Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator
From our UK edition
Don’t say you weren’t warned. Ahead of the Nato summit in Brussels today, Donald Trump had spent the last two days tweeting about the iniquity of Nato and the trade deficits between the EU and his country. He had singled out Germany for not contributing enough to Nato’s defence budget, and three times mentioned a
Uh oh – poor Theresa. You know that when Donald Trump, the most powerful man in the world, tells the media that you and he have a ‘very good relationship’, it means he doesn’t like you at all. It’s what he said about Theresa May this morning, just before he left for Europe. It’s also
Trump says he likes things ‘nice and complicated’ – well, in that case, he couldn’t be coming to Britain at a better time. Theresa May’s newly hatched soft Brexit plan, announced on Friday, has triggered two major resignations from her cabinet and another political crisis in Britain. David Davis, the Brexit Secretary, went late last
From our UK edition
Last summer, the crowds in the fields at Glastonbury Festival filmed themselves chanting ‘Oh Jeremy Corbyn’. It was the fashionable political statement of the summer. This year, there’s no Glastonbury — those fields lie fallow — and Corbyn-mania suddenly feels very 2017. Britain’s Instagram-addled middle classes are eager for a substitute form of mass entertainment
From our UK edition
The stories are filed, the pictures are posted, and the media verdict is almost unanimous: separating children from their parents is wrong, it is unAmerican, and President Donald Trump is going to suffer for it. His administration is baby-snatching. The ‘optics’ are terrible, say the hyperventilating PR men and Washington know-alls. But if everybody stops
The stories are filed, the pictures are posted, and the media verdict is almost unanimous: separating children from their parents is wrong, it is unAmerican, and President Donald Trump is going to suffer for it. His administration is baby-snatching. The ‘optics’ are terrible, say the hyperventilating PR men and Washington know-alls. But if everyone stopped
From our UK edition
‘Imagine Trump doing Brexit — what would he do?’ asked the Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, at that dinner which was recorded and leaked to Buzzfeed. ‘There’d be all sorts of breakdowns, all sorts of chaos. Everyone would think that he’d gone mad. But you might actually get somewhere.’ Well, let’s imagine. What follows, brought to
From our UK edition
Barack Obama tried to be the first Pacific President. He attempted to pivot America’s grand strategy eastwards in order to adapt to a changing world. He failed, by and large. After his meeting with Kim Jong-un today, Donald Trump has shown that he is moving further east. In fact, Trump could be turning into the
From our UK edition
Barack Obama tried to be the first Pacific President. He attempted to pivot America’s grand strategy eastwards in order to adapt to a changing world. He failed, by and large. After his meeting with Kim Jong-un today, Donald Trump has shown that he is moving further east. In fact, Trump could be turning into the first truly Global
You can tell when Donald Trump has just achieved something: he starts being strangely amiable, and his critics start frothing at the mouth. He’s just met supposedly one of the most dangerous, evil men in the world — and made him look like a sweet overgrown child. He and Kim Jong-un signed an agreement and
If the BBC really is, as Steve Bannon says, a communications department of the global elite, they messed up badly last night. Emily Maitlis’s 20-minute long interview with Bannon on Newsnight was mesmerising television — even, or especially, if you can’t bear the subject. It was also the longest advertisement for economic nationalism yet delivered
From our UK edition
Did anybody really think President Donald J Trump wasn’t going to pull out of the Iran deal? He’s said all along he would and this Commander-in-Chief’s number one public image rule is that, unlike most politicians, he honours his word. Trump’s other big rule is that anything Obama has done he’ll undo. And Obama’s biggest achievement,
From our UK edition
From 2009 to 2010 Sven Hughes worked for SCL group, the parent company of the controversial — now deceased — Cambridge Analytica. SCL/Cambridge Analytica and its CEO Alexander Nix have been in the news a lot lately, chiefly because of their role in the Trump campaign. The fall of Cambridge Analytica was prompted by a
The evidence suggests not
The dinner isn’t just a private get-together when the elite get together for a laugh. It’s a gala for media self-importance
President Donald Trump and Brexit Britain have a spooky synergy. After all, the last time Donald Trump came to Britain was the day after the Brexit vote. Was it a coincidence? A shrewd bit of PR? Or destiny? Trump himself seem to believe it was written in the populism stars. ‘I think I see a … Read more
Celebrity opinion, that awful juggernaut, is beginning to shift. It could take another 30 years before we see any great turn. Yet slowly, slowly, famous people are realising that intense political correctness isn’t working. Old fashioned identity politics now bores the fans. One by one, celebrities are starting to reposition themselves. The stars are working … Read more
From our UK edition
As I’ve said before, but it needs saying again because these people never stop — the let’s-bomb-Syria brigade has never quite gotten over the horror of being rebuffed by Parliament in 2013. And this week, what with the latest reported use of chemical weapons by Assad in Syria, they’ve got their tails up again. We don’t
From our UK edition
Remember the never-ending handshake? It was 14 July 2017, Bastille Day, and Emmanuel Macron and Donald Trump opened their formal relationship as leaders of their respective countries by interlocking palms and refusing to let go. They kept at it for a good 30 seconds. They didn’t release even as Trump began kissing Macron’s wife. It
You could call it the John Bolton effect. The president’s new National Security Adviser has only been in the job a few days, and already Donald Trump is threatening war with Russia on Twitter: Russia vows to shoot down any and all missiles fired at Syria. Get ready Russia, because they will be coming, nice
