Donald trump

Thursday

Toby Young

Make Trump Britain’s prime minister

When I was a young man, the claim that Britain was in danger of becoming the 51st state was a political slur mainly thrown about by the left, particularly those who objected to the presence of US military bases. But there was some anti-American sentiment on the right, too – Enoch Powell, for instance, had a dislike of America’s hostility to the Empire that dated back to his service in the second world war. I’m even guilty of some anti–American prejudice myself and wrote a memoir in which I tried to convey that my failure to take Manhattan in the mid-1990s was because I wasn’t willing to sell my soul

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Recognition for Palestine, victory for the Lionesses and no name for Corbyn’s party

Home Britain will recognise Palestinian statehood in September, Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, announced, ‘unless the Israeli government takes substantive steps to end the appalling situation in Gaza, reaches a ceasefire, makes clear there will be no annexation in the West Bank, and commits to a long-term peace process that delivers a two-state solution’. He had convened a cabinet meeting to discuss Gaza, although parliament was in recess, a few days after a meeting by telephone with Germany and France. President Emmanuel Macron had said that France would recognise a Palestinian state in September. Some 255 MPs, 147 of them Labour, had signed a letter to Sir Keir calling

Max Hastings

Britain shouldn’t put up with Donald Trump

History is the march of folly and far too many of my countrymen are hearkening to a drumbeat which would lead us to disaster. On Tuesday several of our newspapers led with variations of the same headline: ‘Trump: cut tax to beat Farage.’ This is idiotic counsel, given the state of Britain’s public finances. I would have thought the way to beat populism was not by emulating its idiocies but by prudent, cautious, sensible management of a nation tired of liars. If Donald Trump teaches us anything, it is how to ruin a great nation. Far more useful than parroting the US President’s delusions would be telling the British people

Tuesday

Tom Miller

What’s next for Taiwan?

When Portuguese traders sailed past a verdant, mountainous land on the fringe of the Chinese empire in the mid-16th century, they named it Ihla Formosa – ‘beautiful island’. But Kangxi, the third emperor of the Manchu Qing Dynasty, was less impressed when his naval forces captured it in 1683, scoffing: ‘Taiwan is no bigger than a ball of mud. We gain nothing by possessing it, and it would be no loss if we did not acquire it.’ Beautiful or not, Taiwan was a pirates’ lair, inhabited by tattooed head-hunters and best left alone. Yet the Qing clung on to Taiwan for two centuries, with Chinese settlers gradually displacing the indigenous

Thursday

William Moore

Soul suckers of private equity, Douglas Murray on Epstein & are literary sequels ‘lazy’?

44 min listen

First up: how private equity is ruining Britain Gus Carter writes in the magazine this week about how foreign private equity (PE) is hollowing out Britain – PE now owns everything from a Pret a Manger to a Dorset village, and even the number of children’s homes owned by PE has doubled in the last five years. This ‘gives capitalism a bad name’, he writes. Perhaps the most symbolic example is in the water industry, with water firms now squeezed for money and saddled with debt. British water firms now have a debt-to-equity ratio of 70%, compared to just 4% in 1991. Britain’s desperation for foreign money has, quite literally,

Douglas Murray

MAGA, Epstein and the paedo files

Bill Clinton published another memoir last year, entitled Citizen, and I take it that everyone read the book the minute it came out. For those who somehow didn’t, there’s a striking passage that can be easily found by standing in a bookshop, going to the index and searching under ‘E’ for ‘Epstein’. This leads to a single page reference in which the 42nd president gives a terse and somewhat legalistic account of his relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, explaining that he never went to Epstein’s island, borrowed his plane only to support the work of the Clinton Foundation and cut off contact before Epstein’s first arrest in 2005. In a brusque

Patrick Kidd

The Donald and the art of golf diplomacy

In 1969, one of the great acts of sportsmanship occurred at Royal Birkdale golf club in Southport, when the Ryder Cup came down to the last green. Britain’s Tony Jacklin had a three-foot putt to halve the final match with Jack Nicklaus and make the score 16-16, but the American picked up Jacklin’s marker and said he was happy to share the spoils. ‘I don’t think you would have missed,’ he said, ‘but I didn’t want to give you the chance.’ The gesture was immortalised in the naming of a Florida golf course, the Concession, which has just been awarded the next three senior PGA Championships, one of the majors.

Tuesday

Freddy Gray

Trump – the conventional foreign policy President?

