US president Donald Trump is often regarded as a divisive disruptor whose principal political skill is for pitting people against each other. Twice in the last fortnight, however, Trump has revealed another side to his character: a remarkable unifier, who has persuaded the diverse peoples of somewhat discontented countries to rally together as one. 

Trump should not clear space on the Oval Office mantlepiece for that long-coveted Nobel Peace Prize yet, however. He didn’t do it on purpose – indeed, quite the opposite. In Canada and Australia, Trump accidentally helped get floundering centre-left governments returned to office, and just as inadvertently damned his fellow conservatives in both countries to the kind of sensational defeat in which the party leader loses not only the election, but their seat. As recently as Trump’s inauguration on 20 January, Pierre Poilievre and Peter Dutton had every reason to believe that, by now, they would have congratulated each other on becoming prime minister of Canada and Australia respectively. Instead, both are unemployed.

The two situations are not precisely analogous. Trump has not, at least as of this writing, threatened to annex Australia – though he has imposed punitive tariffs on several Australian territories, including the Heard and McDonald Islands, which are inhabited only by seals and penguins, and are holders of no known trade surplus with the United States. But just as Trump’s musings on Canada becoming America’s 51^st state, and his deriding of Carney’s predecessor as “Governor Trudeau” galvanised Canadians to deliver the result that would vex Trump most, Australia’s incumbent Labor party won partly by tagging their conservative opponents as Trump surrogates.

Australia’s conservatives – the confusingly named Liberal Party – did not help themselves. Their leader, Peter Dutton, who is a doughty culture warrior, spoke highly of Trump. Dutton endowed the Liberals’ shadow indigenous affairs minister, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, with an unsubtly foreshadowed portfolio for “government efficiency”; she spoke of wanting to “make Australia great again.” 

It was foolish on a couple of levels. Not only do recent polls show Australia’s enthusiasm for the United States ebbing since Trump’s return, but Australia enforces a compulsory vote. It’s tough to win elections pandering to a base of seething weirdos marinaded in social-media conspiracy theories. Australia has its own rumbustious billionaire with political aspirations: Clive Palmer, whose Trumpet of Patriots party spent a fortune in this election, did not win a single seat.

Possibly tellingly, Peter Dutton’s concession speech was notably un-Trumpian. He was graceful, humble and generous, telling the re-elected prime minister, Anthony Albanese, that his single mother who raised him in public housing would be proud. In Australia, this was received with bemusement akin to that which might be prompted in MAGA-land if Trump posted an image of himself enjoying the latest book by Hillary Clinton, or indeed the latest book by anybody.

Centre-left parties across the Western world will be wondering if invoking Trump might also work for them. In the UK, this month’s local elections were a triumph for Reform UK, the latest flag of convenience for inextinguishable Brexiter populist Nigel Farage. It would be surprising if the UK’s governing Labour party has not pencilled in an early election for 2028 while Trump still occupies the White House, with a view to upholstering the country with pictures of Farage leering in Trump Tower’s gold elevator.

In the meantime, such parties have to find a way to govern in a world that is dominated by Trump. Mark Carney visited the White House this week – one hopes he took flowers, much as Alice Cooper thanked the British morals campaigner Mary Whitehouse, circa the early 1970s, for her efforts to get “School’s Out” banned from the BBC (it topped UK charts). Carney was firm but courteous, and hailed Trump as a “transformational president”. Perhaps during his stint as Governor of the Bank of England, Carney acquired a taste for passive-aggressive British obituary euphemisms, in which an infamous crook will be recalled as an “enterprising businessman”, a pestilential lecher a “ladies’ man” and an illiterate yobbo a “man of simple tastes”. 

Trump shortly faces two further foreign electoral tests. In presidential elections in Poland and Romania, Trumpism is on the ballot in some shape or form. Opponents of those candidates should not be shy about saying so.