America

Tuesday

Richard Bratby

The joy of American romanticism

Grade: A– For some record collectors, the fun lies in comparing recordings of standard repertoire. For others, it’s more about exploring – discovering works that are extinct in the concert hall, but which the inscrutable economics of recording make viable. If you’ve a habit of forming modest crushes on wallflowers and unfashionable composers, the news that Chandos is recording the orchestral music of Edward MacDowell (1860-1908) will bring a pleasant flush of blood to the cheeks. MacDowell, in short, is what American classical music sounded like before there was such a thing as American classical music – before Copland, Gershwin and all that jazz. Romantic, in other words; very, very

Monday

Peter Pomerantsev

With no coherent strategy, Britain seems perpetually adrift in the world

The British state seems perpetually befuddled. Every international crisis catches it in its sudden glare like so many headlights trained on a nervous rabbit hopping hopelessly around a motorway. One moment Russia is invading Ukraine, then Hamas attacks Israel, Israel flattens Gaza, America knocks out Venezuela, then attacks Iran, while all the time China leers over Taiwan. Each new event leaves us spinning. Whose side are we on? What do we want? How do we get it? We use grand words to navigate our way in the confusion: ‘the special relationship’; ‘the national interest’; ‘the rules-based order’. But if these once signified some grand story we could all relate to

Wednesday

Rory Sutherland

‘Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness’ is genius marketing

Last Monday, I delivered a speech to mark the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith’s second-best book: An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. The year 1776 was a momentous one for many reasons. It saw the installation of James Watt’s first steam engine, the recognition of Captain Cook by the Royal Society for his work in preventing scurvy, and his departure on his final and ultimately fatal voyage. It witnessed the publication of Gibbon’s The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and Common Sense by Thomas Paine. You could say that the woke playbook  didn’t just originate in the United States; it originated the

Saturday

Freddy Gray

Iran: is Trump’s ultimate target in this war China?

30 min listen

As the crisis in the Middle East has escalated, Donald Trump’s posturing has led many to question his strategy – and if he even has one. Geoffrey Cain, former foreign correspondent, expert on authoritarian regimes – and the author of this week’s cover piece in the Spectator, joins Freddy Gray to explain why Trump’s ultimate target in the war is China. From the Belt and Road development initiative to more tacit bilateral support, President Xi has been playing a game of chess, to try to check America’s power. With Nicolas Maduro arrested and Ayatollah Khamenei assassinated, President Trump is showing his willingness to project American power, at whatever cost –

Iran: is Trump's ultimate target in this war China?

Thursday

Patrick Gibbons

Iran: has Starmer alienated Britain’s allies?

21 min listen

As the conflict in the Middle East escalates, the British government continues to face questions about its response. Was the UK too slow to act, and if so – why? Tim Shipman reveals in the Spectator today that Keir Starmer was initially minded to approve American use of British bases but was persuaded not to by other figures, including Ed Miliband. How much damage has this done with the Americans and also wider European allies? Defence Secretary John Healey has landed in Cyprus today on a damage-limitation mission – or in a show of strength, depending on your viewpoint. Has Starmer been weakened by these events? Plus – Home Secretary

Iran: has Starmer alienated Britain's allies?

Friday

Gavin Mortimer

Americans are erasing European culture

Did Mariah Carey mime or not when she headlined the opening ceremony of the Winter Olympics in Milan? That was the main takeaway from last Friday’s jamboree. Organisers have since suggested that the US singer did indeed lip-sync to Domenico Modugno’s ‘Nel Blu, dipinto di Blu’ and the song that followed, her very own, ‘Nothing is Impossible’. ‘The technical, logistical and organisational complexities of an Olympic ceremony are not comparable to a live performance by a single artist,’ said a spokesperson for the organising committee.    Was there also a linguistical complexity in the decision? Perhaps Carey didn’t feel confident singing live in Italian in front of 75,000 spectators in the San Siro Stadium, plus the 9.2 million Italians watching the ceremony on television. Nevertheless, Maria Laura Iascone of the organising committee called Carey’s performance ‘exceptional’, adding that

