When Mark Carney travels to Mayo this weekend to visit the townlands where his grandparents were born, it will be rather different from the ritual green-tie pilgrimages that punctuate the calendar of transatlantic political visits. Three of his four grandparents were from the west of Ireland and Carney held Irish citizenship until relinquishing it on becoming Canada’s prime minister. The ties are real and close. But what makes the visit even more significant is who Carney has now become. In the less than two years since he entered electoral politics for the first time in his career, the former central banker has emerged as a political leader of real substance at a turbulent geopolitical moment, more so than most heads of government who have held office far longer.
His speech at Davos in January, in which he described a world experiencing rupture rather than a transition, with the old rules-based international order gone forever, offered a stark contrast with the studied evasions of many of his counterparts. Others have acknowledged the scale of the disruption caused by Donald Trump’s second term while struggling to respond to it. Carney has paired his analysis with a clear-eyed strategy for navigating the new reality.
On trade, he has diversified Canada’s export markets with striking speed while imposing measured retaliatory tariffs on US goods. On defence, he has committed to doubling spending while building domestic industrial capacity. On international partnerships, he has struck a comprehensive strategic agreement with the EU, signed trade and security deals on four continents and made the case for middle-power cooperation in the face of great-power coercion. Taken together, these amount to a functioning roadmap for smaller and medium-sized nations seeking to maintain sovereignty and prosperity in an era of renewed great-power rivalry.
Ireland should take particular satisfaction this week in welcoming a leader with such deep roots here, and such a clear sense of where the world is ging.
