The Spectator

Thursday

The Spectator

The ideas-free election

From our UK edition

On the face of it, 2024 is a great year for democracy. Britain is one of 50 countries to hold elections, with a record two billion people globally expected to have cast a vote by Christmas. This is partly down to the growing number of democratic countries, particularly in the past three decades. Last year the Economist Intelligence Unit’s Democracy Index judged two more to have made the grade, bringing the tally to 74. Alongside that, there is greater participation and wider suffrage. No one has worked out how to win elections while telling the public to expect less from government In Britain the past five weeks cannot be said to have shown democracy at its shining best, though. Our political system has felt jaded.

Wednesday

The Spectator

Trump versus the moderators

It’s almost here... the first presidential debate between President Joe Biden and former president Donald Trump will take place tomorrow night on CNN. It is quite early in the election cycle, which is by design to account for the fact that many voters now cast their ballots via mail or in an early voting period. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that Biden agreed to debate this early, which could signal his campaign’s uneasiness with polls showing the president trailing in most swing states, losing by double digits on the issues that matter most to voters and hemorrhaging support among various key voting blocs, despite what they may say in public (When First Lady Jill Biden was asked about polls showing Biden losing battleground states, she sharply replied, “No, he’s not!

Monday

The Spectator

Biden turns up the heat on Dobbs anniversary

On the two-year anniversary of the Supreme Court’s Dobbs decision, the Biden campaign is getting aggressive on abortion. While President Joe Biden is mostly locked away at Camp David preparing for Thursday’s first presidential debate against Donald Trump, he released a video blaming Trump for appointing the Supreme Court justices who overturned Roe v. Wade, “putting women’s lives in danger.”  “Decades of progress shattered just because the last guy got four years in the White House,” Biden said. “We know what will happen if he gets another four. For MAGA Republicans, Roe is just the beginning. They’re going to try to ban the right to choose nationwide. They’re coming for IVF and birth control next.

Friday

The Spectator

Trump making advances with women

Donald Trump is making strides in all the right places, it seems. Polls indicate he’s making moves among black and Jewish voters in New York State as well as with female voters, while also gaining support in crucial battleground states.According to the New York Post:Surveys from Emerson College and the Hill show the 45th president edging out Biden in Arizona (47 percent — 43 percent), Georgia (45 — 41 percent), Michigan (46 — 45 percent), Nevada (46 — 43 percent), Pennsylvania (47 — 45 percent) and Wisconsin (47 — 44 percent).In all six states, Trump’s lead has either remained the same or grown from the outlet’s polls taken last month, before he was convicted by a Manhattan jury on thirty-four business fraud charges.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: the Tories’ fatal flaw

From our UK edition

Major error Sir: Even as a former Tory voter, I acknowledge that the predicted scale of the Conservative electoral defeat would be a national tragedy. Starmer’s government needs to be kept in check by a robust opposition. There are many explanations for the Tory decline, but George Osborne’s Diary (15 June) gives some clues: his celebration of a ‘Middle England’ country fête having a tombola for Gaza rather than a worthy local cause, for instance. More tellingly, Osborne also celebrates John Major’s advice that the Conservatives ‘will never win while we remain in thrall to the hard right of our party’. The practical interpretation of this involves moving the Tories to the left, while leaving voters to choose Labour’s ‘real thing’.

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week: Supermajorities, falling inflation and rammed cows

From our UK edition

Home The electorate mulled over the words of Grant Shapps, the Defence Secretary: ‘You don’t want to have somebody receive a supermajority.’ A question that lodged in the election campaign was put by Beth Rigby of Sky News to Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader, asking whether he had meant it when he said his predecessor, Jeremy Corbyn, would make a great prime minister; he replied: ‘I was certain we would lose the 2019 election.’ A few days later, Sir Keir told a phone-in questioner that serving in a Corbyn administration ‘didn’t cross my mind because I didn’t think we would win’. He evaded questions on council tax, taxing pensions and VAT on schools. A dishevelled Boris Johnson made some short videos endorsing Conservative candidates.

The Spectator

Starmer and Le Pen’s similarities

From our UK edition

Emmanuel Macron’s decision to call a snap election in France is turning out to be a blunder of Sunakian proportions. His second term as president lasts until 2027 and he could have struggled on with a hung parliament in which his was the largest single party. But when Marine Le Pen’s National Rally won 31 per cent of the vote in the European Parliament elections, to his party’s 15 per cent, he decided to call French voters’ bluff. In a parliamentary election, would they really back Le Pen and put in Jordan Bardella, her new 28-year-old party frontman, as prime minister? It is becoming clear that they may well do that. Macron’s Renaissance party, which won 39 per cent of the vote in the last legislative elections two years ago, is now polling at about half that.

