America

The phoney war: what’s really going on between Boris and Putin

What a lucky coincidence. At the start of a week that could see the ignominious collapse of Boris Johnson’s premiership, an opportunity to go fully Churchillian has appeared out of the blue. In an unprecedentedly detailed and direct memorandum, the British Foreign Office announced that it had exposed Russian plans to mount a coup in Kiev. Johnson was quick to back the alarming news with a grave warning to Vladimir Putin. ‘The intelligence is very clear that there are 60 Russian battle groups on the borders of Ukraine, the plan for a lightning war that could take out Kiev is one that everybody can see,’ Johnson told reporters on Monday.

Douglas Murray

This government’s greatest failure is economic

‘The main job of a government is to ensure that the economics don’t go wrong.’ So argued an economist friend of mine to me many years back. And I must admit that my first response was uncommonly cynical. ‘Well, you would say that, wouldn’t you?’ I replied. ‘You’re a political economist.’ It is to be expected. In the same way a military-defence type might say that the most vital job of government is to be able to defend these islands and project military force. Or Lulu Lytle might explain that the most important thing in government is to get the interiors right. But as the years have gone by, I

Ross Clark

Don’t bet on interest rates rising

So is this really it: the end of the era of virtually zero interest rates? There was a marked pullback in US markets on Wednesday when Jay Powell, the chair of the Federal Reserve, indicated that yes, he really did mean it: interest rates are on the way up, if not quite yet. ‘The committee is of a mind to raise the federal funds rate at the March meeting assuming that conditions are appropriate for doing so.’ Share prices, which earlier in the day had risen in expectation of a doveish stance, fell back sharply. The very idea that a central bank might increase interest rates to tackle rising inflation

Joe Biden’s Civil War re-enactment

We can’t blame American progressives for yearning to relive the civil rights movement. Those were heady days. Opposition to segregation — real ‘structural racism’ — placed you conspicuously on the proverbial right side of history. Joining the cause was like shooting up moral heroin. So maybe it’s predictable that when talking up his two voting rights bills in Atlanta last week, Joe Biden evoked the 1963 bombing of a black church in Alabama and MLK’s storied march in Selma two years later. Yet it’s one thing to wax nostalgic, quite another to insist that it’s still 1965 — much less 1865. Biden’s speech recalled a Civil War re-enactment, with polyester

Portrait of the week: Saving Big Dog, scrapping the licence fee and tsunami hits Tonga

Home Sue Gray, Second Permanent Secretary at the Cabinet Office, having been asked by Boris Johnson to look into accusations of parties held at 10 Downing Street, in turn formally asked him about them. Newspaper reports about such gatherings continued day after day, and Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s former chief adviser, said that he had warned Johnson in advance about one for 40 people in the garden on 20 May 2020, telling him: ‘You’ve got to grip this madhouse.’ ‘Nobody warned me that it was against the rules,’ the PM said. The commentariat at large talked of Operation Save Big Dog, by which officials would take the blame to

Does the world want America ‘back’?

American foreign-policy strategists used to promulgate doctrines. Now they dream up slogans. ‘America is back’ is the jingle under which the Biden administration has been conducting — or marketing — its post-Trump, post-Covid diplomacy, much as ‘Go big’ has been its jingle in domestic matters. The problem is, being ‘back’ can mean a number of different things. It can mean a sweet and tender reunion. It can also mean barrelling through the front door after a four-day bender hollering, ‘Anything to eat?’ Joe Biden’s advisors were confident of an effusive welcome. Maybe too confident. At their first bilateral meeting with Chinese diplomats in Anchorage last spring, Secretary of State Tony

January 6 was an alarm bell for America

If you’re tired of hypochondriac journalists’ takes on January 6, then try Thomas Jefferson’s. He delivered his judgment on events of that sort back in 1787. ‘I hold it that a little rebellion now and then is a good thing,’ he wrote to James Madison, ‘and as necessary in the political world as storms in the physical.’ Unlike the riot at the Capitol last year, the rebellion that Jefferson had in mind was a genuine armed insurrection. The Revolutionary War veteran Daniel Shays and his followers, furious over taxes and debts, forced state courts in Massachusetts to shut down in the late months of 1786. By early 1787, Shays commanded

