Good morning. At the beginning of the year, Canada’s Conservatives had a 25-point lead over the Liberal government, and their leader, Pierre Poilievre, looked a dead cert to be the country’s next prime minister. But as the votes cast in yesterday’s election have been counted, the story of the campaign has been confirmed: victory for the Liberals and their new leader, Mark Carney, who have extended their decade of rule by another five years.
It isn’t settled yet whether the Liberals will govern with a majority, or be the leading party in a hung parliament, as in the last two elections; Reuters projected a minority government a short while ago, while the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation said it was still too close to call. Either way, it represents a remarkable turnaround, and vindication for Carney’s efforts to present himself as the prime ministerial candidate who would most effectively stand up to Donald Trump. As for Poilievre: the result isn’t in yet, but he is in serious danger of losing his seat.
In one sense, the result isn’t surprising: even with well-documented antipathy to the Liberals after a decade in office, the task for a party that could so easily be portrayed as sympathetic to Donald Trump became insurmountable once the American president started threatening to annex Canada and ramping up tariffs.
By the same token, the lessons for other western democracies may be quite limited. But the result is still an index of Trump’s power as a recruiting sergeant for his opponents as well as his supporters – and in Canada, a major blow to the prospects of rightwing populism, at least for now.
You can follow the latest on the live blog here. For today’s newsletter, I spoke to Leyland Cecco, reporting for the Guardian from the Liberals’ headquarters in Ottawa. Here are the headlines.
Five big stories
European blackout | Spain’s prime minister, Pedro Sánchez, has said “everything possible is being done” to restore power following an unprecedented blackout in Spain and Portugal. The blackout – blamed by the Portuguese operator on extreme temperature variations – left tens of millions of people without trains, metros, traffic lights, ATMs, phone connections and internet access.
Ukraine | Vladimir Putin has declared a three-day full ceasefire in the war with Ukraine in May to mark the 80th anniversary of the victory of the Soviet Union in the second world war. Ukraine responded to Putin’s announcement by calling for an immediate month-long ceasefire.
Asylum | Foreign nationals convicted of sex offences will be banned from claiming asylum in the UK, home secretary Yvette Cooper has said. Human rights organisations warned that “irresponsible” changes to immigration law are being rushed through to challenge a surge in the polls from the Reform party ahead of Thursday’s local elections.
Politics | Pay rises for NHS staff and teachers must be paid from existing budgets, the Treasury has warned, setting up the potential for strike action. Separate independent pay review bodies for teachers and NHS staff in England are reportedly set to make higher pay rise recommendations than ministers had suggested.
Donald Trump | Senior Whitehall officials have asked golf bosses whether they can host the 2028 Open championship at Donald Trump’s Turnberry course after repeated requests from the US president, sources have said. One person with knowledge of the discussions said: “The government is doing everything it can to get close to Trump.”
In depth: ‘We were dead and buried. Now we are going to form a government’
The last day of the election campaign was bleakly overshadowed by the deaths of 11 people after an attacker rammed a car into a Filipino street festival in Vancouver – an event whose sheer horror makes it hard to decipher its political valence. Until then, the month-long campaign was defined by Donald Trump.
Even yesterday, Trump told Canadians to “elect the man” who would make Canada the 51st state, which appeared to be a reference to himself. The election can broadly be described as pitting Liberal efforts to place that issue front and centre against Conservative attempts to play down their ties to Trump, neutralise the subject and pivot back to the cost of living concerns that had previously given them such a massive advantage.
Despite that drama, the extraordinary reversal in fortunes against the state of play when Justin Trudeau stood down in January was largely baked in by the time his successor Mark Carney called the election. And while there was a late tightening in the polls that ate into the Liberals’ lead, nothing happened during the campaign to change the fundamental calculus.
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What were the results?
The Liberals were leading or confirmed as victorious in 166 of 343 electoral districts a short time ago, with the Conservatives on 146. Whether the Liberals reach the 172 threshold for an outright majority may not be confirmed until the last seats in the westernmost province, British Columbia, are decided, but the authoritative Canadian Broadcasting Corporation projected a Liberal win.
If the Liberals fall short of a majority, they will need the support of smaller parties to govern – but either way, their supporters are delighted. “There was a bit of a sombre mood early on as Conservatives picked up some seats in Newfoundland,” Leyland reported from their headquarters.
