Beyond The Realm?

None of yer AI-generated. The next Pope should post a photograph of himself dressed as Donald Trump. Like that of the Canadian Liberal Party, the victory of the Australian Labor Party (no one knows; the word is spelt the British way in all other contexts in Australia) is not in itself anything to celebrate, and that of Mark Carney or Anthony Albanese gives no cause for joy even by those standards.

But both results, complete with the losses of Pierre Poilievre's and Peter Dutton's own seats, demonstrate that the mere insinuation of a connection to Trump is toxic in the Right's beloved "Anglosphere". Even in the United States' largest trading partner, with which it shares the world's longest border, within 100 miles of which lives the huge majority of the Canadian population. And even in the United States' closest military ally, the only other country to have participated openly and officially in every American war since 1945.

So much for the British Government's insistence that it had to remain neutral on the Trump Question. That was not the only reason for Labour's wipeout on Thursday, but it clearly did the party no good. The strong showing for Reform UK indicates a body of pro-Trump opinion, while the gains by the Liberal Democrats, who came second, and by the Greens indicate the strength of anti-Trumpers. But the Lib Dems are mostly fighting, and beating, the pro-Trump Conservatives. It is Labour that needs to worry about Reform. It needs to get off the fence.

Grander figures even than Keir Starmer have managed. On the twenty-seventh of this month, the King, who is 76 and seriously ill, will have made the three thousand mile trip to Ottawa to deliver the Speech from the Throne, the first time that the monarch will have done that in person in 48 years. Whatever his words, his message could not be clearer. Across at least five parties and two Independents in the House of Commons alone, the British Right has a choice to make.