Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator
It’s been a miserable two weeks for our Foreign Secretary. Not only did Boris Johnson trip up over the British woman held in Iran; not only did he find himself accused of puppeteering Theresa May to further his and Michael Gove’s Brexit ambitions; he also committed the most grievous PR sin any politician can commit:
At some point in the early 21st century, comedy stopped being funny. Politics became the biggest joke on earth, thanks to Trump, Corbyn, Trudeau, Rees-Mogg et al. The professional humourists couldn’t keep up. They turned worthy or bitter or both. Satirical TV news shows, like Mock the Week and Have I Got News For You, ceased to entertain.
Donald Trump’s statement to the nation about Las Vegas was platitudinous. Speeches by leaders in the wake of such horrors tend to be. But it wasn’t bad. He did the necessary: he called the slaughter ‘pure evil’, he thanked the Las Vegas police and protection services for their professionalism, he offered comfort and condolences to
President Donald J Trump, the man who never sleeps, hasn’t woken up to the awful news from Las Vegas. Or at least he hasn’t yet gone on to Twitter to rave at the world, as he normally does after any terrorist attack or incident of mass violence. No doubt he will any moment. Until he
The art of Jacob Rees-Mogg is to be preposterous and sincere at the same time. It’s the reason why he is increasingly popular. It explains Moggmania. It’s also why people are now beginning to take him seriously as a Tory leadership contender; why he is topping the polls for that job. It helps that he is
Ignore the usual bleating about Trump having ‘lost control’ and not being ‘fit’ for the presidency following his attention-grabbing speech in Arizona. Trump has never been fit for the presidency, if we accept that ‘fitness’ for high office means anything at all. His political career has never really been controlled by anything other than wild
Ding dong Steve Bannon is gone – and all the liberal world order is cock-a-hoop. As Democrat congressman Tim Ryan said, ‘Good. He had no business being there to begin with.’ Or as Nita Lowey, D-N.Y. put it, ‘Steve Bannon should have never been a White House official.’ Maybe it is a good thing that
Donald Trump has a yuge problem in special prosecutor Robert Swan Mueller III. The American president’s anger at having this legal thorn in his administration’s side explains much of his recent erratic behaviour, as Daniel McCarthy explained in the magazine this week. Now we learn that Mueller is using a grand jury – a group
Give it to the scriptwriters of the epic comedy that is The Decline and Fall of the American Empire, they know how to keep an audience going. The blockbuster farce starring Donald J Trump – ‘the greatest show on earth’, even to its harshest critics – had begun to tire a little, of late. The
These days nobody much bothers denying that the Trump administration is chaotic, aside that is from the Donald’s inner circle and a few hardcore loyalists who believe that the 45th president really is Making America Great Again. The Trumpists say that reports of strife and discord in the White House are elite media spin. But
Reactions to each development in the Trump-Russia scandal tend to follow the same pattern. At first, journalists express incredulity and then horror. It doesn’t matter if the Team Trump member under suspicion is Mike Flynn, Jared Kushner, Donald Trump Junior, even big daddy Trump himself, everybody agrees this is big news. Dots are connected and
What fun the internet is having now that Vladimir Putin has finally met Donald Trump. Social media is teeming with jokes, gifs, and memes about the two big dawgs of global politics finally coming together. It’s the great bromance of the populist age. Underneath the hilarity, however, there remains intense suspicions about the relationship between
What are we to make of Donald Trump’s intervention in the case of Charlie Gard, the desperately ill boy whose painful story has been in the news so much in recent weeks. Earlier today, the President took to Twitter – where else? – to say: If we can help little #CharlieGard, as per our friends
Another election night in America, another failure for the Democratic Party. Having spent a mind-boggling $23 million trying to win a congressional seat in Atlanta, Georgia, the Democrats lost to Republican candidate Karen Handel. The Democrats had been desperate to paint the contest in Georgia as a ‘referendum’ on the Trump presidency, especially since the
Since the election, Jeremy Corbyn has been parading himself as prime-minister-in-waiting. ‘Cancellation of President Trump’s State Visit is welcome,’ he tweeted this week, ‘especially after his attack on London’s Mayor and withdrawal from #ParisClimateDeal.’ The message was clear: unlike ‘Theresa the appeaser’, Jeremy is willing and able to tell that climate change-denying Islamophobe across the
Since the election, Jeremy Corbyn has been parading himself as prime-minister-in-waiting. ‘Cancellation of President Trump’s State Visit is welcome,’ he tweeted this week, ‘especially after his attack on London’s Mayor and withdrawal from #ParisClimateDeal.’ The message was clear: unlike ‘Theresa the appeaser’, Jeremy is willing and able to tell that climate change-denying Islamophobe across the
Every year for the last four years we have had a referendum or a general election, and it’s exhausting. Journalists on TV are so tired that they can hardly be bothered to row with each other any more; they increasingly just grumble about the poverty of the candidates. But a good political bluffer never blames
How thin-skinned and pompous the British media class is. On the airwaves, Twitter, and elsewhere, the reaction to Donald Trump’s tweet about London Mayor Sadiq Khan has been apoplexy bordering on hysteria. Trump has deeply insulted our nation, it is said, and harmed the Special Relationship. Susan Minton Beddoes, the editor of the Economist, told American
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
