How To Fight An Elite Problem

On Mark Carney’s Elite (Dis)Advantage

One of the better parts of this leadership race so far has been the number of good and interesting conversations I’ve had since it began with people I respect and whose judgement I value. I won’t say who out of respect but there have been numerous conversations from people I would not have expected whose basic thrust was a greater openness to Mark Carney. And it’s happened enough it’s starting to genuinely make me reconsider.

Obviously Sunday’s news that Steve MacKinnon isn’t running for the leadership, paired with Anita Anand’s less surprising choice, has left me looking for a candidate, and so the conversations about Carney take on a renewed urgency. I still stand by the criticisms of Carney’s tenure as a central banker, and I don’t think I’ll change my mind. I’m also not sure I’d be wanting to run right now if I was Carney, but I do think I was wrong about something on Thursday.

(I will take this opportunity to thank Minister Anand for her service to this country - she is an eminently impressive figure who will be long remembered for her intellect, her capacity, and her seriousness. At a time when politics is seemingly not rewarding those skills, Anita has been a gracious and generous public servant, and we are all worse for her decision not to run in Oakville again. Thank you.)

I wrote that Carney is a technocrat in a populist age, an expert in the age of pseudo-intellectualism, and a disaster accordingly. In the harsh light of time I think I’m wrong, at least on that last part. It could be a disaster, but in the era of Trudeau, Ford, and Trump, I am assuming that elitism will be a downside in a way that it’s not a guarantee to be. And I should probably at least make the case for why it’s not a guaranteed crisis.

Now, everything I’m going to say depends on Carney being willing and able to make the arguments necessary, and the honest answer is I have no idea if he can. If your response to this column will be some version of pointing out that Carney could be bad at the art of politics, sure! Definitely possible! But that’s not the point of this piece. There is room for an elite to use that to his advantage - and if Carney plays it right he could legitimately flip the script.

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One of the most nominally perplexing aspects of British politics is how ludicrous it is that nobody seems to find it ludicrous. Boris Johnson, or more accurately Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, graduate of Eton and Oxford, son of a Conservative MEP who later worked for the European Commission and the World Bank, was somehow a populist hero in Britain. Nigel Farage, who went to a dues-paying private school, went to work as a commodities trader, and then took a government salary for the vast majority of the last 25 years as an MEP and now MP, is somehow the voice of “real” Britain. This is patently absurd. It’s also widely accepted in England.

The victory of Donald Trump, especially in 2016, was another victory for this Elite Outsider model of politics - somebody who is by every measure an elite, but who positioned himself as a fighter for the Everyman and used that Elite status to prop up his argument. Trump’s 2016 pitch - and if you watch the 2016 debates again, you see it so much more clearly than you did in 2024 - was that the system was rigged against the working class and that as someone who understands all the ways the deck is stacked he is the only person who can unstack it. Putting aside his actual time in office, that was a pitch that had clear appeal.

Take the Fords, who have effectively managed to make everybody forget that his father was an MPP and founder of a company that does 9 figures in sales. They have been able to sell themselves defenders of the Everyman too in a way that is objectively nonsensical. And yet, Doug is on track to win a third term and do so with ease. Because being an elite isn’t actually a disqualifying feature in a populist age. Being seen to be an uncaring elite is.

Again, I have no idea if Carney can do what he’d need to do, but it’s pretty clear there’s a lane for him. You have to run at the time as Bank of Canada and Bank of England Governor, not from it, and you have to turn those into wins for you. It’s not easy, but it’s also not hard. Having finally bitten the bullet of what he said on Uncommons, this wouldn’t be a hard message for Carney to use.

“I have dedicated the majority of my adult life to service when it would have been a lot easier to just make millions for myself. Doing so has put me in places to see the real way the world works, and I understand how we’ve gotten here. I also understand how damaging those sorts of elite consensus gatherings can be.

I’ve watched governments not just in Canada but across the world tie themselves into knots of good intentions and bad outcomes, of ideas that make us seem virtuous, but don’t ever amount to anything. I’ve been in grand ballrooms with all the key players talking in buzzwords nobody in the real world would ever use, having discussions so entirely divorced from people’s realities. I know why that happens, and how to stop it.

We need to recommit ourselves to a new deal - not just an embrace of this policy or that, but of a fundamentally different approach to politics. We need to make it easier to build a business, build the houses we need, and generally make it easier for those without the advantages that I’ll pass on to my kids to have the same chance to succeed as them. If you want someone to rail against the system who will then keep the same policies that enrich the big end of town, Pierre Poilievre’s your guy. If you want someone who is painfully aware of how the deck is stacked for the wealthy and will actually fix it, I’m your guy.”

If you don’t think that’ll win a general election you’re probably right! But it’s not about winning a general election, it’s about winning seats, and I can see how that’s a message that can work in working class neighbourhoods in downtown Toronto, suburban Vancouver, and even places where the Liberals are holding on against bad tides like most of Atlantic Canada. It’s a message that’s good for all timezones, to steal from Sorkin.

I’m by no means sold on Carney, but I was letting dislike get ahead of me. Done well, he can make his elitism go from liability to strength. He can use his status and experience to make a strong case for the changes we need, and do so while proposing real solutions.

I’m not sold yet. But a week ago I’d have said Carney’s a disaster. Now? I see a path.