It starts with naming it
Image: Dylan Shaw (Unsplash)
Trump’s Greenland grab was pretty audacious — even for him. So it takes something quite extraordinary to not just steal a headline from him but to potentially create a compelling counter narrative.
But that is what this week’s speech by Canadian PM, Mark Carney potentially could do.
It’s ironic really. Former Governors of the Bank of England, which Carney was, are not usually noted for their revolutionary zeal. Yet Carney in his address to Davos devotees came close.
It’s a sign of how superficial our politics has become that speaking plainly and honestly about the true state of the world can be seen to be shockingly bold.
And Carney didn’t mince his words:
“I’ll talk about the rupture in the world order, the end of a nice story, and the beginning of a brutal reality where geopolitics among the great powers is not subject to any constraints … the most powerful pursue their interests using economic integration as a weapon of coercion.”
Carney wasn’t so much addressing those “great powers [that] can afford to go it alone”. Rather, his focus was “the countries in between”, the middle nations who drank the globalisation cool-aid, weathering multiple crises as a result and now finding themselves divided, singled-out and powerless to the whims of those with control.
Carney’s message was unequivocal:
“… when we only negotiate bilaterally with a hegemon, we negotiate from weakness. We accept what is offered. We compete with each other to be the most accommodating. This is not sovereignty. It is the performance of sovereignty while accepting subordination.”
(Sounds a lot like union organising 101!)
For Carney it’s time to call out this supposed “natural logic” that keeps nations hoping their “compliance will buy safety”.
“Let me be direct: we are in the midst of a rupture, not a transition… The old order is not coming back. We should not mourn it. Nostalgia is not a strategy.”
Carney’s first move is to name it:
“The power of the less powerful begins with honesty … there is a strong tendency for countries to … hope that compliance will buy safety. It won’t.”
“The system’s power comes not from its truth but from everyone’s willingness to perform as if it were true.”
Then, Carney goes where so many others fear to tread. Bucking the anti-collectivist ‘wisdom’ of recent decades, he argues:
“… from the fracture, we can build something better, stronger, and more just.
This is the task of the middle powers, who have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from a world of genuine cooperation.”
It’s not exactly rocket science! The old union adage still holds true - you can break a single stick but try bending a bundle. Solidarity is the answer.
So Carney does three things in this speech:
He calls out the widening imbalance of power in the world which has undermined the purported promise of globalisation — thus impacting individual nation states capacity to thrive and exercise autonomy.
He calls on middle countries to be honest about what’s really happening — to critique and call out the reality and not the spin. To stop “living within a lie”.
He wants to help rebuild the architecture of the collective by getting middle nations like Canada (and presumably Australia) working together and sees cooperation and solidarity as key to building a new future built around progressive values.
But why stop there?
What if we talked about people — individuals, their families and communities —and not just the nation state?
What if we talked more about the widening imbalance between those with a lot in our community and those with not so much? The accelerating concentration of wealth at the top, the growing corporate concentration, the capture of our politics by those with money? Maybe it’s time to name the real rupture?
What if we call bullshit on the notion that everything is great with the current system? Despite record levels of indebtedness, housing stress, climate impacts, loneliness, insecurity and the knowledge that we no longer can promise or expect a better future? Maybe it’s time to break the silence and force a reckoning with western governments still wedded to their neoliberal reason — to stop “living within the lie”?
What if we didn’t expect individuals and families to carry the burdens on their own? Maybe it’s time we rediscovered the value of solidarity, and centred public good at the heart of public life and public decision-making?
Carney’s contribution is not really all that radical. He calls out the problem and assesses that the only way forward for fragmented nations is to work together. It’s interesting times (!) when something so simple and sane rocks the world.
And it is something we can build on. We can add to the power of what he has said and expand it beyond the nation state to include the demos.
When Carney asks:
“who have the most to lose from a world of fortresses and the most to gain from a world of genuine cooperation.”
It is not only nation states, it’s people too.
When Carney attests:
“The powerful have their power. But we have something too – the capacity to stop pretending, to name reality, to build our strength at home, and to act together.”
The “we” could just as easily be you and I.
Carney’s speech represents both a radical intervention (for all its mundanity) and an invitation for those looking to speak to the very real lives of people and not just the powerplay of nation states.
If we’re looking for a worthy 2026 resolution, disrupting “living within the lie” feels like a good place to start.
Louise, for the Australia reMADE team
Image: Annie Spratt (Unsplash)