Political stability and the public’s global outlook: lessons from Canada, questions for Britain
Outside Downing Street last week, Andy Burnham’s first promise as UK prime minister was to help the nation “regain stability.” He is the sixth prime minister in a decade, taking office after a period in British politics that has felt anything but stable. Whether a change of political weather can shift how the public see the wider world is an open question — and new DEL data from Canada suggests that yes, it can.
An overlooked driver of disengagement
The go-to explanation for declining public engagement with global issues like extreme poverty and climate crises is economic. When people feel financially squeezed, attention turns inward, and concern for ‘distant’ problems becomes a luxury. DEL data broadly supports this: since 2022, rising concern about economic crises, job security and wages has crowded out concern for global issues in every country we track.
But Canada’s 2026 data suggests political instability may be an independent and significant driver of public disengagement, operating alongside economic anxiety. Indeed, even as economic concerns in Canada remain high, a less tumultuous political landscape seems to have been enough to turn Canadians’ perspectives outward.
Canada’s difficult year
The early months of 2025 were acutely turbulent for Canada in ways that went far beyond the economy. Justin Trudeau announced his resignation in January, opening a months-long leadership vacuum that coincided with looming trade war with the United States, tariff threats, and even rhetoric from Washington about annexation. Consumer confidence fell to multi-year lows.
DEL data from 2025 shows a public turned sharply inward. Eighty-three percent of Canadians said the world was getting worse — Canada’s highest reading since DEL began tracking. The share of those Purposively or Fully Engaged with global poverty had fallen to 25 percent, down from 36 percent in 2023. Concern for issues in developing countries stood at 30 percent. The picture was of a public absorbed by domestic anxieties, with little bandwidth left for the wider world.
What changed when stability returned
Mark Carney won the Liberal leadership in March 2025, called a snap election in April, and won it — campaigning explicitly on resisting U.S. pressure. Consumer confidence began recovering within weeks of the vote. By the time DEL conducted its February 2026 fieldwork, the government held approval ratings around 52 percent, and Carney’s personal favourability was strongly net positive.
The February 2026 data showed several indicators moving outward at once. Pessimism fell seven percentage points, from 83 to 76 percent — the largest single-year improvement recorded anywhere in the DEL panel. Engagement stopped falling: after sliding from 36 to 25 percent over three years, the Purposively/Fully Engaged share stabilised at 26 percent. Concern for issues in developing countries rose four points to 34 percent — the only issue category to rise significantly, making it joint-second among Canadians’ top concerns and the highest such figure across the five DEL countries. Canadians were also talking about global poverty more: 48 percent had discussed it with friends, family or others in the past year, up three points and ahead of France, Germany, Great Britain and the United States. Finally, Canadians’ sense of interconnectedness was holding firm: 47 percent rejected the idea that what happens in developing countries rarely affects them — higher than in Britain or the U.S. — showing no retreat inward despite a live trade conflict.
The crucial point is what did not change: U.S. tariffs remain in place; trade talks with Washington collapsed in October 2025; the cost of living has not materially improved, and economic worry remains Canadians’ top concern at 50 percent. The economic fundamentals behind the gloom were essentially unchanged between the two readings. What changed was the political environment: in the form of Carney, a period of acute instability resolved into something more settled.
The hypothesis this suggests is simple, and we offer it as a hypothesis rather than a finding: not only does political stability interact with economic conditions to affect engagement, but it’s likely these are also independently capable of driving engagement with global issues. In other words, the political climate may be as worthy of close attention as the economy, namely by those working on campaigns, fundraising and even policymaking. Chalking up falling donations and poor engagement with global issues to economic crises alone is too simplistic, when a cooling political environment may offer its own opportunity for catching the attention of new and old followers alike.
A familiar picture across the Atlantic
This is where the Canadian case becomes interesting beyond Canada.
DEL’s most recent Great Britain data, collected in November 2025 — a full six months before Burnham took office — shows a public in a strikingly similar position to Canada at its lowest point: 84 percent of Britons said the world was getting worse, virtually identical to Canada’s 83 percent. 38 percent were Totally Disengaged from global poverty and development, a record high since DEL began tracking in 2019. Concern for issues in developing countries stood at 18 percent. And the political backdrop bears comparison: a government that had lost public confidence amid policy U-turns and local election defeats, months before the prime minister’s resignation.
This is a parallel, not a prediction. The fieldwork windows differ; the political contexts differ in important ways; and correlation between political events and public mood is not causation. Britain’s disengagement also runs considerably deeper than Canada’s did — 38% Totally Disengaged against roughly 26% — which suggests other, more structural factors at work alongside any political effect.
What we can say is that the resemblance is close enough to be worth watching.
What to watch
The next Great Britain wave of the DEL research – due out in August 2026 – will be the real test. If the Canadian pattern is replicated across countries — if political stability, even without economic improvement, is enough to begin shifting public mood outward — we would expect to see British pessimism ease, disengagement at least stabilise, and concern for global issues begin to recover over the coming waves. If it doesn’t, that’s informative too: it would suggest Britain’s disengagement has deeper roots than political uncertainty alone, and that the sector faces a more structural challenge in rebuilding public engagement.
Mr Burnham has promised stability. Canada’s data suggests that, if he delivers it, the effects may reach further than Westminster — into how the British public sees its place in the world.