The surreal joy of putting words in an actor’s mouth

More than 200 non-US residents stood in the queue ahead of me. A grand total of four Homeland Security officers were on duty in the glass booths. I texted my ride to expect me in Arrivals in an hour, at best, and tried to compose the opener for my Spectator diary. I didn’t get far: after an early start in Cork, my long-haul flight from Heathrow to San Francisco and watching Christopher Nolan’s Tenet, my brain was scrambled eggs. Nearby, an elderly traveller fainted. The well-rehearsed response by the tired-looking staff suggested this is a daily, if not an hourly, occurrence. I read a few chapters of Donal Ryan’s novel

Inside Joe Biden’s disastrous negotiations with Iran

One of the West’s great foreign policy failures of 2021 was the Iran nuclear negotiations, which remained bitterly unresolved as the clock passed midnight. Having spoken to a number of diplomatic sources on different sides in recent weeks, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the process has been woefully inept. Not only has there been a dramatic failure to extract any concessions from Tehran – even a meaningful freeze on progress towards the bomb has remained elusive – but western negotiators have become enveloped themselves in an Asterix-style dust cloud of infighting, competing agendas and tension. All of this, of course, is a gift to the Iranians, who

Most-read 2021: ‘My’ truth about Meghan and Harry

We’re closing the year by republishing our ten most popular articles in 2021. Here’s number one: Rod Liddle writing in March on Harry and Meghan.  Caroline Rose Giuliani, the daughter of the former mayor of New York, Rudy, has been talking to the press about one of her hobbies. Apparently she likes nothing more than playing the role of a ‘unicorn’ — the third partner in a sexual liaison. She explained: ‘Finding the strength to explore these more complicated, passionate aspects of my personality became the key to harnessing my voice and creative spark, which in turn helped me better cope with depression, anxiety, and the lingering cognitive effects of adolescent

Will Trump’s pro-vaccine stance prove his undoing?

Donald Trump famously boasted that he could ‘stand in the middle of Fifth Avenue and shoot somebody’ and still not lose voters. That was back in 2016 and the following years proved his point. We are now in the winter of 2021, however, and the 45th president may at last have stumbled across a way to alienate his fan base — by endorsing vaccines. Covid is today the most hostile frontline in America’s all-consuming culture war. Resistance to the national vaccination drive has become the stickiest point. You are either pro-freedom or in bed with the Great Globo Pharma Conspiracy. Trump has adopted a more middle-ground position: encouraging people to take the vaccines while

My snogging spat with Boris

I have not given up on my Build Back Boris campaign, which is the most pressing concern facing the UK. Once a beloved national monument like Nelson’s Column, this formerly majestic edifice has been chipped away by wokery in all its destructive forms, led by the country’s leading demolition expert, Carrie Symonds. It will cost millions and take years to rebuild him, but donors such as my friends William Shawcross and the historian Andrew Roberts have pledged their assistance and expertise. In the past few weeks, however, there has been serious subsidence, and a potentially catastrophic leaning to the south, like the Tower of Pisa. By the south I mean

Jussie Smollett and the rise of American hate hoaxing

The actor Jussie Smollett has been jailed for 150 days after staging a hate crime against himself. Freddy Gray wrote about the rise of hate hoaxing in December… So Jussie Smollett, the world’s most notorious hate hoaxer, has at last been found guilty of lying to the police.  Smollett, you may remember, was the actor who wanted to get even more famous so badly that he hired two brothers to put on ski masks and pretend to be Trump-supporting racists who spotted him in public. They then fake attacked him with bleach and a noose that they just happened to be carrying around, as racists do. The US vice president and

