Justin Trudeaus downfall reveals Trumps power to galvanize voters worldwide

Winning the 2024 election was only the beginning — the Trump effect is now sweeping the globe.From Canada to Europe, left-liberal governments are tottering while right-leaning voters, especially young men, gravitate toward populist politics and take inspiration from Donald Trump’s success in America.It’s almost as if Trump himself were on the ballot in other advanced democracies.Recent polls showing Trump to be more popular in Canada than the country’s own prime minister, Justin Trudeau, presaged Trudeau’s announcement this week of his resignation as Liberal Party leader and impending replacement as head of government.Will Britain’s Keir Starmer, who’s only been in office since July, ultimately face a similar fate?Starmer’s dismal, Biden-like — and Trudeau-like — poll numbers suggest so: In mid-December YouGov measured the Labour prime minister’s net favorability at negative 41%.Starmer has years to go before elections have to be called, but he’s already established himself as Britain’s answer to Biden — decades younger though he might be.Left-liberal leaders like Trudeau and Starmer are architects of their own ruin, to be sure: Like their counterparts in America’s Democratic Party, they’ve shown themselves to be economically inept and wildly out of touch with voters’ desires to limit immigration.Yet that’s true of the center-right parties in all too many parts of the world, too, which is why Britain’s Conservatives lost the last election and Canada’s Tories have been out of power for a decade.Voters already know how inadequate the leadership of a Trudeau or a Starmer is. But to mobilize voters’ dissatisfaction requires a strong voice in opposition to the left — someone willing to mock the pretensions of these worse-than-mediocre premiers and offer a stark alternative on immigration and other urgent issues.Trump may not be able to run for office in Britain or Canada, but he can and does provide that voice for the right, e...