Us politics

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is the left’s Sarah Palin | 9 January 2019

When the media falls in love, it falls hard. Its latest crush is Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Democrat congressgirl from New York. With Obama gone, she’s their new idol and how they gasp every time she flutters her Bambi eyes from behind those Deirdre Barlow-grade glasses. Brits find the deference US journalists show their president unseemly — all that standing to attention, Hail to the Chief stuff — but their slobbery swooning over every Great Progressive Hope that comes along is just creepy. There was the White House correspondent who offered to fellate Bill Clinton and the New York Times writer who blogged her shower dream about Barack Obama and claimed ‘many

Why Donald Trump will step up his feud with the EU this year

For Angela Merkel, the chief guardian of Europe’s centrist politics, 2018 was a year of tribulation – and she admits it. In her New Year’s speech, the German chancellor acknowledged the hardship of the last twelve months while begging her countrymen to unite in the year ahead. “We will only master the challenges of our times if we stick together and collaborate with others across borders,” Merkel told the German people in what can only viewed as a call for the country to come together. Merkel’s words, however, don’t only apply to Germany. Europe as a whole is entering 2019 with many people agnostic about the European Union, exhausted with the familiar

Is Mitt Romney the NeverTrumpers’ great hope?

Is Mitt Romney the mouse that roared? Or does he pose a real threat to President Trump? In his Washington Post op-ed, Romney bludgeons Trump: ‘the president has not risen to the mantle of his office.’ Move over Elizabeth Warren. It looks like the real civil war will be in the Republican, not the Democratic, party. Romney has been all over the map when it comes to Trump, seeking his endorsement seven years ago, importuning him for the Secretary of State post, only to denounce him once he’s floundering. Romney’s pious conclusion — ‘the people of this great land will eschew the politics of anger and fear if they are summoned to

The first amendment and the internet’s free speech clash

For Silicon Valley, 2018 was defined by one impossible question: should there be limits to free speech on the internet? The first amendment is hardwired into the (American) CEOs of the big three social media sites: Twitter, YouTube and Facebook. Each platform grew its user-base with a “words can never hurt me” attitude. Back in 2012, Twitter defined itself as the “free speech wing of the free speech party”; Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg has defended his users’ right to be wrong – even for Holocaust deniers. For years, social media platforms allowed posts that could arguably inspire real-life violence in the US, Germany and in Myanmar. But now things are

How did people end up believing in Trump?

Jon Sopel, the BBC’s North America editor, has given us a pithy and perceptive account of today’s USA in his book If Only They Didn’t Speak English. He described the mood there in 2016 as ‘fearful, angry and impatient for change’. It was the year when Donald Trump was going to be elected to the world’s most powerful position. Could something similar also explain the unpredicted swings in European elections and across the world? If so, does it mean that people are so fed up with the status quo that they will opt for anything contrary? The oft-quoted aphorism from G.K. Chesterton comes to mind: ‘When men choose not to

What does the British government know about Trump and Russia?

We’re closing 2018 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 6: Paul Wood on the UK’s Donald Trump connection:  Washington, DC When the Romanian dictator Nicolae Ceausescu visited London in 1978, the British government did some serious sucking up. Ceausescu was an egomaniac and possibly crazy. When he went hunting outside Bucharest, his body-guards shot game with machine guns so he could be photographed at the end of the day with a shoulder-high pile of dead animals. He was also said to be a germophobe, sterilising his hand with pure alcohol if it touched a door handle. The French president telephoned the Queen to warn her

Why Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony didn’t make me cry | 24 December 2018

We’re closing 2018 by republishing our ten most-read articles of the year. Here’s No. 8: Lionel Shriver on the Brett Kavanaugh hearings: Following Christine Blasey Ford’s Senate testimony about being sexually assaulted by the US Supreme Court nominee when he was 17, numerous women on American news reported that listening to her terrible story made them cry. I didn’t cry. Indeed, my reaction to Ford’s statement was at such odds with the garment–rending anguish of my fellow Democrats that I had to wonder whether either I’d missed something or maybe there was something wrong with me. So I just read the entire transcript. I hadn’t missed anything. As for whether

