What do the midterm results mean for national conservatism?
20 min listen
Freddy Gray speaks to Yoram Hazony, the author of Conservatism: A Rediscovery, about the midterm results, and what happens next to national conservatism in the United States.
Freddy Gray
Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator
Wednesday
Midterm madness: the only clear winner is paranoia
Election night, folks – America decides! Except, it doesn’t. On 8 November 2022, as on 3 November 2020, the polls closed, the votes came in and, er, nobody appeared to have won. Everybody now looks nervously again to the state of Georgia, which is probably too close to call and will be decided in a run-off
Midterms: No red wave, America is still very divided
Is it a red wave? A ripple? Or a trickle? Nobody quite knows. However, what looks certain is that the Republican blow out that many right wing pundits were anticipating has not happened. Crucially, the Democrats have won the crunch Senate race in Pennsylvania. John Fetterman, the man who had a stroke just a few
Monday
How worried are the Democrats about the US midterms?
‘There are two things that are important in politics,’ said the 19th century senator Mark Hanna. ‘The first is money and I can’t remember what the second one is.’ The maxim remains true in 2022. Public polling is all well and good, and useful in its way. Yet in a country as sprawling and complex
Friday
Will Covid lockdowns affect the midterm vote?
29 min listen
Freddy Gray talks to the journalist David Marcus, author of Charade: The Covid Lies That Crushed A Nation, ahead of the midterms.
Tuesday
The Tories are addicted to self-destruction
Well, that round of party unity was fun, wasn’t it? Rishi Sunak, the pragmatist, ushered in an unfamiliar sense of calmness and competence as he entered Downing Street. It has lasted less than a week. Yet again the newspapers are chock full of ‘senior Conservatives’ gunning for each other: the target this time is Suella
Monday
What issues do voters care most about?
31 min listen
Freddy Gray talks to Galen Druke, host of the FiveThirtyEight politics podcast on ABC News, as the midterm elections fast approach.
Thursday
The lady vanishes
41 min listen
On this week’s podcast: After the markets saw off Kwarteng, Trussonomics and now Truss herself, James Forsyth writes in The Spectator that the markets will be driving British politics for the foreseeable future. He is joined by Britain economics editor at the Economist Soumaya Keynes to discuss the institutions now dictating government policy (00:56). Also this week: Looking ahead
A bluffer’s guide to (yet another) Tory leadership race
Here we go again – another leadership contest, another round of intense Westminster blather. Lightweight would-be commentators may feel their energy flagging as they prepare to analyse this next phase of high-level political violence. But alpha bluffers do not fret. We know that there is no such thing as a ‘tired talking point’ – although
Will the Republicans win the midterms?
42 min listen
Republican strategist Luke Thompson returns to Americano to give Freddy Gray the lowdown on how things are shaping up ahead of the midterm elections in November.
Wednesday
How bad will the midterms be for the Democrats?
Towards the end of the summer, almost in a spirit of contrarianism, well-informed Americans started talking about President Joe Biden and the Democrats winning again. It had been a bad year, these pundits conceded, but Biden was suddenly on a ‘hot streak’ and, as the November midterms approached, the Democratic party finally had some political
Friday
Can America save capitalism?
33 min listen
Freddy Gray talks to Dr Samuel Gregg, a scholar at the Acton Institute and Distinguished Fellow of the American Institute for Economic Research, about his new book The Next American Economy: Nation, State, and Markets in an Uncertain World.
Tuesday
Meghan Markle’s podcast is about the word ‘crazy.’ And it’s barking mad
‘Calling someone crazy or hysterical completely dismisses their experience,’ says Meghan Markle in her strangely throaty professional podcast voice. ‘It minimises what they’re feeling. And you know it doesn’t stop there. It keeps going to the point where anyone who has been labelled it enough times can be gaslit into thinking that they’re actually unwell.
Friday
Will Biden’s pot pardons pay off?
20 min listen
This week Freddy speaks to Madeleine Kearns, staff writer at the National Review, about President Joe Biden’s decree that cannabis possession should no longer be a federal crime. Is this a vote winner or will the decision end in disaster?
Wednesday
Ten handy phrases for bluffing your way through the new financial crisis
Aggggghhh! Woooaaaah! Urrrggghhhh! Those screams you hear are ten thousand self-appointed financial experts howling into the existential abyss. The Bank of England this morning announced its ‘operation’ in the gilt market, and every pundit with a social media account is thrashing around in the ever greater ocean of economic jargon and incomprehensible data. It’s hard
Tuesday
Has conservatism been misunderstood?
27 min listen
This week Freddy is joined by political theorist Yoram Hazony. They discuss Yoram’s new book Conservatism: A Rediscovery, the origins of American conservatism and whether the family unit will be the defining feature of the modern conservative movement.
Thursday
What’s going to happen in the midterms?
19 min listen
This week Freddy speaks to journalist and political analyst Sean Trende about what we can expect from the November midterms. Is there a red wave incoming? Or will the Democrats do better than expected?
Monday
Joe Biden’s Taiwan muddle has become untenable
Under Joe Biden, the longstanding American policy of ‘strategic ambiguity’ vis-à-vis Taiwan has taken on a curious post-modern quality. The official US position on arguably the biggest international question of the moment is now so ambiguous that even the president of the United States doesn’t appear to know what it is. In a long interview
Thursday
How much did Queen Elizabeth mean to Americans?
18 min listen
Freddy Gray speaks to Lee Cohen, senior fellow of The Bow Group and The Bruges Group, about how the death of Queen Elizabeth has been received in America.
Wednesday
Biden is treating his political opponents like domestic terrorists
What is going on in America? A celebrity eccentric known as ‘the Pillow guy’, his real name is Mike Lindell, claimed yesterday that the Federal Bureau of Investigation seized his mobile telephone. Lindell, a former crack addict turned successful entrepreneur who is now a major supporter of the Trump movement, says he was returning from
