Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator
Call me crazy, but I’ve just bet on Nicolas Sarkozy to win the French election. I am not convinced he will — Hollande is rightly the favourite — but at 5/1, Sarko is well worth a punt, I reckon. As Gideon Rachman notes, last night’s first round was by no means a disaster for Sarko.
Gawker, the American news gossip site, is very pleased with itself. They’ve hired a Fox News ‘mole’, and he or she has already given them their first scoop: off-air footage of Mitt Romney chatting away amicably with Fox News presenter Sean Hannity before an interview. This is meant to be an insight into the sleazy
So, Rick Santorum has called it quits and abandoned his quest for the nomination. The decision effectively makes Romney the 2012 Republican nominee. Finally. Republican Party chiefs will feel a sense of relief after an exhaustive and bruising primary season in which the party seemed to be beating itself up for months on end. But
Just in time for Easter, David Cameron has attempted to claw back some of the Christian support he seems to have lost. At an official reception for Christian leaders in Downing Street today, he waxed spiritual: ‘Easter week is a very important moment in the Christian calendar. So I would like to extend my best
Mad Men may not be jumping the sharks quite yet, but the latest series is showing signs of collapsing under the weight of its own hype. The carefully built ambiguity of the first few seasons is being lost, replaced by cheesy self-awareness and standard-issue liberal correctness. In this week’s episode, which was broadcast in America
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com Did you see the presidential candidate Rick Santorum lose his cool with a New York Times reporter? If not, you can watch it above. It was a trivial incident, really, but we live in a trivial media age in which politicians think that embarrassing moments are something to boast
So goodbye, Rowan. The Archbishop of Canterbury has announced that he will stand down at the end of the year (leaving Britain bereft of bearded authority figures). Inevitably, people will say he failed. The Anglican Communion is at war with itself over gays and women bishops and the place of religion in a secular multi-cultural society,
American hacks have been mystified by what seems to be a ‘non-aggression pact’ between Republican presidential candidates Ron Paul and Mitt Romney. The two men are in many ways opposites. Paul is the favourite of anti-establishment conservatives — principled, dismissed by the media as too radical, critical of the Grand Old Party machine and US
Poor old Mitt Romney. He just can’t win. Every time it looks as if he’s finally closing in on the Republican nomination, he slips again. Rick Santorum triumphed yesterday in the ‘dixie primary’, winning in Mississippi and Alabama. Romney finished third in both states. He wasn’t expected to win in the south, admittedly, but the
Everyone knows about Mitt Romney’s Mormonism — and that his religion might freak voters out — but what about Rick Santorum’s connection to Opus Dei? Santorum is not, he says, a member of ‘the work’. But he is close to it. His parish in Virginia has Opus Dei links, and, as The New Republic reports:
Senator John McCain was on the radio again this morning, urging us to intervene on behalf of Syria’s rebels. ‘It’s not a fair fight,’ he said, as if that were a good reason to wade in. McCain, a former prisoner of war, is to humanitarian intervention what Mother Teresa was to helping the sick. He
In the wake of Super Tuesday, lots of British journalists are saying that the Republican nomination race has been too ‘negative’ — i.e. the candidates have attacked each other too much ahead of the real contest in November. Mitt Romney may now be close to victory but he’s been badly damaged. This is thought to
Lord Carey of Clifton isn’t the retiring sort. He stood down as Archbishop of Canterbury ten years ago, but he wasn’t ready to end his days in quiet contemplation. At 76, he is still a public figure — more so, perhaps, than ever. He used to be dismissed as a plodding liberal; a typically ineffectual Anglican
The British need to talk about religion. The trouble is, every time God rears His head in the public square — as we have seen this week with the row about prayers at council meetings and Baroness Warsi’s speech on ‘militant secularism’ — everybody starts speaking in platitudes. The debate follows a familiar pattern: an anti-religion spokesman, probably a
Some well-informed people — Rupert Murdoch among them — have suggested that Mitt Romney could exploit Obama’s increasingly fractious relationship with America’s Catholics to win the presidential elections in November. The so-called ‘Catholic vote’ is often said to be the crucial swing factor in American democracy. Romney, however, may be facing a bigger socio-religious stumbling
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics about lying. The University of Essex has today published a study about dishonesty in Britain, and its conclusions are prompting some concern. The ‘ethics and integrity project’ found that our society is far more relaxed about the truth than it used to be — only one person in
As Pete says, Obama fired some well-aimed arrows in the direction of Mitt Romney in his State of the Union address. But it was also a clear attempt to outline Obama’s re-election message, which would, I think, be the same no matter who he faces in November. The idea is to stress that Obama, unlike
That tubby, unlovable rogue Newt Gingrich is on a big roll. His poll ratings are surging ahead of the Florida primary next week. This despite the fact that almost everyone, even the good fellows at National Review, can see what a disastrous candidate he is. Gingrich has — this hardly needs saying — a terrible
What’s the matter with Ralph Nathaniel Twistleton-Wykeham Fiennes? In pictures, he looks so self-conscious and morose. Maybe it’s just his acting face. In the flesh, though, he’s different. He is friendly. Midway through what must be an exhausting press junket at the Soho Hotel, he remains remarkably enthusiastic, and eager to discuss Coriolanus, his new
Everybody knew that Mitt Romney would win in New Hampshire. But the real success story of last night is Ron Paul, who came second, with 23.5 per cent of the vote. In 2008, he came fifth, with just eight per cent of the vote. Santorum, Gingrich and other ‘anti-Mitt’ candidates have risen and fallen, but
