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As we get closer to the US election, Kate Andrews, The Spectator’s economics editor, joins Freddy Gray to host Americano. On this episode, she speaks to Megan McArdle, columnist at the Washington Post. They discuss why Donald Trump and Kamala Harris aren’t campaigning in swing states, and why it’s so difficult to predict the election result.
‘Garbage In, Garbage Out’ is a computer programming principle which states that the quality of a system’s output is determined by the quality of its input. It’s also a phrase that speaks to US politics this week. After a string of good news cycles for the Republican campaign, the Democrats finally believed they had caught a break on Sunday night after the comedian Tony Hinchcliffe made a joke about Puerto Rico on stage at Trump’s mega-rally in Madison Square Garden in New York. ‘I don’t know if you know this but there’s literally a floating island of garbage in the middle of the ocean right now,’ said Hinchcliffe. ‘It’s called Puerto
When Kim Jong-un does not get what he wants, he makes his displeasure known far and wide. Over the past few weeks, one would have thought that Kim would be reasonably content. In return for sending artillery shells, ballistic missiles, and most recently, troops to Russia, North Korea has been receiving food, cash, and most likely, technological assistance, the latter which is what Kim craves the most. But instead of calming down, Kim has responded in the way that he knows best – by launching yet another intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) designed to hit the US mainland. Relations between the two Koreas have plummeted to a nadir over the past
The Chinese Communist party (CCP) is spooked by Halloween. In Shanghai, police have rounded up people gathering in costumes that included a Donald Trump with bandaged right ear, Spiderman, Deadpool and Batman. A man dressed as Buddha was also shown being escorted away in videos posted on Chinese social media, but quickly deleted by online censors. The aim seems to be to prevent a repeat of last year’s celebrations, when revellers used the occasion to take a tongue-in-cheek poke at the CCP, and costumes included a surveillance camera and hazmat suits (a swipe at Covid lockdowns). It has at times been like a game of cat and mouse The online
Sabotage seems to be back with a bang – and if not with a bang, certainly with a lot of smoke. Incidents have come thick and fast since 2022 when someone – and it still is not clear who – sabotaged pipelines in the Baltic Sea to disable the flow of natural gas from Germany to Russia. Since then, we have seen suspicious fires (or attempted fires) everywhere from an Ikea warehouse in Lithuania to a paint factory in Poland; we have seen explosions at defence plants and arms manufacturers spanning the US, Wales, and Germany. Meanwhile, arson brought French railways to a standstill on the eve of the 2024
Warring parties often strike deals. Exchanges of prisoners, ceasefires to deliver aid, covert talks between intelligence services – and eventually, hopefully, peace. But since Vladimir Putin ordered thousands of troops across the Russian border into Ukraine on 24 February 2022, there have been no peace negotiations and no sign of meaningful compromise from either Moscow or Kyiv. But now, after nearly three years of horrendous casualties and destruction in Ukraine, preliminary talks are underway, according to the Financial Times, for a deal in which both sides would agree to stop or reduce attacks on energy installations. While it might seem a bizarre development, it’s now in Moscow’s interest as much as
If Donald Trump wins back the White House next week, adopt the brace position. His opponents will go beserk, inevitably, and try once again to put him in prison. Yet Trump allies might go even more crazy as they scramble for influence. Trump claims to have learned from the mistakes of his first term. But what counts as a mistake depends on who you talk to. And it’s impossible to even guess at what a Trump Redux might mean without some sense of who he talks to these days – and who might shape and influence his agenda if he is elected. The awkward truth – for insiders anyway –
For American politicians, all wars are two-front wars. There is a hot battlefield somewhere in the Middle East or the South China Sea, and there’s a political battlefield in Washington, D.C. The domestic contest is decisive. The same goes for Europe. With Joe Biden riding into the sunset and the presidential campaign drawing to a close, American interest in Ukraine is winding down, too. Europeans talking tough about ‘standing up’ to Russia had better be prepared to do so on their own. The next president will find the domestic pressure to scale back involvement in Ukraine irresistible Donald Trump’s campaign message, muddled though it is, bodes ill for the Ukrainian
Home Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, repeatedly mentioning an inherited ‘£22 billion black hole’, raised taxes by £40 billion in the Budget, while saying she was abiding by Labour’s manifesto promise not to increase taxes on ‘working people’. A big hit came from increasing employers’ contributions to national insurance; the threshold at which it begins to be paid was reduced from £9,100 to £5,000. But income tax and NI thresholds for employees would be unfrozen from 2028. Capital gains tax went up; stamp duty for second homes rose. Fuel duty would again be frozen. The non-dom regime was abolished. Tobacco went up; a pint of draught went down
Tofurious Maximus Crane was sitting in a barber’s chair in Moscow when he received the greatest news of his life. It was 19 August, the day Vladimir Putin signed a decree allowing foreigners to immigrate to Russia. Now, the 46-year-old native of Virginia Beach, Virginia, could finally achieve his life’s dream of remaining in Russia for ever. ‘For me, the decree is the best thing that ever happened in my life besides, you know, family and children,’ says Crane, a charismatic bear of an American who sports a long Old Testament beard and perfectly coiffed hipster hair. ‘I got the notification about the decree, and I jumped up out of
A week away from the American election, and the polls cannot tell us who will be president. But can they ever? A poll is, as the pundits always remind us, a snapshot of public opinion, not a prediction. Nate Silver himself said that anyone dissecting an individual poll is ‘just doing astrology’. So what predictions are actual astrologers making about the election? She looks relieved when she draws the High Priestess: a trump card, but possibly not a Trump card Under the electoral college system, nationwide data is not as important as predictions for the swing states, so I look for astrologers in the seven states which will decide the election.