“But as it became clear that Liberals were outperforming that level elsewhere, it started to feel buoyant. And when it was called, the room erupted in cheers. Now they’re in a weird ‘can we have it all’ feeling – but in the context of where they were a couple of months ago, this result is absolutely unbelievable.”
Leyland’s news story features a quote from former Liberal justice minister David Lametti that summarises the mood: “We were dead and buried in December. Now we are going to form a government.”
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What does this mean for Canada’s relationship with the US?
Mark Carney, whom British readers will remember from his stint running the Bank of England, is the model of a modern central banker: competent, conventional, and colourless, more likely to be popular at Davos than in retail politics.
While the conventional wisdom for years has been that such figures are no longer viable political leaders, the specific circumstances in Canada this year have turned that analysis on its head. As he said himself in March: “I’m most useful in a crisis. I’m not that good in peacetime.”
Carney has promised to negotiate a new trade deal with the US, and said he hopes to meet Trump in person soon – but adds that Canada has the leverage to wait until the time is right to do so. In the meantime, he wants to focus on lowering internal trade barriers and bolstering major investment projects, such as housing construction, to spur the economy.
He has also said that the old relationship with the United States is over, and emphasised closer ties with the UK and Europe in his brief tenure as prime minister since he replaced Justin Trudeau. In his victory speech less than an hour ago, Carney said: “This is Canada, and we decide what happens here.” And he added: “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we must never forget the lessons.”
“Senior members of his team expect a call with Trump in the next few days,” Leyland said. “The US is obviously top of mind. We’re not talking about Europe becoming the dominant trading partner – but there will be an examination of whether the extent of the relationship with the US is still in Canada’s national interest.”
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What does it mean for Pierre Poilievre and the Conservatives?
Before the tariff and annexation issues blew up, Poilievre, generally regarded as an effective and experienced politician, thought he had hit on a winning formula: stop short of Trump’s most radical positions on issues such as immigration and the role of the government, but mimic the Maga movement’s embrace of culture war issues and persuade Canadians that someone aligned with Trump would be the best possible leader to deal with the White House.
It is now clear that this alignment was toxic. But whether the Conservatives are likely to tack back towards the centre is much less obvious, because the circumstances of this election were so remarkable – and it is anyone’s guess as to whether Trump will present such problematic baggage during the next election campaign.
“Poilievre leaned heavily on this more aggressive approach that energised the party base,” Leyland said. “In any other election, that might have been enough. But the collapse in the vote share for the smaller parties tilted things towards the Liberals.”
It’s too soon to say if Poilievre will be held personally responsible for the defeat. “Change did not get over the finish line tonight,” he said about an hour ago. “Change takes time. Most of all, it requires that we never give up.”
The CBC reported that he has told allies he wants to stay on as party leader, pointing to the fact that the Conservatives have their highest vote share in many years. The most immediate and stunning challenge to his hopes: he may have lost his own seat in Ontario, where he was trailing his Liberal opponent not long ago with 86% of votes counted.
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What about the smaller parties?
As the election turned into a binary choice about such a fundamental issue as which prime minister would be best placed to deal with the threat from Trump, the smaller parties appeared bound to suffer – and that was borne out in the results.
The New Democratic party, to the left of the Liberals, saw many of its supporters defect to Carney, and fell from 24 seats to fewer than 10; their leader, Jagmeet Singh, announced his resignation after being pushed into third place in his own seat. The separatist Bloc Québécois also saw their support collapse, falling from 32 seats to around 23. (Leyland’s piece from Montreal last week charts the damage done by Trump to the prospects of separatism in Quebec.)
The proportion of the vote share going to the two biggest parties is on track to be comfortably over 80%, the highest it’s been in almost 70 years. “The race was presidentialised,” Leyland said. “A lot of people who voted for the NDP in the past couldn’t see the point now. They have won majorities provincially, so the brand is not totally dead, but the federal wing has lost its way.”
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Is this result a model for other progressive parties?
Well … up to a point. Some liberals will undoubtedly take heart from the idea that a moderate centre-left politician without a radical prescription for reconstructing how the state operates has prevailed against a Trump-adjacent opponent – and the election stands as evidence that Trump’s unpopularity can be turned to his opponents’ advantage around the world.
