Winds of change

THE EDITOR, Madam:

Winds of change have been howling around Washington, DC, with the intensity of a Force 12 Gale in the 100 days since President Trump was inaugurated, and the eye of Category Five Hurricane Donald is behind the Resolute Desk in the Oval Office.

After losing in 2020 he reinvigorated his base with a highly successful 2024 election, and the winds of change now radiate outwards, by blowing a Trump Factor into elections abroad. First they blew across the northern border into Canada, where the Conservative Party held a 28 per cent lead over the ruling Liberal Party of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. By January Trudeau resigned, and his party chose a neophyte to replace him; Mark Carney, a financier who had never been elected even as a dog catcher, and he called for a snap election. Within days that 28 per cent evaporated as fast as you can say ‘Trump Factor’; the campaign became all about trade wars and tariffs.

Voters responding on April 28 to elect the Liberal Party for a fourth term, despite their abysmal record of mumbling, fumbling and bumbling around really serious issues in every Canadian community. Housing shortages and overpricing, homelessness and tent cities, opioid addiction and mental illness, cost-of-living and inflation, urban crime and revolving-door justice, along with many other major problems either appeared or worsened during their dismal decade. PM Carney has inherited all the MPs who mismanaged for so long, yet promises to reverse Liberal Party policies by putting Canada on a new fast track in building homes, industries, oil pipelines and LNG plants, etc.

A few days later, winds of change ripped across the Pacific to Australia where an election produced an almost identical result to Canada with the centre-left defeating the centre-right, and was attributed to the Trump Factor Down Under, again fearful of trade wars and tariffs. Simultaneously, English politics received a huge hammering when Hurricane Donald huffed and puffed over the Atlantic to blow away the long-established Conservative Party and badly damage the Labour Party in local elections. Those winds of change came in the form of the fledgling Reform Party, whose leader Nigel Farage is a long-time follower and sycophant of Mr Trump. Thomas Jefferson once said: “The government you elect is the government you deserve”, and as a signatory to the Declaration of Independence in 1776, he knew a few things about the winds of change.

BERNIE SMITH

Parksville, BC

Canada