Daniel Rey

Daniel Rey is the author of 'Checkmate or Top Trumps: Cuba's Geopolitical Game of the Century'. He lives in New York.

Can Republicans be trusted with the US economy?

When it comes to the economy, Americans typically trust the Republicans. They’re the party traditionally aligned with big capital; and their policies – low taxes and minimal government interference – sound sweet in a believer’s ear. Donald Trump, leading the GOP for the third election in a row, is a famous businessman; and the party’s

How postal votes could deliver Donald Trump the White House

Watch or attend one of Donald Trump’s rallies, and you may well see something surprising: an electronic billboard encouraging people to vote by post. It’s a big u-turn for Trump, who has spent years maintaining that postal votes are manipulated. Ahead of the 2020 election – which took place in the pre-vaccine era of the

Biden’s legacy is in Harris’s hands

Joe Biden did the honourable thing. It took dire polls and home truths from donors and allies, but the President finally admitted that his political race is over.  Biden was trailing Donald Trump in the swing states – in some cases with a wide margin – and was showing little sign of being able to

The Democrats should remove Joe Biden from office

In a sense, Democrats ought to be relieved. After his calamitous presidential debate, Joe Biden delivered one of his most embarrassing gaffes on Thursday, when he introduced Volodymyr Zelensky as ‘President Putin’, and called Kamala Harris ‘Vice President Trump’. These howlers – which could have been mistaken for hard-right disinformation – are incontrovertible evidence the

Don’t dismiss America getting into cricket

US cricket is rising. After beating Pakistan and pushing India, the Americans have reached the last eight of the T20 World Cup. On Sunday, they play England. The success comes at a time of vast growth for American cricket. The US, the co-host of the tournament, launched a professional league last year and added T20 cricket to the

Trump is forcing Biden to the right

Joe Biden is a pragmatist. With just five months to go until his rematch against Donald Trump, the veteran Democrat is making political decisions based on an electoral calculation. These decisions, intended to undermine Trump’s appeal among wavering voters, cross into economic, domestic and foreign policy. They are taking him closer to the views of

Have NeverTrumpers found a way to hit Donald where it hurts?

With Donald Trump confirmed as the Republican nominee, a group of NeverTrump conservatives have tried to hit the former president somewhere vulnerable: the musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber. The Lincoln Project, an organisation led by old-school Republicans, has released a video parodying one of the tunes most associated with Trump’s rallies – the theme song

New light on the New Testament

Readers of the Bible, you are almost certainly in for a shock. A new book, drawing on recent archaeology and literary criticism, persuasively argues that some of the most important parts of the New Testament were written or edited by slaves. Its author, Candida Moss, presents this thesis in God’s Ghostwriters, a general interest book

What Hugo Chávez failed to understand about Karl Marx

It’s 25 years this week since Hugo Chávez – an inspiration for leftwingers like Ken Livingstone and Jeremy Corbyn – was elected president of Venezuela. Chávez may not be the person primarily responsible for his country’s descent into dictatorship, anarchy and humanitarian disaster (that would be his hand-picked successor, Nicolás Maduro) but the foundation was

Next year’s US election promises a crisis

There’s only a year to go until the most complex and consequential US presidential election ever. Ukraine, the Middle East, geriatric candidates, big-name independents, the criminal charges against Trump, a new House speaker (who must ratify the outcome) who didn’t recognise Biden’s victory in 2020 – the complexity is staggering.  The two main candidates, Biden

The horror of Halloween

Temperate weather, perfect apples, and leaves turning yellow, red, and purple – ‘Fall’ ought to be the most charming time to be in the US. But the season’s natural beauty is defiled by a grotesque American obsession – Halloween. For all of October (and most of September) Halloween kitsch is as ubiquitous as leaves and

The outrageous felling of the Sycamore Gap tree

One August afternoon, my dad, my uncle, and I were walking along Hadrian’s Wall. It was pouring. Our shoes were full of water, our glasses had steamed up, and our pac-a-macs were sticking to our bodies.  Seemingly out of nowhere, we came upon a little dip in the cliff, within which was nestled a tall

Radio 4’s In Our Time is still the best thing on the BBC

For 25 years, Melvyn Bragg and his guests on Radio 4’s In Our Time have discussed most things from antimatter to Zoroastrianism. Their conversations have attracted a live audience of two million, and provide the BBC’s most-listened-to weekly podcast. At 9 a.m. today, In Our Time will broadcast its one thousandth episode. How has the BBC’s flagship

Book banning has come back to bite US conservatives

If you thought American book-banning couldn’t get any more ridiculous, think again. A school district in Utah, one of the most religious states in the country, has banned the Bible.  The Bible – fundamental to the state’s Protestant, Catholic and Mormon churches – is to be removed from elementary and middle school libraries for containing

Test cricket is being sabotaged

Test cricket should be in its prime. England is the most aggressive team in history, India and Australia are uncommonly good, and New Zealand has just played two of the most exciting matches of all time. Yet from Marylebone to Melbourne to Mumbai, administrators are sabotaging cricket’s finest form.  Every cricket lover knows that the charm

Mario Vargas Llosa’s Damascene conversion to liberalism

Mario Vargas Llosa wasn’t always a liberal. From his youth until his early thirties the Peruvian writer, born in 1936, was enthused by the utopian promises of socialism. He joined a communist cell at university, and in the 1950s spent half his salary on a subscription to Les Temps Modernes, the leftist journal founded by

Emperor for three years: the doomed reign of Maximilian I of Mexico

On 8 April 1864 an Austrian archduke with a penchant for daydreaming agreed to be emperor of Mexico. As Edward Shawcross describes in his majestic history The Last Emperor of Mexico, the process to install Maximilian of Habsburg began two and half years earlier. The plan was proposed by a determined clique of Mexican Conservatives

Why England lost the Ashes

England’s wretched performance in the Ashes – which saw the side lose three tests and so the series to Australia last week – has been more abject than even the most inspired pessimist could have imagined. No sane observer expected England to win against Australia, but to lose the five match series little more than