Anyone hunting for a ‘Trump trade’ at this late stage has probably missed the US election bus. If you bought gold as a traditional safe-haven asset back in February at £1,600 an ounce, you’d be a smug 33 per cent up by now – though my man in the bullion market tells me the rise is by no means all to do with presidential hopes and fears. There has also been big buying from China possibly linked to moves, with Russia and other unfriendly actors, towards ‘de-dollarisation’ of world trade using a partially gold-backed alternative currency. Which means there could be more upside ahead, my man says, and gold ETFs
The first scent of trouble came when Cuba’s government ordered all its non-essential workers home. By packing them off (and there are plenty of them, given Cuba is one of the world’s last centrally planned communist states) the government hoped the island’s exhausted national power grid would get a breather. It didn’t work, the main power station crashed, and Cuba went dark. At first, I didn’t think it was a big deal. Power cuts in this all-but-bankrupt state have long been a daily scourge. But it turns out there’s a categoric difference between 20 and 24 hours of blackout. I came to Cuba in 2018 for a three-month stay and
Hillary Clinton has a simple but bitter lesson to teach Donald Trump’s supporters in 2024: the best way to lose an election is to assume you’ve already won it a week before it happens. The MAGA movement – aiming to Make America Great Again, namely by Making Trump President Again – has never been more confident. Opinion polls have Trump faring much better against Kamala Harris than he ever did against Clinton in 2016 or Joe Biden in 2020. Indeed, the polling averages actually place Trump ahead, which wasn’t the case at this point in either of his earlier elections. And since the polls underestimated his share of vote the
‘To get rich is glorious’ is perhaps the most over-used slogan attributed to Deng Xiaoping, the paramount leader who reformed China and opened its economy up to the world. There is no evidence that he actually said it, but regardless it seemed to capture the mood of that era. In the China of Xi Jinping, to get rich is decidedly dangerous, which may account for why the number of super-rich (or at least those admitting to it) is in sharp decline, with many now clambering for the exit to protect their wealth and their liberty. According to a rich list compiled by Hurun, a research group, the number of dollar
So, the long-awaited Israeli strike on Iran is finally over, and if we trust the Israeli post-attack analysis, then it went well. Buckling under American pressure not to attack Iranian nuclear or oil facilities, which could have led to massive escalation and a spike in oil prices (both undesired outcomes on the eve of US elections), Israel focused instead on military targets. Its 100-aircraft armada knocked out all of Iran’s S-300 air defence system, reduced Iranian ballistic missile production by 80 per cent, and struck air defence systems in the vicinity of Abadan, an oil production centre. This air attack caused not only physical damage but also sent a clear
Emmanuel Macron arrived in Morocco on Monday for a three day State visit, during which time he will discuss trade and security. Among his entourage is Yassine Belattar, a light entertainer with a controversial past. In September last year, the 42-year-old Franco-Moroccan was found guilty by a Paris court of making death threats against the screenwriter and director Kader Aoun. Belattar was given a four-month suspended sentence and he was also ordered to pay damages to an actor. The charges arose from the takeover of a Paris theatre in 2018. Macron is a poor judge of character. Perhaps he is too arrogant to care It was also in 2018 that
The president of Egypt has come up with the most modest of proposals to try and end the war in Gaza. President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has proposed a 48-hour ceasefire to facilitate the release of just four Israeli hostages in exchange for an unspecified number of Palestinian prisoners detained by Israel. El-Sisi’s objective is for the two-day truce to then lead to a longer-term ceasefire. He has suggested a ten-day negotiating period following the release of the four hostages. His proposal has coincided with the arrival in Doha, of the heads of the CIA and Mossad for renewed talks for a ceasefire-and-hostage-release framework. Washington still wants a deal that will
I have spent the past week travelling across ‘swing country’. Namely Pennsylvania and Ohio – two of the crucial states which will decide the coming US election. The former is important for the presidential race, the latter for control of the Senate. I spent time following a pollster, joining interviews and focus groups. The first stop was an affluent Pennsylvania suburb near Allentown. In 2020, the county (Lehigh) broke for the Democrats in a closely contested race – the party won just 53 per cent – and it is often seen as a bellwether for the national mood. In the suburb I met Rebecca and her family. Their sprawling bungalow-style
Where did it all go wrong for Volkswagen? The German carmaker is said to be planning to shut several factories and lay off thousands of staff. Workers who do keep their jobs could see their pay cut by as much as ten per cent, according to VW’s top employee representative, Daniela Cavallo. If the revelations are correct, the three factories will be the first to be shuttered in the company’s 87-year history. It is hard to overestimate the scale of the shock that the claims about VW, a company that has always been emblematic of the country’s post-war economic miracle, has delivered to the German economy today. Yet Germany –
