Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator
Where’s all the unpredictability in politics gone? After the hubbub about a ‘crisis of liberalism’ and the thrills of punting on Trump and Brexit, election betting in 2017 is beginning to look almost boring. Everybody who wasn’t crazy — or excessively paranoid about the return of fascism — knew that Emmanuel Macron would beat Marine
Donald Trump either has nothing to hide about his relationship with Russia — or he is hiding in plain sight, as all good con artists do. What you believe will depend on your political prejudices and how you feel about Vladimir Putin and the Kremlin. The Washington Post‘s report yesterday that Trump shared ‘highly classified
It’s a summer of change for the House of Windsor — out with the old, in with the young. The Duke of Edinburgh has just announced that he is standing down. The Queen carries on, but she’s 91, and now the younger members of the royal family are expected to step up. For an institution
What to make of the shocking news that Donald Trump has fired the director of the FBI James Comey? Senior Democrats are calling it a ‘Nixonian’ cover up of the Bureau’s probe into Trump’s links to Russia. It is easy to see what they mean. The abrupt move has strong echoes of the famous ‘Saturday
Emmanuel Macron has won the French presidential election. He is projected to have won by just over 65pc, pretty much the exact majority the polls have suggested all week. So it’s no populist surprises tonight, and chapeau to France pollsters. Everybody thinks the French are revolutionary, but actually the Fifth Republic is constitutionally and temperamentally conservative. Macron
Sebastian Gorka is a big man. He has a powerful handshake, a deep voice, and a serious goatee. He’s also deputy assistant to President Donald Trump, and known as the most influential Brit in the White House. He was born in London, the son of Hungarian immigrants, and grew up in Ealing. Yet he seems
Everybody knows that Marine Le Pen can’t beat Emmanuel Macron, don’t they? What does she have to lose? Nothing, it seems. She has now declared that she will run as an independent candidate, and not stand for the National Front. Marine’s move is surprising and clever in a madcap way. Anything that Macron can do
It’s still rather a cheerful vibe at the French ambassador’s residence in sunny Kensington this evening. The crowd here would have preferred the exit poll to show Macron and Fillon to go through, but they’ll take Macron versus Le Pen, especially with Macron in the lead. There were sharp intakes of breath when Le Pen
Boom! Are you impressed? The US Commander-in-Chief has just dropped the biggest non-nuclear bomb ever on Afghanistan. Why? Well, to kill terrorists, natch, but also because he’s Donald J Trump, and he’ll do what he wants. The new president was clearly heartened by the positive response he received from the usually hostile media to his
If you want to know where President Donald Trump will bomb next, follow his daughter on Twitter: Heartbroken and outraged by the images coming out of Syria following the atrocious chemical attack yesterday. — Ivanka Trump (@IvankaTrump) April 5, 2017 It’s Ivanka’s rare outburst and her use of the word ‘outraged’ that suggested daddy might
Perhaps Steve Bannon isn’t quite as all-powerful within the Trump administration as everybody believed. He’s just been removed from the principals committee of the National Security Council. This news has been understood as a sign that Trump’s new National Security Advisor H. R. McMaster is now calling the shots on foreign policy. The spin in Washington is
He’s unstable. He’s an irrational hothead who is by some freak a president. And his inability to control his mouth is endangering world peace. I’m talking about Jean-Claude Juncker, of course, who just said that if Donald Trump carried on supporting Brexit, he would ‘promote the independence of Ohio and Austin, Texas, in the United States
Oh dear. Anybody who thought that, contrary to expectations, Angela Merkel and Donald Trump might get along seems to have been gravely mistaken. The meeting between the two world leaders was meant to have been held on Tuesday, but was put off by a snow storm. Things still looked pretty chilly in Washington today. Seated next to each other
Donald Trump’s first address to Congress last night was the best speech he has given since he won the election last year. A low bar, you might say, and the new Commander-in-Chief will never match the rhetorical skill of his predecessor. Yet before the joint session of Congress a few hours ago, President Trump at
If you believe the hype, Emmanuel Macron is l’anti-Trump. He is what the inter-national centre-left, reeling from the shocks of Brexit and the US election and fearful of a victory for Marine Le Pen in France, is crying out for: a politician who can win again. He is only 39 years old, handsome and radical
Uh oh, football’s puritans are riled up today. They think the sport might have been brought into disrepute during last night’s FA Cup tie between Sutton and Arsenal. Why? Because Sutton’s substitute goalkeeper, the gloriously fat Wayne Shaw, ate a pie on the subs bench during the match. Shaw’s stunt — which amused anybody with a
It’s been said a lot that, for all the supposed closeness between Russia and the new US administration, the Trump-Putin axis could soon turn into dangerous enmity. Strange friendships make fast feuds. And if Trump is a proper nationalist, if he is the thin-skinned narcissist that everybody says he is, he will react strongly against
Donald Trump now looks the weakest US president of recent times. His approval rating is historically low for a new Commander-in-Chief. And the 9th District Court of Appeals has now refused to reinstate his executive order on immigration — an order which, if you stop breathing in all the media hot air surrounding it, isn’t
It’s hard not to feel for François Fillon, the French presidential hopeful whose career is now imploding. He looked destined for the Élysée Palace — until Le Canard Enchainé, the French equivalent of Private Eye, broke the story about him paying his British wife too much to pretend to be his assistant. Sensible, small c conservative, Catholic France had
America’s new visa policies are shocking, everyone agrees on that. Even Donald Trump’s administration calls its US entry vetting ‘extreme’. But before everyone calls Trump a fascist again, before everyone reaches once more for the Hitler and the Nazis comparisons, consider this: Trump’s ‘America First’ nationalism is defensive, not aggressive. It may be clumsy, it
