Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator
It was always ridiculous that Jared Kushner, an amiable 37-year-old who had no diplomatic, political or military experience, should have had top-level ‘SCI’ security access as a senior member of the White House — just because he happened to be the President’s son-in-law. Well now, he’s been downgraded, as Politico reports. He continues to have
On Coffee House today, the Tory MP Johnny Mercer says that Britain lost its ‘strength and leadership’ on 29 August, 2013, the day we decided not to attack Assad. We’ve heard this line a lot from a certain sort of politician. Michael Gove and Nick Clegg lost their tempers in the hours that followed the Syria
Peter Oborne, The Spectator’s associate editor, is something of a legend in Pakistan — as least among the defence establishment types we met there. That’s because every year he takes a cricket team on a tour of the country. Last September, in Miranshah, they played a ‘Peace Cup’ match against an XI consisting of current
Not so long ago, Barack Obama called Waziristan ‘the most dangerous place in the world’. It was the losing front in the war on terror, a lawless region in the Federally Administered Tribal Areas of Pakistan infested with Taleban and terrorism. Today, thanks to the Pakistan army, even a risk-averse hack like me can go
Boris Titov is running to be president of Russia, but he’s eager to talk himself out of the job. ‘I am not a good politician,’ he says, over breakfast at the Lanesborough hotel in Knightsbridge. ‘To be a president means you need to be wise, a big politician like Thatcher, Deng Xiaoping, Lee Kuan Yew.
Donald J Trump’s State of the Union was as expected: long, boastful, cheesy — and largely right. Trump says he is creating a ‘new American moment’ — and it’s hard to deny that he is. Before he was president, and even in his inauguration speech, Trump painted only a vision of America in ruins. Now,
Wow. As far as I know, Donald Trump has only apologised twice since he emerged as a presidential candidate in 2015 — never apologise, never explain seems to be his usual rule. Once he said sorry after the famous ‘locker room’ talk Access Hollywood tape was leaked in 2016. And today, with his pal Piers Morgan,
President Donald Trump, famously, has two modes: flattery and hostility. Theresa May had a taste of the latter following Trump’s decision to cancel his trip to the UK. But he has changed mode again for Davos – and is now laying it on thick. At their press conference today, he told the PM: ‘There was a
What if the great smoking gun in the Trump-Russia enquiry is not Donald Trump’s collusion with the Kremlin? What if the real conspiracy turns out to be a Democrat conspiracy to invent a Trump-Russia conspiracy? What if the baddies of 2016 turn out to be not Trump and Vladimir Putin — but Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton? These
Donald Trump had hoped to mark his first anniversary as president basking in surprisingly positive media headlines and enjoying a lavish party at his Mar-a-Largo estate in Florida. Instead he must contend with a government shutdown and another major political crisis in Washington, the political swamp he promised to drain. Congress has remained in session
Another week, another blow to the so-called Special Relationship. The latest sorry news is that Number 10 has been trying to orchestrate a meeting with President Donald Trump at Davos — but President Donald Trump reportedly isn’t interested. He’d rather hang out with President Macron of France instead. Oh dear. It looks as if the
Journalists can guffaw at the silliness of President Donald’s Trump’s Fake News Awards as much as they like. The truth is he’s right: the media is biased against him to the point of insanity. And the way Trump has presented the awards on Twitter, and whoever wrote the announcements on GOP.com, has been funny, perceptive, and
Boris Johnson is absolutely right to say that his successor as London Mayor, Sadiq Khan, has behaved like a ‘puffed up pompous popinjay’ about Donald Trump’s cancelled visit to Britain. And they aren’t the only ones. The whole ‘Trump visit’ story has become an embarrassing mass exercise in British grandstanding. In fact, if you want
How quickly Steve Bannon’s dark star has collapsed. Not so long ago, friends and enemies talked him up as a media genius. He was a political guerrilla operative you underrated at your peril. He was ‘Trump’s Rasputin’, or ‘President Bannon’, the man who really controlled the White House. Then he lost his job in said White House, fell out with
Forget North Korea for a moment — President Donald J Trump today launched a devastating assault on Steve Bannon, his former chief strategist, and the man often credited as the architect of his success. Replying to bitchy comments Steve Bannon reportedly made in Fire and Fury, a new book about the Trump White House by
Say this for Donald Trump — if he does bring on nuclear apocalypse, at least he made it funny. Every amateur Freudian with a media platform is now dissecting his latest ‘mine is bigger than yours’ exchange with Kim Jong-Un, perhaps not realising that the joke is on them. Here is what Trump tweeted: It may
At last, at last, President Donald J Trump has a big win. After the humiliating failure of his attempt to re-re-reform American healthcare, he has now passed his enormous $1.5 trillion tax overhaul through Congress. It is his first significant legislative accomplishment and it is, as he would say, yuge. The Republican splits that emerged
These really are wild times in American politics. A Democrat, Doug Jones, just won the Senate Race in Alabama. A Democrat hasn’t won a Senate seat in the Heart of Dixie since 1992 – and that was Richard Shelby, who was so conservative he then became a Republican, and still is the senior GOP Senator
It’s Hanukkah next week, and President Donald J Trump has decided to give the state of Israel a big present. He will today recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and it is understood that America will shortly move its embassy from Tel Aviv to the Holy City. This is something that Israeli diplomats have long hoped
President Donald J Trump likes nothing better than winning, and he has just had the first major legislative win of his presidency. An enormous $1.4 trillion tax cut has now been passed by the Senate. No Democrat voted for the bill, yet still it passed by 51 to 49 votes. This avoided the anticipated legislative