Politics

Read about the latest political news, views and analysis

Shots fired at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner

Donald and Melania Trump entered the hall at 8:16 to cheers and applause. “Hail to the Chief” was followed by presentation of the colors and the National Anthem. We had a brief introduction from Weijia Jiang, this year’s president of the White House Correspondents Association, followed by dinner. Two questions hovered in the background. One, how would President Trump treat the press? And two, would he, as had many presidents in the past at this event, treat the audience to a little self-deprecating humor? “Donald Trump” and “self-deprecation” are not words you often hear together, but who knows? The President is also a master communicator who reads his audience well.

Richard Williams

Trump believes Britain has betrayed the SAS

The Special Air Service, Special Boat Service and other elements of UK Special Forces are held in the highest regard by the Pentagon and by US special operators. British and American special forces have forged a bond of trust over decades with joint high-risk operations and combined training. A recent visit to Washington made clear that the American leadership on both sides of the political divide, and within the military and intelligence services, believe the current British government has broken that alliance. America views the SAS and SBS as equal to its own tier one special forces operators in Delta Force and SEAL Team Six. The eight saber squadrons of

John Foreman

Ukraine won’t give up at the behest of Donald Trump

Four years after President Putin bragged that he would “demilitarize and denazify” Ukraine, it still stands free. Talking to locals, expats, journalists and diplomats recently in Kyiv, I found a profound sense of realism and a confidence. Ukraine’s military strength is burgeoning. Its people are determined to see things through. They are cautiously optimistic. Although life is looking up after an exceptionally difficult winter, one astute insider noted that the country faces the same strategic challenges: a larger, implacable, and cunning enemy; economic fragility; $500 billion damage to infrastructure; US hostility; and steady civilian and military deaths. The faces of the fallen were everywhere. Two days before my arrival, Russia had launched almost 1,000

Travis Aaroe

The Palantir manifesto doesn’t go far enough

Tech companies like Palantir now find themselves in a bind. Wanting government contracts, they have a reason to stay politically neutral. At the same time, they rightly suspect that the greater part of the left has already marked them for destruction. The hostility has little to do with Silicon Valley’s enthusiasm for Austrian economics, or its occasional calls for a property-based franchise – an old National Liberal demand rather than a fascist one. Rather, the left is hostile to technology because it is America’s conservative party, suspicious of anything that threatens to undermine old solidarities. MAGA was quick to forgive corporate America after it called a, at least temporary, halt

Friday

April 24, 2026

Daniel DePetris

The contempt Trump feels for his NATO allies is mutual

The war in Iran has revealed plenty about America’s ability to inflict damage on its enemies, Tehran’s capacity to resist pressure and Washington’s broader tendency to get itself stuck in the Middle East – a region several US presidents planned to extricate from. The conflict has been paused since April 7 due to a ceasefire that Trump extended earlier in the week. But it is nonetheless revealing a gradual systemic shift in the so-called international order that has been bubbling beneath the surface for years. The movable object is none other than the transatlantic alliance which, through NATO, has bound the United States and most of Europe into a single

Julie Burchill

Don’t whitewash Michael Jackson

We’re not used to famous pedophiles having a great talent; perhaps because all of their drive goes into their secret obsession, they’re generally just operators with a lot of front. It’s been easy to slice the cultural contributions of, say, Jerry Sandusky from one’s life and not feel the least absence. If the chattering classes are allowed to keep their Eric Gill, why can’t the dancing classes keep Michael Jackson? On the other hand, we’re inclined to give Caravaggio a pass, as he was such a great painter as well as a boy-abusing murderer – and it was such a long time ago, that the victims can’t speak out. The

Thursday

April 23, 2026

Freddy Gray

How real is the ‘Trumplash?’

Freddy is in DC and is joined by Daniel McCarthy from the Heritage Foundation to discuss why the Iran war is unpopular in America; the significance of China ahead of Trump’s visit; plus NATO, Europe and “Trumplash.”

Mark Pulliam

The tawdry shenanigans of the Southern Poverty Law Center

In the financial world, most frauds are short-lived. Ponzi schemes such as Bernie Madoff’s eventually run out of new suckers to provide enough funds to pay the phony “returns” promised to earlier investors. When the cash flow dries up, the scam collapses. The con artists at the non-profit Southern Poverty Law Center have a different racket, and a different problem. Instead of swindling the public with promises of unrealistic, too-good-to-be-true investment returns, the fear-mongering SPLC sold “paranoia porn” to credulous donors, convincing them – falsely – that the country is full of dangerous right-wing extremists who need to be identified and brought to heel. SPLC has so much money socked away that it

Gavin Mortimer

France isn’t ready for its first openly gay president

France is ready to elect its first openly gay president. That is the belief of Gabriel Attal, who discusses his homosexuality in the memoir that was published yesterday. Attal became the first gay prime minister of the Republic when he was nominated by Emmanuel Macron in January 2024. At 34, he was also the youngest, a man described as a “mini Macron.” Attal is busily promoting his oeuvre – En Homme Libre (As a Free Man) – with media interviews and book-signing appearances. He told one radio station yesterday that being gay was “not at all” a barrier to becoming president. “Our country is more open and tolerant than it

Wednesday

April 22, 2026

Jawad Iqbal

Who is really leading Iran?

