Is it perhaps a sign of the times that Mark Carney, the prime minister of Canada, has become a thrilling orator? A sober banker, he speaks calmly, without many vocal inflections. We expect Canadians to be somewhat flat; even a little boring, and yet Carney has already delivered two remarkable speeches in 2026, and the year is far from over.

The first, at Davos, described a “rupture in the world order”, and “the end of a pleasant fiction”. By that, he meant that the world could no longer depend on the United States to lead the Pax Americana that has largely kept the peace since the end of the second world war.

Carney called for a new “geometry”, allowing nations with shared values to align, and asking middle-sized powers to act together, “because if we’re not at the table, we’re on the menu”. The United States, traditionally the leader of the west, was not invited to join. Ironically, the speech was delivered on 20 January, the first anniversary of Donald Trump’s second inauguration.

The second speech was a 23-minute address, delivered last Saturday, on 22 August, from a drab government interior in Ottawa. The backdrop was unexceptional, a set of eight Canadian flags, behind a wooden podium (carved with a maple leaf). There were few rhetorical fireworks. He hardly ever raised his voice.

Yet the speech signaled an earthquake. The news, as widely reported, was that Carney was calling off the trade talks that many expected to resolve or reduce the trade frictions that have been in place ever since Trump slapped his first round of tariffs on Canada, shortly ever assuming office.

The failure of the talks surely came as a surprise to Donald Trump, who had announced that a deal was imminent. But as is so often the case, US negotiators had undermined their own position with a series of last-minute power moves, bullying the other side.

In this way, the failure was reminiscent of the way the Trump administration continues to blow up its own peace deals in the Middle East, by adding new conditions at the........

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