Neo-liberal Carney is no solution to the fight against the far-right

The Liberal party just elected Mark Carney as their new leader. In the end the race wasn’t even close. He got 85 percent of the vote and his nearest rival, former deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland, didn't get to the 8 per cent mark.

Carney is seen by many commentators and Liberal voters as the man to handle the impending economic crisis caused by Trump’s trade war with Canada. Indeed, like the Ontario election, the Trump tariffs dominated the discussion during the leadership race.

Bankers' Banker

Carney is credited with saving Canadian banking during the financial crisis in 2008. It is true that Canadian banks did better than their counterparts in the US and globally but that was largely due to surreptitious bailouts to the billionaires. In the crisis to come he will likely move in the same direction, bailing out capital while imposing even deeper cuts on workers.

He has already stated that he wants to see a reduction in government spending and that usually means cuts to social programs.

Carney is a bankers' banker who cut his teeth as an advisor for Goldman Sachs. He later chaired the Bank of Canada and was then recruited to take on the same role at the Bank of England.

He was paid a whopping $1.6 million yearly by the UK government while the Tory government oversaw cuts and austerity measures that savagely attacked the working class. It is clear that he represents the interests of the bankers and lives in the rarified air of the super rich.

He has said that he wants to try and build an environmentally sustainable economy but that is the same rhetoric we heard from Trudeau before he spent billions in taxpayers' money to buy the TMX pipeline and oversee dramatic increases in tar sands growth.

Carney has also adopted similar arguments to the far-right on immigration, blaming migrants for everything from strains on social services to the housing crisis. He plans to reduce immigration numbers and make it much harder for temporary foreign workers and international students to come and stay in Canada.

While touted as an intellectual, he buys into these immigration myths to try and gain some ground politically from the right wing and the Conservative party.  But as we have seen in elections around the world, from the UK to Germany, centrist politicians appealing to racism simply builds the forces of the right.

His economic policies will do the same. The fact that centrist parties like the Liberals continue to oversee an economy where the billionaires flourish and working people suffer, means that Carney will increase the despair and discontent that the far-right is currently using to build a base.

Liberal, Tory, same old story

While many are happy that Carney has tightened the race for the next Prime Minister and may hold off the hated Conservatives and Pierre Poilievre, it is clear he will not represent the kind of politics that can end the many crises of capitalism.

With the NDP remaining a distant 3rd in polling, once again, we are stuck with alternating Tory & Liberal governments that oversee attacks on workers to prop up the profits of the 1%. Trying to determine how Carney might be better than Poilievre gets us nowhere. Only mass movements & strike action can bring real change.