Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator
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
Well, Theresa May managed to lay on the praise towards Trump without seeming too sycophantic, which made their press conference a reasonable success. May congratulated Trump on his ‘stunning’ electoral victory while describing Britain’s future as ‘open to the world’. May seems to be presenting herself as a reassuring ‘third way’ leader between the frightening
On Wednesday afternoon I went to the British embassy in Washington for ‘a tea and champagne reception’ to mark the inauguration of President Trump. Like most institutions, the embassy has struggled to come to terms with the Donald. We all know (thanks to Twitter) that Trump wants Nigel Farage to be the UK representative in
He could be the greatest disaster ever to befall America. He could go down as the man that Made America Great Again. What’s certain is that Donald Trump is the most radical US president for centuries. Trump’s inaugural speech was predictable — in the sense that we have heard Trump say it all before. In
Washington, D.C. I just witnessed an anti-Donald Trump protest, and it was nasty. About an hour ago, I looked out the window on the corner of 13th and Massachusetts Avenue and saw a crowd of roughly 300 people — most of them dressed in black and wearing bandanas and hoods — moving quickly through the
Washington, D.C. Nigel Farage’s 2016 celebration of Nigel Farage’s 2016 is a party that might never stop. And it is a jolly affair. Yesterday, at the Hay-Adams Hotel, in Washington, DC, Nigel and his pals — let’s call them the champagne populists — had a US election bash. Nigel stood up to do his usual
Freddy Gray, Paul Wood and Kate Andrews discuss Trump’s arrival at the White House: As president, Barack Obama was too cool for the special relationship. The romantic bond between the United States and Great Britain, which always makes Churchill fans go all soggy-eyed, left him cold. Obama was more interested in globalism, ‘pivoting’ to
Donald Trump will not find satisfaction as the 45th President of the United States of America. He really wants to be king. Just look at the gilded-bling madness of his penthouse on the 66th floor of Trump Tower in Manhattan, or the sprawling exuberance of his holiday palace in Mar-a-Lago, Florida: Trump aspires to be
Donald Trump hasn’t given a press conference for 167 days, but this was some comeback appearance. The President-elect came out swinging, to put it mildly. Responding to sensational reports that Russian intelligence might have kompromat – a comprising piece of evidence, possibly a sex tape involving ‘golden showers’ – against him, Trump was angry, full of
It’s a shame that protocol, being protocol, prevents Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson from meeting President-elect Donald Trump during his trip to Washington. Boris can’t even meet Rex Tillerson, the man Trump has chosen as his Secretary of State, until Tillerson is confirmed by the senate. A Trump-Johnson encounter would be a meeting of considerable media
The ‘price of non-intervention’ is becoming one of those awful Westminster clichés. It is a phrase which, we can be sure, will be used to justify another half-cocked and disastrous military intervention in the not-too-distant future. There is growing consensus among the political class that, had wicked Ed Miliband not scuppered brave David Cameron and George Osborne’s
The choosing of Exxon mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as America’s next Secretary of State – which is expected to be confirmed today — seems a typical Donald Trump move: crass, profoundly annoying to the president-elect’s enemies, yet at the same time perhaps very clever. The political class is, naturally, aghast: a corporate titan in charge of
It might be better for everyone if, in the spirit of Yuletide Fake News, we all pretended that Donald Trump’s Twitter account was a spoof, or at least an alter of the man’s many egos. The President-elect, for one, doesn’t take his pronouncements on Twitter too seriously. Or does he? It’s safe to say that there is a
It is odd when someone you know becomes a world-famous Nazi. You may not recognise the name Richard Spencer, but my bet is you soon will. He’s an American white-power activist who is often billed as the inventor of the ‘alt-right’. In the age of Trump, when everyone is panicking about the rise of extremism
