even the deepening housing crisis isn’t immune from conflict between the premiers and the prime minister. In a meeting on Tuesday, provincial heads blasted the federal government’s approach of bypassing provincial governments to cut housing construction deals directly with municipalities. One premier is even considering a law to prevent the feds from making the local bilateral deals at all.
An old challenge looms. As if all of this wasn’t enough of a problem, the mother of all federal-provincial tensions is quietly stirring again. A recent poll found support for Quebec separation rising several points to 38%, a jump from the 32% support it enjoyed in 2020. One cause of the uptick could be misgivings about immigration – some Quebec nationalists say the feds are preventing the province from attracting enough French speakers to preserve the dominance of the French language there. Meanwhile, a Quebec plan to increase university tuition costs for out-of-province students, also aimed at shoring up Francophone dominance, has sparked fresh protests.
All of this couldn’t come at a worse time. The federal government is trying to tackle overarching challenges like climate change, healthcare, and housing that require comprehensive approaches. But with the Liberal government trailing in the polls by double digits, provinces may smell blood in the water and believe now is the time to strike for concessions.
Unfortunately, the people who suffer most are ordinary Canadians. Struggling with high costs for housing and health care, and worried about climate change, they’re less interested in jurisdictional squabbles than they are in practical solutions to real problems.