Everyone Won (Apparently)
Trump declared total victory. Iran declared total victory. Vance fought foreign interference from a Fidesz rally. Carney absorbed another Conservative. It was quite a week.
This week, we run the issues scan across three stories that share an uncomfortable theme: everyone has a story about winning, and almost none of them hold up.
First up, the Iran ceasefire. After nearly six weeks of Operation Epic Fury, the US and Iran agreed to a two-week pause in the fighting — announced on Truth Social less than two hours before Trump’s own deadline, the one where he threatened to send Iran “back to the stone ages.”
Both sides declared total victory. The problem is the Strait of Hormuz is still largely closed, over 400 tankers remain anchored in the Persian Gulf, and Iran is now demanding tolls for ships passing through what used to be an international waterway.
We break down what the stated war aims actually were, whether any of them were achieved, and why Trump’s inability to set modest goals — and stick to them — has handed the Iranian regime a survival story it will tell for decades.
Andrew puts it plainly: if you’re going to take on a despotic regime, you have to do it from the moral high ground. Threatening to wipe out a civilization is not that.
Then, the floor crossings.
Conservative MP Marilyn Gladu became the fifth MP to cross to the Liberals since last April’s election, bringing Carney’s seat count to 171 — one short of a majority. With three byelections on April 13th in Scarborough Southwest, University–Rosedale, and Terrebonne, a Liberal majority is now a question of when, not if.
What makes Gladu’s crossing so striking isn’t just the number — it’s who she is. An MP who aggressively challenged the COVID response, pushed back on vaccine policy, fought the conversion therapy ban, and voted to restrict abortion is now a Liberal.
I credit Fred Delorey for the framing: what we’re seeing isn’t just Conservative dysfunction — it’s Mark Carney operating as a ruthless political player. The whole caucus is now available for picking, not just the red Tory wing. And for Pierre Poilievre, Andrew draws the parallel nobody wants to hear: Jeremy Corbyn nearly won in 2017, and by 2019 the public had moved on. Moments pass.
Finally, Hungary.
On April 7th — five days before the election — US Vice President JD Vance flew to Budapest, stood on stage with Viktor Orbán, called Trump on his phone so the crowd could hear “I love Hungary and I love Viktor,” and told voters to stand with Orbán at the polls. He did all of this on the same day he called EU behaviour “one of the worst examples of foreign election interference I have ever seen.”
Andrew doesn’t mince words on the hypocrisy — and draws on his own experience as a British MP who did Council of Europe election monitoring to explain just how extraordinary Vance’s visit actually was.
I flag the Russia angle: the Financial Times has reported a Kremlin-linked operation flooding Hungarian social media to boost Orbán — and now you have the US and Russia aligned on the same side of a European election. Andrew’s line: the MAGA obsession with strongmen is being used by Putin like a useful idiot.
The Hungarian election is April 12th. Independent polls have Tisza up 16 to 19 points. We’ll see.
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