Donald trump

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters | 10 March 2016

Democracy or bureaucracy Sir: Professor Garton Ash makes a scholarly appeal for us all to be content with government from Brussels for the foreseeable future (‘A conservative case for staying in’, 5 March). The alternative would involve possible risk. Very true. But the professor skates animbly round two words: governmental system. After numerous combats and enormous suffering, the British live within and are ruled by an elective democracy. In a reference to his Churchillian quote, it may be an imperfect system but it is better than all the others. Read the works of Jean Monnet and one will understand why the governmental system of the EU was never designed to

Max Hastings

American Notebook | 10 March 2016

I have been driving many hundreds of miles across America, interviewing Vietnam veterans for a book. Though I have been doing this sort of thing for 40 years, the fascination of the serendipity persists. I meet an extraordinary variety of people, way outside my usual social round. Some talk in modest bungalows, others in motels, one last week in a conspicuously wealthy gated community. Many rich Americans now live in such places — essentially their own country clubs, fortified by wired perimeters. The one that I visited covered 6,000 acres, with lots of lakes and a golf course. There is excellent food in the clubhouse, skeet ranges, riding stables and

Thursday

Taki

High life | 3 March 2016

The rich are under attack nowadays, never more so than in America, where The Donald continues to trump his critics, amaze and surprise his fans, and drive his haters to paroxysms of sexual fantasy, with Trump as the main actor. National Review, where I got my start 40 years or so ago, devoted a whole issue to rubbishing Donald Trump. There were contributions from great conservatives, such as Thomas Sowell, and great clowns, like John Podhoretz. It was an issue that inadvertently looked in opposite directions while hating The Donald. William Kristol’s bit was in there — the one where he calls Trump vulgar. That he may be, but coming

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 3 March 2016

Home An official analysis by the Cabinet Office said that if Britain left the EU it would lead to a ‘decade of uncertainty’. Opponents of Britain remaining in the EU called the report a ‘dodgy dossier’. George Osborne, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, said that the economy would suffer a ‘profound economic shock’ if Britain left, echoing a communiqué of the G20 which referred to ‘the shock of a potential UK exit’. Boris Johnson revised his suggestion that a vote to leave could bring about a better deal from Brussels; ‘Out is out,’ he told the Times. Sir Jeremy Heywood, the Cabinet Secretary, declared that ministers opposing government policy on

Tucker Carlson

Diary – 3 March 2016

Just as the presidential race in America started to get really crazy, I left for India. On the morning of the South Carolina primary, I interviewed Donald Trump from a restaurant near the state capitol. By the next afternoon I was dodging mopeds in a traffic circle in Mumbai. I’d imagined the trip as a respite from the campaign, much needed after weeks of immersion in a world where Bernie Sanders is considered charming and Hillary Clinton is regarded as an intellectual. Yet I found that I couldn’t stop thinking about the race. If you’re brooding about the future of your country, a former British colony is the wrong place

Charles Moore Charles Moore

The Spectator’s notes | 3 March 2016

The government, or at least David Cameron’s bit of it, seems to think that trade is something that takes place because of a trade agreement. The order is the other way round. People trade, and have done for several thousand years, because it is to their mutual advantage. After a bit, governments come along and try to direct and often impede it, but in the modern world of instant communications, ready transfers of money and container shipping, this has become blessedly difficult. A friend, Edward Atkin, who has made a large fortune out of Avent baby bottles and like products, tells me: ‘I have never known or asked whether any

Tom Goodenough Tom Goodenough

Today in audio: Mitt Romney brands Trump a ‘phony’

Mitt Romney launched an outspoken attack on Republican frontrunner Donald Trump, branding the billionaire businessman a ‘phony’ and a ‘fraud’. He said Trump’s promises are as ‘worthless as a degree from Trump university’: Romney, who ran for the Presidency in 2012, went on to say Donald Trump had inherited his business and slated his past ventures: Elsewhere, during a joint press conference with David Cameron, Francois Hollande said he didn’t want to scare anyone but insisted there would be ‘consequences’ if Britain left the EU. The French president added that ‘there is no solution where there is no consequences’: Whilst during the same event in France, David Cameron reiterated his