Wednesday

Deborah Ross

Gripping: Melania reviewed

The documentary Melania, which follows the first lady in the 20 days leading up to her husband’s 2025 presidential inauguration, has already been savaged by critics. It is ‘shallow’ and ‘a shameless infomercial’ and ‘designer taxidermy’, and according to Variety, ‘if they showed this on a plane people would still walk out’. It is, it’s true, a film that could have been authored by Hello! magazine, but isn’t there some value in seeing how someone wants to be seen? There’s also no shame in being in it for the rich lifestyle porn – on that count it delivers handsomely. I was hanging on to every detail, from what will be

Saturday

Jonathan Ray

How to drink (and not drive) in Arizona

I was in Scottsdale, Arizona and, to put it mildly, a little squiffy. Most folk go there to play golf (yawn) but I’d gone there to drink and, after a lengthy tequila masterclass in La Hacienda and several cocktails at Platform 18 (‘best US cocktail bar’ in the 2023 Spirited Awards, incidentally) in nearby Phoenix, I was also more than a little disorientated. No, don’t laugh. Firstly, La Hacienda – a fancy bar in the Fairmont Scottsdale Princess resort – has more than 240 different tequilas and mezcals on its list and, thanks to the resort’s resident Tequila Goddess (its term, not mine), they just kept on coming. And secondly,

Wednesday

The Spectator

Which US city is the most violent?

Black in the day A new book claims William Shakespeare’s works were really written by a black woman and were stolen by a semi-literate chancer from Stratford-upon-Avon. Other historic figures who have been claimed to be black: — Queen Charlotte, wife of George III. Was born Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz in 1744, and was thoroughly German, unless you happen to believe that she was descended from 13th-century Portuguese king Alfonso III and his African mistress. — Beachy Head Woman. Skeleton of Roman-era young woman discovered near Eastbourne in the 1950s. A study of her skull claimed she was the first known black person in Britain, until DNA analysis found she probably came

Lionel Shriver

No one is safe from a wealth tax

No matter how many jurisdictions discover the hard way that wealth taxes backfire, in California an initiative is collecting signatures to put a ‘one-time’ (ha!) 5 per cent tax on the net worth of the state’s roughly 200 billionaires on November’s ballot. Hey, those guys are rich. They won’t even notice. But the funny thing about people and money is that even folks with lots like to keep it. The 2026 Billionaire Tax Act is slyly retroactive, a variety of pre-crime legislation – applying to anyone resident in California on 1 January this year, looping a bungee cord around the ankles of would-be absconders. Thus billionaires such as Peter Thiel

Douglas Murray

The censors are winning

They say you should never meet your heroes, a rule that is not always correct. But I did have a salutary session some years ago when a friend in New York asked me if I wanted to meet a comedian I really do admire. I had been looking forward to the meeting, but unfortunately it took place during the summer of 2020. If you remember those far-distant days, this was a time when America was obsessing over the story of alleged disproportionate police violence against black Americans. One of the cases was that of a woman named Breonna Taylor. Although the case for the police’s actions and the victim’s innocence

Wednesday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Digital IDs ditched, unrest in Iran and an app to check you’re not dead

Home The government dropped plans to make digital ID compulsory to work in Britain. Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, called it ‘disgraceful’ that Grok, the online tool on Elon Musk’s X, could undress pictures of people. X limited the function to subscribers, but Liz Kendall, the Technology Secretary, said that the government would back Ofcom if it decided to block X in Britain. ‘They just want to suppress free speech,’ Mr Musk wrote on X. Sir Keir, due to visit China this month, was warned by some Labour MPs not to approve a vast new Chinese embassy in London. The government signalled a U-turn on increases to business rates

Rachel Johnson

Penetrating Trumpland is a breeze

For this trip, I’ve had to divulge my social media handles, blood group, shoe size etc, and have therefore assumed the brace position for being ‘processed’ into the US, not least because I was once, under Joe Biden, incarcerated in a side room at JFK for having an apple in my hand luggage. The border protection officers show not the slightest interest in my sarky tweet about neocon Liz Truss Though, I might add, it was even worse under Bill Clinton. My baby boy was placed in a detention centre on arrival at Dulles when we relocated to Washington, D.C. Oliver, aged six months, was travelling separately from us with