Jeremy Hunt’s direct channel to Trump

The past few months have been testing for the so-called special relationship. President Trump’s visit to the UK ended in disaster for Theresa May when the US President gave an interview to the Sun in which he declared that her proposed Brexit deal would kill any chance of a UK/US trade deal. However, not all Cabinet ministers had a wholly bad experience. On Tuesday night, Mr S headed along to Jeremy Hunt’s Foreign Office Christmas reception at Lancaster House – also known as the ‘Foreign Secretary’s leadership launch,’ according to a fellow Cabinet minister. In his speech, Hunt told guests how his own relationship with Trump had flourished on that

Relations between the US and EU have gone from bad to worse

One of the most important duties of being an ambassador is serving as a counsellor of sorts. When relations between two countries are on the rocks – or a president or prime minister says or does something another nation regards as hostile – the ambassador is often called on to ensure that any diplomatic fallout can be contained and the relationship itself can be repaired. Apparently Gordon Sondland, the US ambassador to the European Union, didn’t get the memo.   In an extraordinarily frank interview with Politico Europe this week, ambassador Sondland blasted the EU as an archaic, obstructionist, elitist European superstructure whose primary objective is to keep itself in business. The European Commission,

Camille Paglia: ‘Hillary wants Trump to win again’

Camille Paglia is one of the most interesting and explosive thinkers of our time. She transgresses academic boundaries and blows up media forms. She’s brilliant on politics, art, literature, philosophy, and the culture wars. She’s also very keen on the email Q and A format for interviews. So, after reading her new collection of essays, Provocations, The Spectator sent her some questions. You’ve been a sharp political prognosticator over the years. So can I start by asking for a prediction. What will happen in 2020 in America? Will Hillary Clinton run again? If the economy continues strong, Trump will be reelected. The Democrats (my party) have been in chaos since the 2016 election and have

Mike Pompeo’s unwelcome warning to Brussels’ bureaucrats

The US secretary of state Mike Pompeo strutted into Brussels yesterday like a man on a mission. His task was almost impossible from the start: to convince America’s friends and allies in Europe that the United States under Donald Trump is still the leader of the liberal world order European politicians care so deeply about. It’s difficult to believe Pompeo convinced anyone. America’s top diplomat could have done what many of his predecessors have chosen to do: tell the European foreign policy community to relax and take a deep breath, America won’t be throwing you to the wolves. Instead, Pompeo was far more confrontational, channeling the fire and brimstone of his

Does America oppose female genital mutilation – or not?

Twenty years ago almost no one in the West had heard of Female Genital Mutilation. Then in the 2000s, thanks to a few brave and vocal campaigners like Ayaan Hirsi Ali, knowledge of this barbaric practice began to spread. Originally there was some queasiness about taking up the subject at all. Lawmakers and opinion formers took a while to work out their line. There was an early question mark over whether FGM wasn’t just the same as male circumcision. Most people swiftly learned that the difference was, gynaecologically speaking, almost everything. There were some hold-outs among people who thought that since FGM was practiced among Muslims there might be something

Macron and Trump’s doomed bromance is good news for Le Pen

Emmanuel Macron’s hosting of sixty world leaders in Paris last weekend to commemorate the centenary of the Armistice has turned into a public relations disaster. The president of the Republic not only infuriated Donald Trump, but he also put the Serbian president’s nose out of joint. According to reports, Aleksandar Vucic was not amused with the seating arrangements at Sunday’s service of remembrance. While Kosovo’s president Hashim Thaçi was behind the leaders of France, Germany, Russia, and the United States, Vucic was shunted off to the side. “You can imagine how I felt,” Thaci is quoted as telling the Serbian media. “I couldn’t believe what I was seeing before me, knowing

The Spectator Podcast: why May’s Brexit deal is hard to stomach, but the alternative is worse

