America

Well, well, well. President-elect Donald Trump may have snubbed Sir Keir Starmer and missed off the new US ambassador Peter Mandelson when he was sending out his inauguration invites but there is one Labour figure who has been deemed privileged enough to make the cut. Steerpike can reveal that Lord Maurice Glasman is currently making his way to DC after being personally invited to the ceremony by the Trump team. How very interesting… The Labour peer and author of Blue Labour is, Mr S understands, heading out to the presidential inauguration – and appears to be the only Labour figure to have been expressly invited by the president’s top team,

Greenland’s prime minister Múte Egede has responded to Donald Trump’s overtures to buy the island by saying it is time to shake off ‘the shackles of colonialism’ and hold an independence referendum. As Egede works out how to proceed on the path to independence from Denmark, and how to respond to Trump as he prepares to take office, he would be advised to do a little background reading. For Donald Trump’s policies are increasingly informed by his key lieutenant, Elon Musk; Musk’s friend and fellow PayPal co-founder Ken Howery will be the next US Ambassador to Denmark; and Musk’s key philosophical text is The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, which reminds us: ‘Space

Censorship and the silencing of dissenting voices has been a defining feature of the 21st century. It’s curious, because it wasn’t meant to be like this. This epoch, as the tech libertarian utopians of the 1990s so eagerly pronounced, was going to be one of unprecedented and untrammelled freedom. The internet, which burst into public consciousness back then, promised as much. Social media, which erupted a decade later, promised even more. And then it all went wrong. I was cancelled by Facebook for writing about why men are funnier than women We shouldn’t have been surprised. Ideologies based on utopian fantasies, underpinned by the illusion that mankind can be perfected, inevitably

Another day, another story that risks further exacerbating tensions between the world’s richest man and the prime minister. The Mirror reports that Elon Musk’s posts on X (the platform he owns) are being monitored by the Home Office’s counter-extremism unit as part of an increased effort to assess the risk posed to Britain by tweets sent from those with large followings. The news will go down like a cup of cold sick with Musk who has long railed against the UK government over censorship. It’s just another indicator of how the strained relationship between Keir Starmer and Musk is unlikely to improve anytime soon. But are things so bad that

No one can accuse President-elect Donald Trump of failing to be transparent about his intentions and plans. Speaking at a lengthy news conference at Mar-a-Lago, Trump promised to rename the Gulf of Mexico the ‘Gulf of America’. He also refused to rule out employing military force to reclaim the Panama Canal and to seize Greenland. He did, however, exempt Canada, declaring that he would rely solely on ‘economic force’ to create a great union between the two countries. All that was missing was a vow to reunite with Great Britain and Trump would have reverse-engineered much of the British empire. Trump had good reason to feel bullish. For one thing, Meta CEO Mark

When Donald Trump won the US election, the writing was on the wall for Nick Clegg at Meta. Now, just a few weeks before Trump’s inauguration, Clegg has stepped down from his role as president of global affairs at the social media giant. He will be replaced by his deputy and Republican Joel Kaplan, as the firm shifts to the right to fit in with the new regime. No one ever had much idea what Clegg did all day Clegg has tried to put a positive spin on his departure, tweeting that: ‘As a new year begins, I have come to the view that this is the right time for

Donald Trump is an unconventional politician and he responds to terror attacks unconventionally. When bad things happen, he often goes on the offensive.  ‘Our Country is a disaster, a laughing stock all over the World!’ he posted on his Truth Social media account last night, after 15 people were killed in the New Year’s Day terrorist truck attack in New Orleans. ‘This is what happens when you have OPEN BORDERS, with weak, ineffective, and virtually nonexistent leadership.’ Trump was the target of not one but two near-miss assassination attempts in 2024 There is no evidence yet linking the New Orleans incident with a car explosion on the same day in

There’s been a ‘vibe shift’. After the resounding victory at the recent US election, at long last things are changing, and heading towards some form of hope and sanity. This Christmas, there’s hope for the future on the right.  Is this December 2024 or December 2019? Because the current anticipation for the second Donald Trump term in America is very much reminding me of the similar aura of relief and positivity that followed Boris Johnson’s election win five years ago. And we all know how that turned out.  I can’t help feeling jealous of the Americans, because what are we stuck with? One of the few advantages of getting old

What is going on with the drones buzzing over New Jersey in the United States? Reportedly ‘the size of cars’, sometimes flying low in formation, these mysterious semi-identified flying objects have been sighted in their thousands every night – and only at night – for weeks. They might not even be drones. Are they alien spaceships? Are they from Russia or China? Are they just planes? Are they even anything at all? I’ve watched a number of videos purporting to show these invaders. ‘What is that thing? It’s freaking huge!’ one awestruck observer can be heard over footage of what looks like a commercial passenger jet.  It’s increasingly hard to