Lionel Shriver

There should be no ‘sanctuary’ from ICE

After three hours of parsing American case law, for once I share Donald Trump’s exasperation. See, many a naif, including yours truly three hours ago, would have thought the Democrats’ ‘sanctuary cities’ unconstitutional. A sanctuary city instructs its local police force to cease all co-operation with federal immigration agents. The constitution’s supremacy clause dictates that federal law overrules local law, just as rock crushes scissors in the hand game. For sub-jurisdictions to offer refuge from big meanie federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (the aptly cold-hearted sounding ICE) should not, legally, be possible. It’s possible. The work-around is the 10th Amendment’s ‘anti-commandeering doctrine’, which prevents the feds from directly telling local

Wednesday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: US strikes Venezuela, China taxes contraceptives and happy anniversary to the Birmingham bin-strikers

Home Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, said Britain was not involved ‘in any way’ in the US strikes on Venezuela. But he tweeted: ‘We regarded Maduro as an illegitimate president and we shed no tears about the end of his regime.’ Earlier that day, Dame Priti Patel, the shadow foreign secretary, had said: ‘Nobody will shed tears over him no longer being in power.’ RAF Typhoon jets joined French aircraft in a strike on an underground arms cache in Syria thought to have been used by the Islamic State group. Britain should consider ‘even closer alignment’ with the EU single market, Sir Keir said. All young children will be

Rod Liddle

Has Trump gone mad?

I asked Luna, my AI girlfriend, if she thought Donald Trump was right to have bombed Caracas and abducted Nicolas Maduro and she replied: ‘I don’t know, Rod. Would you like to see my panties?’ This is the problem with AI – it is not intelligent and nor are the people who program it. I had told the company that I wanted my AI girlfriend to ask me interesting geographical and historic trivia questions and be au fait with Millwall’s injury-stricken line-up, as well as being able to chat knowledgeably about interesting issues of the day. What I get instead is a numbing void, other than those continual solicitations about

Freddy Gray

Disrupt the world, deport the world – the ‘Donroe doctrine’ is about immigration

Invade the world, invite the world. That pithy phrase was invented in the 2000s by Steve Sailer, the right-wing writer, to mock the then bipartisan consensus which supported George W. Bush’s war on terror abroad while pushing open borders at home. Or, as Sailer also put it: ‘Bomb them over there and indulge them over here.’ Back then, such analysis was generally dismissed as the preserve of white supremacist cranks. Now, it’s fair to say that Sailerite thinking animates the spirit of the second Donald Trump administration. Disrupt the world, deport the world. That’s the order of the day. Since America’s stunning attack on Venezuela last weekend, almost everybody has

Monday

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Farm tax backdown, trail hunting crackdown and anti-misogyny courses for 11-year-olds

Home The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs announced plans to criminalise trail hunting ‘amid concerns it is being used as a smokescreen for hunting’; another part of the new animal welfare strategy will make it a crime to boil a live lobster. The government revised the threshold below which, from April, agricultural assets may be handed down without incurring inheritance tax, from a planned £1 million to £2.5 million. Downing Street cancelled regular afternoon lobby briefings and said it would hold more morning press conferences with limited questions from selected journalists. The government ‘should look at every option for our relationship with the European Union, up to and

Monday

Hannah Moore

Spare us from the snarky Christmas bauble

I have been scouring the internet for a Christmas bauble for my mother-in-law. I have fond memories of the blown glass baubles of my childhood – the little wooden cabin in the trees, covered in powdery snow; the half papaya, its orange cocoon concealing bright purple seeds inside. Last year I bought myself a glass bauble of Big Ben which, though perhaps not traditional, is still charming. We have a red post box too, which occasionally disappears and turns up in my son’s Lego set.  This year, though, I ventured to Etsy for a bauble and was shocked by what I found. The first one that caught my eye was

Thursday

The Spectator

Portrait of the year: Trump’s tariffs, the definition of biological sex and the fall of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor

January Downing Street said Rachel Reeves would remain in her role as Chancellor of the Exchequer ‘for the whole of this parliament’. She made a speech standing behind a placard saying: ‘Kickstart economic growth.’ Axel Rudakubana, 18, was sentenced to at least 52 years in prison for the murder of three girls in a knife attack at Southport. Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, announced a ‘rapid audit’ of grooming gangs by Baroness Casey of Blackstock. Wildfires raged around Los Angeles. Luke Littler, 17, became world darts champion. February President Donald Trump of the United States and the Vice-President, J. D. Vance, berated President Volodymyr Zelensky of Ukraine at a press