Monday

The Spectator

Team Biden rejects ‘cheap fake’ videos

Who can you put next to President Joe Biden that will make him look good? We know it’s not the G7, as Italian prime minister Giorgia Meloni had to wrangle the US commander-in-chief when he threatened to drift away from the group of world leaders during a parachuting demonstration. And Saturday confirmed that former president Barack Obama isn’t the answer either, after grabbing his former VP by the wrist and guiding him by his shoulders off the stage at a Los Angeles event as Biden appeared to freeze for about five seconds. Biden’s handlers have already equipped him with special shoes and a gaggle of aides now surround him during boarding of Marine One to disguise his shuffling gait.

biden cheap fakes
letters
The Spectator

Letters from Spectator readers, July 2024

The cunning of the Democrats’ lawfare On the right flank the aristocrats of the conservative intelligentsia dominated by the likes of Max Boot, David Frum, David French, Bill Kristol and George Will would rather compromise than soil their false pride; the haughty intellectual snobs are thus perfect targets for Alinsky’s “Make the enemy live up to its own book of rules” — aristocratic intellectual elites that would rather die than support a judicial and policy juggernaut with bad table manners. As Victor Davis Hanson observed, Marquess of Queensberry Republicans would rather lose nobly than win ugly. — Adler Pfingsten Will Cherelle Parker become the next ‘America’s mayor’ in Philadelphia?

culture
The Spectator

This month in culture: July 2024

The Bear, season three Hulu, June 27 America loves a misanthropic, depressive chef. How else would we know the chef is a real artist? The Bear returns for its third season with the trailer promising lots of arguing, screw-ups, failures and everything else you’ve come to expect from the beloved show. We’re not sure why you would take a perfectly good beef-sandwich shop in Chicago and try to turn it into a Michelin-starred restaurant, but we hope Carmy and the gang give us some sort of good reason. — Zack Christenson Jeremy Allen White in The Bear Wimbledon ESPN and ABC, July 1 You know summer has arrived when the brilliant green grass of the All-England Lawn Tennis and Croquet Club lights up your screens.

Friday

The Spectator

Trump courts Gen Z on the pods

Donald Trump went to Capitol Hill on Thursday, his first visit since some of his supporters stormed the Capitol building on January 6 three years ago.A packed room full of House Republicans sang “Happy Birthday” to the former president, who turns seventy-eight today.Trump pleaded with members for a change in tone on abortion, calling on the issue to be left to the states. This comes after a record number of voters, 32 percent, said in a Gallup poll that they would only vote for candidates in major races who share their views on abortion.

Thursday

The Spectator

Letters: could Nigel Farage ever be a statesman?

From our UK edition

Debunking the debanking Sir: Toby Young is wrong to say the Conservatives have ‘failed us on debanking’ (No sacred cows, 8 June). On the contrary, this was a situation where immediately following his incident being brought to my attention, swift and decisive action was taken. The Free Speech Union was indeed ‘patient zero’ of the ‘debanking’ epidemiology and such was my concern about its chilling impact on freedom of expression that I invited Toby and Miriam Cates MP to meet me in my Treasury offices.

The Spectator

Portrait of the Week: Sunak’s D-Day misstep, Michael Mosley’s death and Macron’s snap election

From our UK edition

Home The Conservatives promised to reduce National Insurance from 8 per cent to 6 per cent (and abolish it for most of the self-employed by 2029) in their 76-page election manifesto. Despite other tax cuts already announced, the tax burden would continue to rise steadily. The Tories also promised to halve migration. In its manifesto, Labour decided after all not to reinstate the lifetime limit on tax-free pension savings, but it was tempted by capital gains tax. Labour promised 100,000 extra childcare places, with nurseries set up in classrooms expected to be empty because of falling numbers of primary school children; the costs would be met by VAT on private schools. Douglas Ross announced that he would resign as leader of the Scottish Conservatives after the election.

The Spectator

The danger of a Labour supermajority

From our UK edition

We are witnessing what could well be the last few weeks of a constrained Labour party. Sir Keir Starmer is saying as little as possible about his agenda and is instead listing what he won’t do (raise income tax, etc). He is rightly fearful that the Conservatives may do better than the opinion polls suggest. That has happened in the past. There may be a ‘shy Tory’ effect in the polls as there was in 1992, 2015 and 2019. Who would admit to voting Conservative in the current climate? Regardless, power now looks certain to come Starmer’s way – perhaps with a majority bigger than that of any modern prime minister. It doesn’t much matter that he has not enthused voters with his promises.

The Spectator

What was in the first manifesto?

From our UK edition

Made manifest What was in the first manifesto? The word ‘manifesto’ is first recorded as being used in English in a 1620 translation of the History of the Council of Trent – the series of meetings held by the Catholic Church between 1545 and 1563 in an attempt to stem the rise of Protestantism. Among the measures proposed was a ban on the sale of indulgences, an insistence that bishops must be resident in the diocese they served, a prohibition on concubinage and a ban on duelling. More controversial was a ban on divorcees marrying while their former spouse was still alive – including an innocent party whose spouse had been unfaithful. Win win Which political parties won the most seats in last week’s European elections?

Wednesday

The Spectator

The cultural chasm between Biden and Trump supporters

A new Pew Research poll with some stunning findings challenges common critiques from centrist and moderate politicos that the so-called “culture war” is a distraction or even imaginary. On the contrary, the results show a massive cultural chasm between Biden and Trump supporters that helps explain why America seems so politically divided — and why compromise often feels impossible.

Rebecca Watts

Multiverse Valentine

From our UK edition

In your lit eyes I see other candles, other flames. On the stiff white tablecloth I lay out my jokes like the contents of a handbag. Your laugh, as mine, sounds far away. But the scene — how close and familiar it all is! Uncountable sweetnesses, tragedies.

Monday

The Spectator

Biden White House rocked by protests

The Biden White House had a difficult weekend as pro-Palestinian protesters continue to be a thorn in the side of the administration and the Democratic Party. Thousands arrived outside of the White House on Saturday to call for an immediate and permanent ceasefire and for Biden to stop sending weapons to Israel. Police erected additional fencing around the White House in anticipation of the protests and deployed pepper spray against at least one demonstrator, but no arrests were made. Instead, the pro-Palestinian activists left graffiti on statues in Lafayette Square and trash strewn around the perimeter of the White House complex.

protests