The Global Progress Action Summit brought together center-left leaders in Toronto to confront a troubling reality: far-right politics no longer occupies the political fringe but operates as a mainstream force reshaping governance globally.
The conference, featuring speeches from former President Barack Obama and Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney, positioned itself as the progressive answer to CPAC, the influential conservative gathering that has become a launching pad for populist and far-right movements. The comparison itself reveals the shift. Where the right once gathered at CPAC to discuss ideas at the margins, those same ideologies now dominate major political conversations and electoral outcomes across democracies.
This normalization of far-right politics presents an existential challenge for center-left parties worldwide. Traditional progressive coalitions built on postwar consensus have fractured. Populist-right movements exploit economic anxieties, immigration concerns, and cultural grievances more effectively than center-left parties respond to them. The result: far-right candidates and parties win elections, influence policy, and set the terms of debate.
The summit's framing as a "progressive version of CPAC" acknowledges this new reality. Progressives no longer compete in a landscape where left and center-left occupy the dominant institutional space. They now fight for relevance against movements that command voter loyalty through direct appeals to national identity, economic nationalism, and cultural conservatism.
For governance, this shift carries concrete implications. Far-right parties now hold coalition power in European parliaments, shape judicial appointments in democracies, and influence trade and immigration policy. Center-left governments must either adopt modified versions of far-right messaging or cede political territory entirely. Neither option restores the postwar consensus these parties once took for granted.
The gathering in Toronto suggests center-left leaders recognize this transformation but remain uncertain how to counter it. Building a conference to compete with CPAC implicitly concedes