Abortion rights: the cracks are showing in Roe v. Wade

Crowds gathered outside of the Supreme Court this week as the Court prepared to hear arguments in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, the most consequential abortion case in a generation, which will decide if a 2018 Mississippi law that bans abortions after 15 weeks is constitutional. Pro-life groups rallied outside the Court, holding signs to ‘love them both’ while chanting ‘we are the pro-life generation and we will abolish abortion.’ The pro-abortion group Shout Your Abortion stood opposite them, allegedly swallowing abortion pills while chanting ‘abortion pills forever.’ Inside the court, the atmosphere was more serene. Stepping forward to open the arguments, Mississippi solicitor general Scott Stewart framed his

Biden is losing America

Plummeting polls are sending a clear message to the Biden administration, but the President is deaf, dumb and blind to it. And it’s not just the polls. Take congressional retirements. Democrats who chair congressional committees, reading the grim poll numbers, figure life will be a lot more comfortable as highly paid lobbyists than as powerless minority members. They are retiring in droves. Historically, retirements by well-informed insiders are strong predictors of the next House majority. Local elections are sending the same message. They tell Democrats they have moved too far left and that voters’ quality of life is suffering. Voters are especially troubled by inflation, Covid and crime. They are

How Thomas Jefferson became ‘problematic’

A victim of revolution, King George III’s statue was toppled almost 250 years ago in New York. Now the statue of his most bitter critic, Thomas Jefferson, is to follow in his footsteps – after the founding father’s likeness was removed from New York City Hall this week because he was a slave owner. Jefferson’s statue will be moved down the road to the New York Historical Society, after the city’s public design commission unanimously voted to remove him from his plinth. His statue had been in the city council chamber since 1915, but as councilwoman Adrienne Adams explained in a presentation: ‘It makes me deeply uncomfortable knowing that we

The inconvenience of the Waukesha attack

At least five people were killed and more than 40 injured on Sunday night when a driver drove his SUV into attendees of the annual Christmas parade in Waukesha, Wisconsin. The driver has been identified in news reports as Darrell Edward Brooks Jr. The horrific attack immediately made national news in America because of the death toll and brutal nature of the crime. Videos surfaced online showing the driver veering towards members of the parade and narrowly missing many others. Sunday’s incident appeared eerily similar to the 2016 Berlin terror attack, where an Isis member killed 12 people by ramming his truck through a Christmas market. However, it seems probable

Kyle Rittenhouse and the failure of the American state

Kyle Rittenhouse is innocent. We knew that anyway, but the simple fact of something being true in no way guarantees that the legal system will recognise it. In this case, we are fortunate that law and reality have decided to agree with one another. Kyle Rittenhouse is innocent, but the state remains on trial. There will be a great deal of commentary after the Rittenhouse trial about ‘what this verdict says about America’. You can see the first green shoots beginning to emerge even now; news outlets are talking about the ‘racial justice protests’ in Kenosha and how the verdict demonstrates the fundamental racial inequities of American society, or even

What’s the truth about Kyle Rittenhouse?

On the night of 25 August 2020, Richie McGinniss, a somewhat gonzo video journalist, interviewed Kyle Rittenhouse for the right-wing Daily Caller website. Rittenhouse wore his cap backwards, had rubbery purple medical gloves on and an assault rifle dangling between his legs. He had decided for some reason that he, a 17-year-old boy, had to help the forces of law and order during the Black Lives Matter riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin. ‘People are getting injured,’ he said. ‘If there’s somebody hurt, I’m running into harm’s way. That’s why I have my rifle because I need to protect myself, obviously. I also have my med kit.’ Around two hours later, the reporter McGinniss

Biden isn’t FDR

With Biden sliding to 38 per cent approval in the polls, it’s finally time for everyone to stop calling him ‘the new FDR’. That preposterous moniker was always misplaced. Biden’s ambition for ‘transforming’ the country has never extended beyond removing Donald Trump from the White House, inserting his patronage picks into important jobs and, most importantly, crushing the intra-party insurgency led by Senator Bernie Sanders. He has been spectacularly successful in all three of these goals given his meagre talents. But comparing him to Franklin D Roosevelt — America’s most transformative president since Abraham Lincoln, and a man of immense energy — has always been downright absurdity. Mercifully, the media’s