Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator

Is Israel going green?

Israel’s PR electoral system annoys mainstream politicians because it encourages a plethora of fringe parties, who waste their time and prevent them from doing what they want. The governing Likud-Beiteinu came together on a promise to overhaul the system. The proposals include raising the threshold for entering the Knesset from 2 to 6 per cent,

Israel is sleepwalking to election day

Maybe it’s the unconscious effect of the Sabbath, but here in Tel Aviv a soporific atmosphere hangs over next week’s Israeli elections. Among the Israelis I have spoken to (mostly secular Tel Avivians), apathy prevails. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is going to win whatever happens, it seems, and he is going to have to come

The Pacific President

On Monday, as Barack Obama is sworn in again as President, his allies in the West will ask themselves the same nervous question they posed four years ago: how much does he care about us? The British, in particular, are worried. War looms in Mali, yet Washington seems happy to let the French take charge,

Sorry atheists, organised religion works

‘I’m spiritual, not religious’ is something people say to make themselves sound interesting. It doesn’t work. What is intriguing, though, is that, according to this new survey, those who see themselves as spiritual but don’t follow conventional religion are far more likely to be mentally ill. Now, before you trolly atheists out there in webland

The easy language of opposition

Isabel makes an excellent point about Ed Miliband’s One Nation spiel. It soothes political minds to talk about society rather than economics, people rather than the state, the common good rather individual utility. Voters like it, too, because globalisation and technology make many of us feel lost and alone. But it is, as Isabel says,

The Church of England rejects women bishops

Gulp. The General Synod of the Church of England has, against almost all expectations, rejected the ordination of women bishops. This seems to represent an early defeat for the incoming Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby, who earlier had called on his fellow Anglicans to ‘finish the job’ and accept reform. Secularists and liberals will be

Why Old Etonian Justin Welby is good news for the CofE

So, another Old Etonian at the apex of the British establishment: Justin Welby, the Bishop of Durham, will be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. It’s sweet, in a way. All we need now is an OE named as Bank of England Governor, and David Cameron’s alma mater will have the complete power set. But it would be

US elections 2012: God Bless Negativity

Today, says American political journalist Michael Brendan Dougherty, ‘120 million Americans will choose who they don’t want to be president.’ Exactly — for all Mitt Romney and Barack Obama’s upbeat noise over the last few days, the 2012 US presidential elections have been motivated, entirely, by fear and loathing. The key questions: Are you so

The small-minded people of the abortion debate

Are men not allowed to talk about abortion any more? I’ve lost count of the angry comments I have read on Facebook and Twitter, denouncing Jeremy Hunt, the new Health Secretary, as a vile bigot because he supports a reduction in the 24 week time-limit on legal abortions. ‘Hunt: stay out of my c***’ is

Deliver us, Lord

Why has David Cameron made his conference slogan ‘Britain can deliver’? That word ‘deliver’ is revolting. Cameron clearly likes it: ‘Britain delivered’, he said after the Olympics. But if only Dave and his handlers read the Spectator’s Dot Wordsworth more closely, they’d know better. In 2003, Dot wrote: ‘Politicians and managers who use the word

The professorial President

Is Barack Obama really as clever as he looks? Ever since he first appeared in the public eye, it’s been taken as read that he’s a major intellectual. Liberals say, in fact, that brilliance is his greatest flaw. He’s too academic, too nuanced; too eager to understand both sides to be an effective leader. The

The court of Twitter

It is wrong to insult an Olympian who has just missed out on a medal, and worse to bring his dead father into it. But, as Melanie Philips and others have pointed out in this morning’s papers, it is hardly criminal. Yesterday, Dorset police arrested a teenager after he sent a nasty message to Tom

Mad Frogs and Englishmen

The English like nothing better than the idea that the French hate us. Bradley Wiggins, an Englishman, wins the Tour de France, and we are full of in-votre-face triumphalism. British journalists search the French media for sour grapes. How the frogs must be fuming! Beaten by a rosbif on their own turf! Yet if the

Obama’s Romney money war

Barack Obama’s latest email appeal for campaign funds – entitled ‘we could lose if this continues’ – doesn’t seem altogether sincere. The president’s re-election team wants more money, of course – who doesn’t? – and they must be concerned by the fact that Romney and his plutocratic committees are beating them in the fund-raising stakes.

Burning Man and the Republicans

Grover Norquist, a leading voice of American conservatism, is cross about the date of the Republican Party convention. He tweets: ‘Which idiot put the GOP convention the same time as ‘Burning Man’ in Nevada? Is there time to change this?’ Burning Man, in case you didn’t know, is a festival in Nevada where ‘freethinkers’ flock

The Obamacare battle is far from won

The US Supreme Court’s decision to uphold ‘Obamacare’ and the so-called ‘individual mandate’ will have brought a little relief to President Obama. If his administration’s hardest-fought legislative victory had been struck down by the high court, the president’s admirers would have started to wonder whether he had achieved anything at all. But Obama and the

Fun is not everything in sport

In tonight’s Evening Standard (guest edited by Tony Blair), Tim Henman says that if we want British tennis stars in the future, we need to make the sport more fun. ‘I’ve got three girls and anything they have fun with, they’re going to want to do again. But if something bores them, they’ll say ‘no