But the circumstances in Canada are so specific, and Canada’s ties to the United States so unusually deep, that the parallels for other democracies are likely quite limited. And there is a danger that anyone who concludes that the way forward is to come across as a defender of the status quo is learning the wrong lesson. Studying Kamala Harris’s defeat in the US elections, after all, or looking at the state of French politics, would lead to very different conclusions.
But that is not to understate the significance of a seismic victory. “It’s an incumbent government surviving in what has recently felt like a sweep against them. And Donald Trump was on the ballot,” Leyland said. “This is the first major electoral repudiation of Trump outside of the United States. As one person put it to me: in Canada, we live on the edge of the volcano.”
What else we’ve been reading
After yesterday’s extraordinary blackout across Spain and Portugal, this picture gallery gives a sense of the wide-ranging impact. Archie
“A lot of Russians have been killed. We like this” – Luke Harding’s dispatch from the frontline of the war in Ukraine, where he stuck to the hip of an artillery unit and meets those living in the towns and villages, is a stunning read on the soldiers and civilians dragged into the war. Charlie Lindlar, acting deputy editor, newsletters
Border walls are meant to stop people moving freely – but they also have consequences for animals. Phoebe Weston’s report is a fascinating and bleak look at the ecological consequences, with one remarkable fact: there are now 74 border walls globally, against six in 1989. Archie
Author Quinn Slobodian has a great take on the Trumpian right’s obsession with IQ – where it comes from, its co-opting by Silicon Valley, and the dark path this “fetishism” leads down. Charlie
Run out of patience with your petulant pup? Sarah Phillips has helpfully spoken to a trio of experts on how to tame your badly behaved dog (or, I’m hoping, toddler). Charlie
Sport
Football | Two goals for Largie Ramazani helped Leeds United to a 4-0 against Bristol City, putting them on track to finish the season on 100 points and clinch the Championship title. Leeds fans chanted manager Daniel Farke’s name amid reports that he could be sacked ahead of the club’s ascent to the Premier League.
Cricket | Fourteen-year-old Vaibhav Suryavanshi became the youngest centurion in men’s Twenty20 cricket on Monday as he guided Rajasthan Royals to an eight-wicket victory over Gujarat Titans in an Indian Premier League match.
Football | Mikel Arteta has told the Arsenal support to “bring your boots” and “play every ball” with their team in the Champions League semi-final first-leg at home against Paris Saint-Germain on Tuesday night. The manager described the game as the biggest of his career and one of the most significant hosted by the Emirates Stadium.
The front pages
“Spain declares state of emergency after power blackout causes chaos” is the splash on the Guardian today, a story that also led the news on many other papers. “Net zero blamed for blackout chaos,” says the Telegraph, while the i runs with: “Spain and Portugal thrown into chaos after ‘rare weather event’ leads to mass blackouts.” “Pain as Spain mainly off the mains,” quips the Metro, while the Financial Times says: “Trains halt and traffic snarls as huge power cut strikes Spain and Portugal.”
“Culture of the untouchable,” is the lead story on the Mirror, on a warning to stars who abuse power. “Now Labour is facing a Summer of Discontent,” says the Mail, while the Express quotes Kemi Badenoch as saying: ‘“I will not let Labour destroy rural way of life.”’ Meanwhile the splash in the Times is: “Milkshake tax looms in broader sugar levy.”
Today in Focus
Labour v Reform UK: on the road in Runcorn
Helen Pidd heads to the industrial town before this week’s byelection. How will Labour fare in its first big electoral test since taking power? Kiran Stacey reports
Cartoon of the day | Rebecca Hendin
The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
Monty Python and the Holy Grail turns 50 this week. Guy Lodge looks back on watching the film at different stages of his life, and how it holds up now. “Half a century on, the film is palpably a product of its era – visible in its own stylings and those of the contemporary works it responds to – but the Python sensibility remains so strangely, dizzily sui generis that it can’t really date all that much,” he reckons.
To him, it remains “a film made to be recited by heart, hilarious even as second-hand evocation, and still possessed of pleasures and surprises that generations of cultists haven’t yet spoiled”.
Bored at work?
And finally, the Guardian’s puzzles are here to keep you entertained throughout the day. Until tomorrow.
