FIRST READING: Brits warn that Canada's new prime minister has 'reverse Midas touch'

https://nationalpost.com/opinion/brits-warn-canadas-new-prime-minister-has-reverse-midas-touch

Mark Carney's reputation as Bank of England governor is more checkered than he may be letting on

Tristin Hopper

Published Mar 13, 2025  •  Last updated 1 day ago  •  4 minute read

Re-printed without permission. This must be saved.

Liberal leader Mark Carney speaks briefly with media as he makes his way to a caucus meeting on Monday, March 10, 2025 in Ottawa. Photo by The Canadian Press/Adrian Wyld

First Reading is a daily newsletter keeping you posted on the travails of Canadian politicos, all curated by the National Post’s own Tristin Hopper. To get an early version sent directly to your inbox, sign up here.

TOP STORY

With Mark Carney only days away from his swearing in as Canada’s 24th prime minister, British sources are warning that Canada has signed up for a leader with a checkered history at his last public sector job.

Article content

Carney was governor of the Bank of England between 2013 and 2020 — a period during which the U.K. experienced a notable decline in growth, living standards and productivity.

“While there are many explanations for that, the ‘rock star Governor’ clearly did nothing to improve the performance of the British economy,” reads a Monday critique of Carney published in The Telegraph. The column referred to Carney as a man with a “reverse Midas touch.”

Another article in the same paper referred to Carney as the “high priest of Project Fear” — a reference to Carney’s prominent role in the 2016 anti-Brexit campaign. However, it added that Carney seemed to have “charmed Canadians,” and “is now the figure most trusted by his countrymen to stand up to (U.S President Donald) Trump.”

The “Project Fear” moniker was first coined in 2018 by the pro-Brexit Conservative politician Jacob Rees-Mogg. In interviews at the time, Rees-Mogg would also call Carney a “second-tier Canadian politician” who “got a job in the U.K.” after “having failed” at Canadian politics.

Carney was one of the most vocal critics of the push for the U.K. to leave the European Union, publicly warning that in a worse-case scenario, a departure from the trading bloc would impose a “real economic shock” on the British economy.

In 2023, Carney’s successor, Andrew Bailey, would admit that some of the Bank of England’s more “dire” Brexit predictions never came to pass. “If you go back to the period after the referendum, there were pretty dire predictions about the consequences of Brexit for the financial services world … and I think so far those effects have been smaller,” Bailey said in an interview.

The “Project Fear” label would also be wheeled out this week by the conservative U.K. magazine The Spectator, which drew parallels between Carney’s prophecies about Brexit, his warnings about climate change and his more recent warnings about the economic threat posed by Trump.

“Canadians should be aware that fear is possibly the most-used wrench in their new prime minister’s toolbox,” wrote columnist Jane Stannus.

Reactions from the British left, meanwhile, were mostly positive about the incoming Canadian leader.

The Guardian, the usual standard-bearer for British progressivism, called Carney a “boring guy” with “experience of financial crises.”

The progressive-minded U.K. outlet The New Statesman had praise for Carney’s record of “crisis management,” but doubted whether it was the right fit for a battle against Trump.

“Untangling the country’s fortunes from the U.S. would require a radical remaking of the economy. That is something that Mark Carney, a technocratic centrist, is unlikely to do,” it wrote.

In the middle of the Carney takes was The Independent, which wrote that while Carney’s most memorable British legacy was his failure to stop Brexit, “he now hopes to be the man who can step in and prevent populists from taking control in Canada.”

All the while, multiple foreign tabloids — including the New York Post and the U.K.’s Daily Mail — used Carney’s elevation to Liberal leader as an opportunity to republish 2013 images of the former central banker alongside convicted sex trafficker Ghislaine Maxwell.

The images were taken at the U.K.’s Wilderness Festival before the emergence of sex trafficking allegations against Maxwell. A source close to Carney told the Toronto Sun that Maxwell “went to the same high school as Mr. Carney’s wife’s sister” and that the images are the result of a chance encounter.