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

Land of the Donald

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/donaldtrumpsangryamerica/media.mp3″ title=”Freddy Gray talks to Isabel Hardman about Donald Trump’s angry America”] Listen [/audioplayer]It was, in the end, the best possible night for Donald Trump. On Super Tuesday, 11 American states voted for Republican and Democratic presidential candidates. Trump won seven. That was enough to ensure he remains easily the frontrunner, but not enough to persuade his opponents to coalesce around one of his rivals. Had he won nine or ten, the Republican party might have fallen in behind the man in second place, Ted Cruz. As it turned out, Marco Rubio, the last establishment man standing, won one state, which has encouraged him to keep fighting. But Rubio’s

Roger Alton Roger Alton

Two big hitters leave the crease

Two great men have just bowed out from their chosen trades and it is bloody sad. The New Zealand cricket captain Brendon McCullum and the journalist Hugh McIlvanney might not seem to have much in common but they both made the world a better, more joyful place. I sat up until the small hours a few of weeks back watching McCullum: it was his last Test, in Christchurch, against the old enemy from across the Tasman Sea, and his side had been put in to bat. McCullum has redefined what it means to be a batsman and for his farewell he wasn’t going to leave anything in the pavilion. He

Tuesday

Brendan O’Neill

From Trumpmania to Euroscepticism: Revenge of the Plebs

The Third Wayists are quaking in their boots. The middle-class, middle-of-the-road technocrats who have dominated politics for the best part of three decades are freaking out. These people who bristle at anything ideological, are disdainful of heated debate, and have bizarrely turned the word ‘moderate’ into a compliment feel under siege. And no wonder they do, for on both sides of the Atlantic their very worst nightmare — a revenge of the plebs — is becoming flesh. You can see this sometimes clumsy but nonetheless forceful reassertion of pleb power in everything from Trumpmania to the staggering back to life of Euroscepticism — or what snooty moderates call ‘Europhobia’, because

Thursday

Christopher Buckley

Dealing with The Donald

A few nights ago, my missus and I were walking along Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, minding our own business while trying not to think about Donald Trump — or Ted Cruz, or Hillary Clinton, or Bernie Sanders. Presently we passed the Old Post Office Building, a venerable pile dating to 1899. It looks a bit like Big Ben atop a ten-storey Romanesque atrium. There in front was a billboard the size of Montana proclaiming ‘TRUMP’. It is to be — shudder — a hotel. Clutching my beloved’s arm, I gasped: ‘A drink — quickly. For the love of God, a drink.’ She rushed us to the restaurant, where a martini

Thursday

Chris Mullin

Diary – 11 February 2016

While browsing in Barter Books, the wonderful secondhand bookshop in Alnwick that is fast becoming a national institution, I came across a volume of Piers Morgan’s diaries, covering his two years in the United States, judging America’s Got Talent and taking part in Celebrity Apprentice (the Alan Sugar role being played by one Donald Trump). I cannot claim to have been all that keen on Morgan ever since I discovered that in the mid-1990s, when he was an agent of Murdoch, he penned a note to Tony Blair demanding that he silence ‘idiots like Mullin shouting their mouths off about “loathsome tabloids” and my owner’. As you might expect, the

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 11 February 2016

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, said that if Britain left the European Union, France could stop allowing British officials to make immigration checks on the French side of the border, and, his spokesman predicted: ‘You have potentially thousands of asylum seekers camped out in northern France who could be here almost overnight.’ Mr Cameron denounced the way prisons are being run by his administration: ‘Current levels of prison violence, drug-taking and self-harm should shame us all.’ Junior doctors went on strike again for 24 hours. Twelve men of Pakistani heritage were jailed for up to 20 years for the rape and sexual abuse of a girl when she was

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

How Bernie trumps Hillary

‘Anybody here got any student debt?’ asks Bernie Sanders halfway through his speech at a rally in a small university on Monday. He then starts conducting a fake auction. ‘What are some of the numbers you got? You? 35,000. You? 55,000? Who else? A young lady here… 100,000 dollars. You win! I don’t know what you win, but you win!’ The students all hoot and chant. ‘Bernie! Bernie! Bernie!’ Sanders cracks an avuncular smile, then starts talking again about how rich the rich are. It’s hard not to like Sanders. It’s hard not to ‘Feel the Bern’, as the mantra goes. He is 74 years old, and angry at the

