When Mark Carney took the job as governor of the Bank of England in 2013, he negotiated a five-year term rather than the traditional eight-year tenure. The sense was that he was eager to get back to Canada to run for office in the next federal election. But that election came and went in 2019, and Carney instead extended his tenure at the Bank, ultimately leaving it in 2020. A year later, the Guardian asked him whether he’d be prime minister of Canada some day. Carney was deliberately coy. “Er, look at the time!” he laughed, with a raised eyebrow.
No need to be cute any more. On Sunday evening, Carney won the Liberal leadership race in a landslide, capturing 85.9% of the overall riding points on the first count. The party allocates 100 possible points to each constituency (or ridings, as they’re known), and those points are distributed based on the ratio won by each candidate in each riding (the ballots are ranked). Carney’s commanding win outdoes even that of his predecessor, Justin Trudeau, who won the leadership in 2013 with a little over 80% of the points.