In declaring an extension to the ceasefire in the Iran war, President Trump signaled clearly enough that he would prefer to strike a peace deal with Tehran. J.D. Vance, the Vice President, has been kicking his heels, waiting to return to the Pakistani capital Islamabad for another go at achieving a breakthrough. The Iranians keep blowing hot and cold on whether they are ready to play their part. Trump suggested in a social media post earlier this week that he believes this is because Iran’s government is “seriously fractured.” His ceasefire extension is aimed at allowing the regime time to deliver a new proposal. Trump may want to hammer everything

Melanie McDonagh

It’s little surprise that an Israeli soldier was caught desecrating a crucifix

There’s something apposite, I suppose, about the desecration of a crucifix. In this case, it was an Israeli soldier in southern Lebanon who took a sledgehammer to one on private property and smashed the Jesus figure on the cross. The original crucifixion, as anyone who heard the gospels over Easter will recall, was marked by the humiliation of Jesus; this attack on the figure of one who took on suffering willingly was another humiliation, through the image. Mind you, if the charmer with the sledgehammer had reflected that the Christ-figure is, in Christian belief, not just God-made-man but God-made-Jew, he might have eased off a bit. It looks like the

Alexander Kolyandr

Is Russia’s economy really on its last legs?

The head of Swedish military intelligence has dropped what he clearly regards as a bombshell. Thomas Nilsson told the Financial Times this week that Russia’s economy is far weaker than it appears, that the Kremlin systematically manipulates its statistics to fool Ukraine’s Western allies, and that the central bank is understating inflation, which he believes is closer to 15 percent than the official 5.86 percent. For good measure, he endorsed the German intelligence service BND’s earlier estimate that Russia’s budget deficit is understated by $30 billion. One need not be a Kremlin agent to find this less than convincing. That Russia’s economy is struggling is not in dispute. It lives on a mortgaged future

Jacob Heilbrunn

Virginia referendum loss adds to Trump’s woes

In 2020 Donald Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to lose Virginia twice since William Howard Taft. Then in 2024 Trump lost once more, this time to Kamala Harris. Now he has in effect lost it a fourth time as Virginia voters approved on Tuesday a fiercely contested referendum redrawing congressional districts to favor Democratic congressional candidates in the 2026 midterm elections. “This is really a country election. The whole country is watching,” Trump said. If so, it watched Trump suffer a major blow – one that will prompt renewed questions about his political acuity and judgment. It was Trump, after all, who kicked off the spate of gerrymandering in August 2025 by demanding that Texas Republicans engage in geographic contortions to deprive Democrats,

Tuesday

April 21, 2026

Charlie Gammell

Why Iran doesn’t want peace

Perhaps we should be used to be this by now. Yet again, there have been a flurry of promises to rapidly achieve peace in Iran. Yet again, the American administration has threatened to destroy the nation’s infrastructure. J.D. Vance is again flying to Pakistan for more talks. And yet the conflict shows no sign of ending. We don’t know whether the Iranians will actually turn up. A foreign ministry spokesman said yesterday that Iran will not be joining the talks. The speaker of the parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has also made clear that the regime won’t negotiate under threat of civilizational destruction. Why would they resist peace talks? There is

Anna Paulina Luna

Congress needs an ethics overhaul: Anna Paulina Luna

Washington’s problems are not hidden. Many of them simply go unaddressed. On Capitol Hill, “open secrets” persist because Congress has chosen to look the other way. Ask almost any staffer on Capitol Hill, and they can tell you which offices to avoid, which members have a reputation and which situations are quietly tolerated because confronting them would be politically inconvenient. Rumors are not just whispered behind closed doors; they are broadcast to virtually anyone dialed in to the right frequency. Leadership hears them. Colleagues hear them. The press often hears them too. And still nothing happens. Awareness is not the problem. The blatant absence of accountability is. When misconduct is tolerated

Ian Williams

The Iran war is giving Xi the upper hand with Trump

China’s largest trade show is now under way in the southern city of Guangzhou. The Canton Fair is a colossal month-long affair with around 32,000 exhibitors and is often described as a shop window for Chinese manufacturers – a barometer of the China trade – where just about anything and everything can be bought. This year the mood is subdued. “The specter of the Iran war hung heavy like the banners inside the gigantic exhibition halls,” as Bloomberg described it. Exhibitors reportedly complained of soaring costs and falling orders, most notably from the Middle East. China’s economy is highly dependent on exports, and the show’s opening coincided with President Xi

