America

The Democrats dare to hope that this week will be a study in contrasts. On their side stands President Joe Biden, the veteran statesman, using all his diplomatic experience to stop a third world war breaking out in the Middle East. On the other, in the dock in Manhattan, sits Donald Trump, facing 34 criminal counts in a case relating to porn stars, adultery and hush money. As Biden urges Israel to ‘think carefully’ as it considers how to respond to Iran’s attack last weekend, Trump is, as ever, ranting away about himself. This speaks to Biden’s 2024 re-election pitch: it’s democracy (him) vs chaos (you know who). Trump can

Emmanuel Macron told a communist newspaper earlier this year that he didn’t consider Marine le Pen’s National Rally part of the ‘Republican arc’. By extension, the French president presumably thinks the same of the 13,288,686 million men and women who voted for Le Pen in the second round of the 2022 presidential election. In the event of a war with Russia, or another hostile state, would the president therefore consider Le Pen voters unworthy of serving in the Republic’s military? The average Le Pen supporter has much in common with Britain’s Red Wall voter; they tend not to have gone to university, to have been hit hard by deindustrialisation and

When I was first asked to join the O.J. defence team, I declined, because I had appeared on television and opined that he was probably guilty. Bob Shapiro responded by saying, ‘At this time, everyone thinks he’s guilty, but we have to look at all the evidence.’ He also reminded me that O.J. was facing the death penalty and that I generally don’t decline capital cases. With these considerations in mind, I accepted the role as legal and constitutional consultant to the defence team and designated appellate lawyer in the event he was convicted. O.J. referred to me as his ‘God-forbid lawyer.’ Every defendant is entitled zealous representation, but many

When more than two-thirds of the American electorate doesn’t want to vote for either major party’s nominee, a third party should have a chance. Polls have demonstrated that whichever party chucked its front-runner would win –even if it nominated a cloned sheep. Yet last week, having failed to convince a prominent politician to sign up, No Labels closed shop. Whichever wretched candidate wins, we’ll just have slightly different problems The centrist project was doomed from the start. The formation of a successful ‘unity party’ is inherently unlikely in an era of rabid polarisation. Republicans and Democrats differ substantially on policy issues, and compromise positions on tax, Israel, Ukraine, immigration, and

David Cameron has got some front. The Foreign Secretary is haranguing Israel over its tragic unintentional killing of seven aid workers in Gaza, and yet he oversaw a war in which such ‘friendly fire’ horrors were commonplace. In fact, more than seven people were slain in accidental bombings under Cameron’s watch. Terrible accidents happen in war It was the Libya intervention of 2011. In that Nato-led excursion, in which Cameron, then prime minister, was an enthusiastic partner, numerous Libyans died as a result of misaimed bombs. Things got so bad that the West’s allies took to painting the roofs of their vehicles bright pink in an effort to avoid Nato’s

Among the many political advantages of the presidency, surely one is the ability to extend warm wishes to Christians, Jews and Muslims on their holidays. It’s a golden opportunity to invite a few for pictures at the White House and explain how much the holiday has always meant to you. Easy-peasy. For a Catholic president such as Joe Biden, expressing solidarity with co-religionists on Easter ought to be a well-practiced routine.  Which voter group does the White House think its exclusionary message appeals to?  It took genuine incompetence and obtuseness for the Biden White House to muck up the chance to reach out to fellow Christians on the holiest day

With Donald Trump confirmed as the Republican nominee, a group of NeverTrump conservatives have tried to hit the former president somewhere vulnerable: the musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber. The Lincoln Project, an organisation led by old-school Republicans, has released a video parodying one of the tunes most associated with Trump’s rallies – the theme song from The Phantom of the Opera. Trump has a profound love of musical theatre, particularly the work of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Since 2015, songs like ‘The Music of the Night’, ‘All I Ask of You’ and ‘The Phantom of the Opera’ have been part of his pre-speech soundtrack. He revealed in Think Like a Billionaire that he saw

When I first started teaching undergraduates at Harvard, the grading system the university employed struck me as very odd. Even ambitious students at top colleges in the United States see it as their job to answer any essay question in the most thorough and reasonable way. They regurgitate the dominant view in scholarly literature in a competent manner. If they pull this off without making major errors, they fully expect to get an A. And with grade inflation rampant in the Ivy League, they usually do. This attitude has had a significant influence on American public life. If you read an opinion piece in the New York Times or the

President Joe Biden has been touring Nevada and Arizona in an attempt to win back disgruntled Hispanic voters. ‘This guy despises Latinos,’ he said, speaking of his adversary Donald Trump, the inevitable Republican nominee. Trump’s response? He posted the following on his Truth Social page: Laugh or scorn all you want. The polls show Trump now has majority support Hispanic voters.

The United States is heading for a Donald Trump vs Joe Biden rematch in this year’s presidential election. US leader Joe Biden is the presumptive presidential nominee for the Democratic Party after his victory overnight in the Georgia primary pushed him passed the threshold of 1,968 delegates. Donald Trump also passed the threshold of 1,215 delegates to become the presumptive nominee for the Republican Party, following his triumphs in Georgia, Mississippi and Washington. Biden’s approval rating is lagging behind Trump’s at the same stage of his presidency ‘It is my great honour to be representing the Republican Party as its Presidential Nominee,’ Trump wrote on Truth Social. ‘Fear not, we will not

President Joe Biden compared himself to presidents Franklin Roosevelt and Abraham Lincoln, and his Republican opponents to Hitler, Nazis and the Confederacy during Thursday night’s State of the Union – and that was just in the first ninety seconds. Before two minutes had gone by, he’d lumped the Grand Old Party in with Russian president Vladimir Putin for good measure. Having cracked a decent joke and demagogued his opponents, the President was off to the races. By the third minute, he’d reached his next most important goal: more money for war in Ukraine. By minute four, he’d mentioned former president Donald Trump, though not by name. His ‘predecessor’, as he

When US policy-makers supported Nato expansion in the 1990s, it was widely believed that America, as the sole remaining superpower, could impose its will and leadership across the globe. ‘An American century’, ‘indispensable nation’, ‘the unipolar moment’, ‘benign hegemony’ – these became the new buzz-words of Washington’s political class. The rhetoric turned bellicose after 9/11, when outrage over the terrorist attacks, together with the mental habits of global supremacy and American exceptionalism, gave US leaders a clear, overriding sense of mission and purpose. Hillary Clinton reflected this notion of the country’s omni-potence as secretary of state in 2010 when she declared that ‘it is in our DNA’ to believe ‘there