Unassuming ex-bureaucrats are being parachuted in to do… what? The triumph of Mark Carney in the Canadian election has turned what seemed like a series of local flukes into a global trend. The political mainstream has begun to despair of its own leaders, and now feels compelled to parachute in stately ex-mandarins of a slick, personalist style – figures who seem to stand above the factions. Call them “liberal Caesars.” Carney is only the latest example. He joins the former banker and technocrat