Carney styled himself as the man to take on Trump – but another challenge looms

Mark Carney styled himself as the man to take on Trump – Canadians took him at his word.

The polls had long shown that he was the finance man trusted to take the fight to the nemesis next door. Canadians confirmed it.

He had been belligerent in his dealings with President Trump and he carried it on to the victory stage when he addressed supporters inside an Ottawa ice arena.

He spoke of a “hinge moment of history”, “American betrayal” and said “President Trump is trying to break us so he can own us”.

It was “Canada strong” rhetoric that was threaded through his election campaign and reflects a new politics moulded by the new president across the border.

In winning this election, Carney is the political rookie who has pulled off an astonishing political comeback.

His Liberal Party was 25 points behind in the polls – turning that round signifies the biggest reversal in modern politics.

Carney’s liberals, once written off, have now written history.

Carney, 60, is the former banker with crisis management on his CV.

He was the Bank of England governor through Brexit, having led the Bank of Canada through the 2008 crash.

He invoked the experience on the campaign trail, pitching his expertise in discussion and dispute with Donald Trump.

Carney demonstrated political acumen in framing Trump as an existential threat to Canada, simultaneously talking up the US president as the danger and himself as the antidote.

He sensed, and seized, the national mood. His political skills would be tested further in leading a minority government.

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It’s nothing new to the Canadian parliament, nor to his Liberal Party, but it presents the grinding challenge of politics in the raw and will test Carney’s personality and instinct, not necessarily taught in the texts that propelled him to high finance and fortune.

It is the looming domestic challenge, however, overshadowed by the pressing matter of foreign policy and the “existential” threat from Donald Trump.

Winning the election was a political challenge that mattered to Mark Carney.

To Canada, the next one matters more.