As Theresa May prepares to unveil her Brexit deal, we ask: just how bad is it, and what happened to ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’? In the American midterms, the Blue Wave didn’t happen, but Democrats did take control of the House of Representatives – what next for Trump’s presidency? And last, as we approach Remembrance Sunday, who are the lives we are remembering, and is it time to move on? First, Theresa May is serving up two unpalatable options on Brexit – her deal or no deal. If we take her deal, Britain risks being tied to the EU forever through the customs union; but if

After losing the House, Trump will have more to worry about than CNN reporters

As soon as Donald Trump says ‘I’ll be honest,’ which he did at his press conference today, you know he’s about to tell a lie. The media, he proclaimed, ‘really does bring disunity.’ No, it doesn’t. What it brings is coverage of his administration rather than the beatification that he craves. Trump’s performance was more than ordinarily intemperate. He was clearly nettled by CNN reporter Jim Acosta’s questions about the Russia investigation, deeming him ‘a rude, terrible person’ who behaves in an ungentlemanly fashion toward his press secretary, Sarah Huckabee Sanders. After NBC reporter Peter Alexander tried to defend Acosta, Trump barked, ‘Well, I’m not a big fan of yours either.’ I see this

How will Donald Trump react to his midterm elections setback?

Midterm elections are traditionally nightmares for the party of a sitting president. Just ask former president Bill Clinton, who suffered the humiliation of seeing his Democratic Party lose 54 seats during Newt Gingrich’s 1994 Republican Revolution. Ask George W. Bush, whose blunders in Iraq cost the GOP control of both chambers of Congress in 2006. Or maybe ask Barack Obama, who candidly admitted after the electoral disaster of 2010 (in which the GOP picked up 63 seats on their way to capturing the House) that he needed to do a better job presiding over America’s economic recovery. Democrats and the thousands of hungry progressives who canvassed for them certainly hoped

Freddy Gray

The lesson of the midterms? Trump’s crudeness works

President Donald J. Trump thinks only in terms of winning and losing. On Tuesday, he won and he lost, which might muddle his pride. But any pain Trump feels at losing the House of Representatives will be as nothing to the satisfaction he will feel at having gained seats in the Senate. The Republicans have lost 26 House seats, and several governorships. But the 2018 midterm elections were not the Dem- ocratic ‘blue wave’ that prognosticators spent all last year anticipating. It was not a ‘shellacking’ — the word Barack Obama famously used in 2010 when his party lost 63 seats in the House and six Senate seats. In 1994,

Does a Democratic House win pave the way to impeachment?

At an election-night party hosted by a leading light in the Clinton White House, the hostess wore blue, anticipating the ‘blue wave’ that Democrats hope is about to sweep away the Republican majority in the House of Representatives. As I write, the Democrats are up 14 seats. They need to gain 23 to win the House. Opinion polls going into Tuesday gave them a good shot at that – and a smaller chance of winning the Senate. But then again, opinion polls predicted Donald Trump would lose and that Brexit wouldn’t happen. And some Democrats talked about how they would need a huge margin in the popular vote, as much

The Democrats’ dismal failure to stamp out anti-Semitism

It’s been a year since I warned that the Democrats were at risk of replicating the Labour party’s lurch into extremism. As Americans go to the polls in the midterms, let’s have a look at some of the rising stars of the Democrat Party. There are some recurrent themes that chime pretty eerily with the radicalisation of Labour.  Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, running in the solidly Democrat 14th congressional district of New York, ‘represents the future of our party’ according to Democratic National Committee chair Tom Perez. We can only take him at his word. Ocasio-Cortez is backed by the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA); advocates the abolition of Immigration and Customs

How Democrat success in the midterms could help Trump

Today’s midterm election is bound to put a bit of swagger back into the steps of Democrats. If polls are anything to go by — and since when have they ever led anyone astray? — it will be a dolorous evening for Republicans as they watch state legislatures, governors, and Congress turn Democratic. CNN has the generic gap between Democrats and Republicans at 55 per cent to 42 per cent. Politico purports to discern an upswing for candidates such as Kyrsten Sinema. Maybe a new political category will also be detected — the shy Democrat voter who scurries to the polls, half ashamed at surrendering his or her Republican identity to pull