Friday

Tom Goodenough

Spectator most-read: Trump’s defeat, life in the Royal Navy and ‘racist’ Oxford

The Spectator’s fifth most-read article of the week was Nigel Farndale on what life was like on board a warship in our ‘much reduced’ Royal Navy. Nigel joined the crew of HMS Bulwark in the Mediterranean where he found a Royal Navy undergoing an identity crisis amidst swingeing cuts. Our fourth most-read piece was Damian Thompson on the furore surrounding the last-minute decision to pull an incendiary book about the Church of England. Publisher Bloomsbury sent a panicky message to reviewers asking them to return their copies of ‘That Was The Church That Was: How the Church of England Lost the English People’. You can read Damian’s article about why

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week | 4 February 2016

Home David Cameron, the Prime Minister, made a speech in Wiltshire about a letter from Donald Tusk, the president of the European Council, on Britain’s demands for renegotiating terms of its membership of the European Union. Mr Cameron said: ‘What we’ve got is basically something I asked for.’ In the House of Commons, Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the opposition, said: ‘It’s rather strange that the Prime Minister is not here…’ instead of ‘…in Chippenham, paying homage to the town where I was born.’ Mr Tusk proposed that in-work benefits for migrants might be subject to an ‘emergency brake’. As for child benefit, this could still be sent home to children

Freddy Gray Freddy Gray

The Donald isn’t dead yet

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/fightingovercrumbs-euroscepticsandtheeudeal/media.mp3″ title=”Freddy Gray and the Republican Party Overseas’ Kate Andrews discuss what’s next for the GOP” startat=695] Listen [/audioplayer]If Donald Trump had won in Iowa on Monday night, everybody would still be saying what a brilliant candidate he is. His decision to shun that Fox News debate, just four days before the caucuses, would be seen as a tactical masterstroke. Looking at his poll lead ahead of the New Hampshire primary next week, journalists would be saying that he had effectively secured the Republican party nomination. He didn’t win, though. He came second, almost third, and now the narrative about the Trump phenomenon can be turned upside down. Trump’s

Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

What fun it will be if Trump becomes president

I suppose spite and schadenfreude are thinnish reasons, intellectually, for wishing Donald Trump to become the next American president (and preferably with Sarah Palin, or someone similarly doolally, as veep). But they are also atavistically compelling reasons nonetheless. Think of the awful, awful people who would be outraged and offended. If you recall, 8 May last year was awash with the bitter tears of lefties who couldn’t believe the British people had been so stupid as to elect a Conservative government. There were the usual hilarious temper tantrums and hissy fits. Typical of these was an idiotic college lecturer called Rebecca Roache who loftily announced that she had gone through

Thursday

Taki

High life | 28 January 2016

The Dolly Sisters were off to Davos last week for the World Economic Forum: Nat Rothschild and Sebastian Taylor in their finest playing up to Harry Selfridge, in reality Christine Lagarde, the IMF chief. This total waste of a week advertises itself as a discussion of the global issues of the day. In reality, it’s utter twaddle, unless one is networking like the Dolly Sisters, or showing off like Justin Trudeau, the Canadian premier whose mother is Margaret, once upon a time a Studio 54 regular and a friend of yours truly. Old Greek ship-owning families, prominent ones such as the Livanoses, Goulandrises and Chandrises, eschew such shenanigans, leaving them

Thursday

James Forsyth

The centre-right is failing world-wide – so what’s the secret of Cameron’s success?

[audioplayer src=”http://rss.acast.com/viewfrom22/donaldtrumpsrise-racismattheoscarsandcameronscentre-rightsecret/media.mp3″ title=”James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss the PM’s centre-right secret” startat=628] Listen [/audioplayer]There are times when Westminster’s obsession with US politics is embarrassing for even the strongest believer in the Anglo-American relationship. Monday was one of those days: MPs debated banning Donald Trump, the reality TV star turned presidential hopeful, from entering Britain. Leaving aside the illiberal absurdity of this, Trump hadn’t even said he was planning a visit. It was a pathetic attempt by MPs to insert themselves into the US presidential race. But what cannot be denied is the extent to which Trump is shaking up US politics. After the angry Republican primary and the failure