In May 1925, Robert Carney and Nora Moran left the tiny village of Aghagower on the foothill of Croagh Patrick, Co Mayo, the place where St Patrick had founded his first church in AD 441. Robert was 23, Nora 22, and they were bound for a new life in Canada. When they arrived at Grosse Isle, Montreal, in the summer of 1925, their total possessions were valued at £5, about €500 in today’s money. With that meagre sum, Robert and Nora managed to cross this vast country, settling in Alberta.

When their grandson, Mark Carney, was in charge of sterling as governor of the Bank of England, he kept a print of Aghagower on the wall behind his desk, lest anyone forget where he was from.

Today, as prime minster of Canada, Carney is one of the few politicians to stand up to Donald Trump – and it’s a role he appears to relish. No other politician in the West has the stature of Carney, a man whose intellectual pedigree is unsurpassed. He understands that we are in the middle of a cultural, economic and political war between authoritarians and democrats.

The history and the norms of the past 70 years – multilateralism, independent judiciaries and central banks, respect for international treaties – are up for grabs, and Carney is prepared to fight for them. What at Davos he called “the rupture” between the US and Canada is real, and when you are in Toronto, you feel it.

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Given his prominent role as the anti-Trump politician, even he would admit there is no Mark Carney without Donald Trump. Carney’s unexpected victory in last year’s Canadian election proved that Trump is such a........

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