DONALD Trump’s main trick is doing nothing to conceal his motives. While his rivals use high moral rhetoric to cover up shabby and vulgar realities, he revels in vulgarity. All the dark and dirty habits, all the power fantasies of a flawed human being are right on the surface, from money-grubbing to pussy-grabbing. That’s why many otherwise intelligent people trust him despite all his lies, and why liberals think he is the devil.

Liberals of all countries usually unite in celebrating all things American, so it’s been a tough year. Fortunately, though, they’ve found their anti-Trump. If you are liberal, hope lies to the north in the shape of Canada’s “telegenic” Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

Trudeau breezed into politics, having been surrounded by cameras since birth. He is the son of Pierre Trudeau, Canada’s most famous Prime Minister, and the grandson of Scottish-born James Sinclair, who served in Canada’s cabinet as minister of fisheries.

However, his appeal is based on more than privileges of birth. Trudeau is unnervingly handsome for a political leader, and he looks great in a selfie, but he also delivers moving rhetoric. On identity and lifestyle issues, he has a habit of saying the right things with a soothing yet edgy style. His quips are a thing of liberal legend. When asked why he was taking gender parity seriously in naming his cabinet, he responded: “Because it’s 2015.” He attends Pride, poses with refugees and sings along to Lady Gaga. He expresses solidarity with Canada’s First Nations and ethnic minorities. Stylistically he’s the anti-Trump. But practically he can be just as dangerous.

With Trump, the vulgarity is plain. His words are ugly, his hair is ugly, his manner is ugly, his hands are, well, unmistakably creepy, and best observed from a safe distance. With alarm bells ringing non-stop, the liberal commentariat are doing double and triple shifts, observing their civic duty in holding his administration to account for every real or imagined crime.

Trudeau is the opposite. The rhetoric sounds great. It’s not just persuasive, it’s got an air of mischief to it. As Jacobin magazine points out, Trudeau embodies the ideal of an “edgy White liberal” and can be thought of as a “living TED talk”. He’s rather like one of those designer billionaires who plays stock markets by day and campaigns against gender inequality by night.

Liberals gush in his presence. Trudeau was last month rapturously welcomed to the University of Edinburgh, where he was awarded an honorary doctorate. Ordinarily, student radicals would be furiously protesting a leader representing the country that’s the second biggest arms dealer to the Middle East. Trudeau arrived having just approved a $15 billion weapons sale to Saudi Arabia, which Freedom House regularly cites as the “worst of the worst” on human rights.

The klepto-theocratic regime is not only odiously oppressive and belligerent. It’s also, no pun unintended, a mecca of misogyny. But Trudeau, the self-declared feminist, is unmoved, arguing that scrapping the deal would make Canada a “banana republic”. And, by all accounts, nobody in Edinburgh seemed bothered.

Trudeau’s bluster on Canada’s indigenous “First Nations” is even more questionable. He’s quite happy to play the game, to wear a headdress and to express great and sincere remorse for Canada’s bloody colonial past. Before his election, the Canadian Truth and Reconciliation Commission made 94 recommendations for action on indigenous rights. Trudeau promised to implement them all. But he didn’t want to make Canada a banana republic – so he’s ignored virtually all of them.

Meanwhile, Trudeau has licensed oil and energy companies to ride roughshod over indigenous rights where they stand in the way of so-called development. Stolen indigenous lands are at the centre of a new wave of fracking, mining and pipeline works, and Trudeau has promoted land and resource grabs with matchless vigour.

Perhaps most importantly, there are trade deals like CETA. Initially, you can count this among the reasons that liberals love Trudeau. Since populists like Trump are against NAFTA and TTIP, the logic follows that we should support them – right? Don’t trade deals make our society more open and tolerant?

Only if you aren’t paying attention. Shadowy, undemocratic trade deals that undermine workers’ rights are not the antidote to “populism”, they are one of its principal causes. Professor Joseph Stiglitz, a key intellectual supporter of the EU, said last year that TTIP was so bad that he would consider supporting Brexit if it allowed Britain to escape the deal. CETA is essentially another version of TTIP that would allow American multinationals with bases in Canada to sue European governments that passed laws against their interests.

Trudeau is the bright shining star of those who want a return to free markets. Trade deals inevitably go with the package.

And that’s the bind we’re in. “Official” ideology makes it near impossible to support inclusion and tolerance without the free market – yet the failing free market is the main reason for the ongoing decline in tolerant and inclusive values.

Trudeau represents the hopes of those who wish “populism” would just go away. He’s the icon of wealthy white Americans who hate Trump. But he’s also the embodiment of everything the Blairites would like in place of Jeremy Corbyn.

Stylistically, he gets it right. That’s why he’s trusted by all the people who fear Trump’s brash indifference to polite decency. But, after a point, as Tony Blair learned, charm and fresh presentation can quickly become smarmy and an oily manner, and today’s wonder boy becomes tomorrow’s hated pawn.

By pushing for more Justin Trudeaus we’ll inevitably produce more Donald Trumps, just as, by electing Macron, the French virtually guarantee a future of Marine Le Pen. There’s a reason why the political centre ground is failing everywhere. You can’t fix that problem with a million-dollar smile and ten million cute selfies.