Freddy Gray

Why Trump hasn’t stuck the knife into Starmer

As public messages of support go, it scored pretty low on the conviction-o-meter. “Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom acknowledged that he ‘exercised wrong judgment’ when he chose his Ambassador to Washington,” said President Donald Trump on Truth Social last night. “I agree, he was a really bad pick. Plenty of time to recover, however! President DJT.” Uh oh. None of the trademark capitalization, which suggests Donald’s heart isn’t really in it. Some aide must have just spoken to him about Keir Starmer’s Peter Mandelson crisis, or perhaps a news story came to his attention. You know a British prime minister is in trouble when an American president

Charles Cornish-Dale

Iran is winning the meme war

The opening strikes on Iran forced the country’s military to operate without a centralized command structure. Despite this enormous setback, something like a unified approach has emerged, and nowhere is that more evident than on social media. Iran’s embassies have become meme factories, centers of information warfare churning out images and videos designed to do just one thing: mock the US and Israel and, in particular, Donald Trump. Courtesy of Iran’s overseas missions, we’ve now seen Donald Trump as a minion from Despicable Me; a Lego man fleeing a Lego Jeffrey Epstein; and a Pirate of the Caribbean trying, and failing, to hijack the Strait of Hormuz. My personal favorite came when Trump

Gareth Roberts

Why politicians make us wince

Mind your language! There has recently been another smattering of incidents featuring accusations of inappropriate choice of words, or even just the wrong tone. I think it’s worth taking a closer look at some of these for what they reveal about our hang-ups, the tender areas of our discourse. What makes us wince? What is considered appropriate, and what isn’t? On last week’s Edition podcast, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams spoke of there being something “demonic” about the current political culture of the US. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s “rhetoric about the violent obliteration of enemies” strikes him as “diabolical” – and of course Trump’s recent threat that “an entire

Monday

April 20, 2026

Ross Clark

Tariff refunds are a nightmare for Trump’s economy

Donald Trump’s second presidency began with a blaze of executive orders which horrified and impressed in equal measure. It also begged the question: if it really were so easy for a president to circumvent the legal obstacles and assert his will, how come none had behaved in this way before? A year on, we are learning the truth: no, a president can’t just do what he likes, and there is a horrible price to pay if he tries. In the case of Trump’s “Liberation Day” tariffs the notional bill is $166 billion. That is the sum that US Customs believes it will have to refund to importers who paid tariffs which were

Klaus Dodds

Trump’s costly armchair geography

In the 19th century, the geographer and explorer David Livingstone was scathing of what he described as “easy-chair geographers” – authors and mapmakers who produced maps and treatises about the non-European world without ever leaving their learned society or personal office. Donald Trump is a latter-day armchair geographer. Or judging by photographs repeatedly released by the White House, a president comfortable convening meetings in the Oval Office with large maps displayed by his desk. But whether it is a case of acquiring Greenland or blockading the Strait of Hormuz, maps can be poor substitutes for in-field knowledge and understanding. Blockading seven Iranian ports stretching over several hundred miles of coastline

James Heale

Starmer squirms on Mandelson debacle

Keir Starmer is enduring perhaps his most uncomfortable afternoon in the House Commons since being elected Britain’s Prime Minister. He promised in his opening remarks that he would set out the full timeline of Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador, which ended in Olly Robbins’s dismissal last Thursday. Carefully worded and legally precise, his statement contained another revelation: Chris Wormald, the ex-cabinet secretary, was not told Mandelson had failed the UK Security Vetting interview (UKSV), despite leading an official review. Starmer’s tone was one of scorned hurt and anger. He remarked repeatedly how various facts of the case were “staggering.” “I do not accept,” he said, “that I could not

Sunday

April 19, 2026

Oz Pearlman

Can I read Trump’s mind?

Making time to prepare to host the White House Correspondents’ Dinner has not been easy. Presently I’m flying back to New York, where I live, on a red-eye after a show in Las Vegas. My wife and five kids, all under the age of ten, are at home waiting for me. On average, I have one media appearance every day and a half between now and then. I’m not asking you to cry for me. All of this momentum and publicity is terrific. And my preparation for the big night on April 25 is always simmering below the surface. It feels as if reading minds for the last 30 years

Saturday

April 18, 2026

Tim Shipman

How Peter Mandelson became Britain’s ambassador to the US – despite failing vetting

I have just been contacted by a source who knows much more about what happened with Peter Mandelson’s vetting. It supports the case that I made in my summary of the case last night and Sam Coates made in his thread yesterday that the crucial decision was Keir Starmer’s political decision to appoint him. In essence, Oliver Robbins – the top civil servant who overruled Mandelson’s failed security vetting – was rubber-stamping a decision which had already been made. Things are much less clear cut than Downing Street has been claiming for the last three days I have heard too from an ally of Mandelson who believes Robbins’s dismissal was