28 min listen

Trump has said he’s “very, very unhappy” with Russia, and threatened severe tariffs against them if there’s no deal on Ukraine within 50 days. He’s also sending more weapons to Ukraine in coordination with NATO. What’s behind his change of heart on foreign policy, and how’s his MAGA base responding? Freddy Gray is joined by deputy US editor Kate Andrews, and Sergey Radchenko, professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies. You can watch this episode here.

Thursday

Tom Gross

We should welcome regime change in Iran

On the first night of what Donald Trump has called the ‘12-day war’ between Israel and Iran, someone spray-painted a message in Farsi on a wall in Tehran: ‘Thank you, Israel. Hit the regime hard – and leave the rest to us.’ That graffiti encapsulated the feelings of many millions of Iranians. If you doubt this, you can read (in translation from Farsi) opposition accounts such as ManotoOfficial and IranIntlTV on Instagram or Telegram, which in the past two weeks have been posting countless messages and comments in support of Israel. These accounts are widely seen by people inside Iran, who use VPNs to get around the regime’s online censorship

Peter Frankopan

Israel’s attack on Iran has been planned for years

It was clear at the time that what happened on 7 October 2023 would change the Middle East. What was perhaps less obvious was the impact it would have on the rest of the world. In addition to the suffering in Gaza, the weeks and months that followed Hamas’s horrific attacks have seen the reconfiguration of Syria, the effective dismantling of Hezbollah, the decapitation of the leadership of Hamas and now, with Iran, a time when the decision-making in Tehran, Jerusalem and Washington will have a profound effect on the shape of the emerging global order. Historians like to think about turning points and moments in the past where the

Tuesday

James Heale

Iran: 'what the f***' is going on?

14 min listen

It is rare to see the President so visibly frustrated (see The Apprentice, circa 2004), but after Iran and Israel seemingly ignored his ceasefire announcement – and his plea on Truth Social, ‘PLEASE DO NOT VIOLATE IT!’ – Donald Trump has come down hard on both sides. In a clip taken this afternoon he exclaimed: ‘These are countries who have been fighting so long and so hard, that they don’t know what the f*** they’re doing.’ Succinctly put by the President. The exchange of fire could be the expected tit-for-tat seen after the announcement of ceasefires in other global conflicts, but it has dampened the mood at Nato, which world

Thursday

Toby Young

Has Trump been taking inspiration from the royals?

One of the objections to the military parade in Washington, DC last Saturday – supposedly to mark the 250th birthday of the US Army – is that it was a breach of democratic norms. The real reason it took place, say Donald Trump’s critics, was because he wanted to celebrate his 79th birthday with a display of military might – which is ‘what dictators do’, according to a general who advised him against it. Trump’s opponents gleefully pointed out that the number of attendees – around 200,000 – was dwarfed by the millions who took part in simultaneous ‘No Kings’ protests in dozens of American cities, a reference to his

Freddy Gray

Who’s pushing Trump to be an Iran hawk?

‘This never would have happened if I had been president,’ says Donald Trump, whenever the international news goes from bad to worse. It’s a line he uses a lot in relation to the wars in Ukraine and Gaza, both of which began in the interregnum between his first administration and his second. Yet the latest war, between Israel and Iran, is a different matter. Trump of course blames his predecessor, Joe Biden, who ‘made Iran rich’ with $300 billion for the evil regime’s dreaded nuclear weapons programme. It was Trump, though, who in 2018 tore up Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran and in 2020 killed Qasem Soleimani, the head

Wednesday

James Heale

Westminster waits for Donald’s decision

14 min listen

Westminster waits with bated breath to discover whether Donald Trump will ally with Israel in striking Iranian nuclear sites. The President called for ‘UNCONDITIONAL SURRENDER!’ from Tehran overnight. The day to day of domestic politics appears diminished by comparison with the ever-looming threat of an escalated conflict… But the show must go on: today’s PMQs saw Chris Philp (why not Robert Jenrick?) and Angela Rayner deputising for their absent leaders; Liz Kendall introduced legislation to enact cuts to personal independence payments for disabled people; the Commons voted to decriminalise abortion at any point until birth; and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) is up to its old tricks, announcing that

Friday

Sean Thomas

Sean Thomas, John Power, Susie Mesure, Olivia Potts and Rory Sutherland

22 min listen

On this week’s Spectator Out Loud: Sean Thomas reflects on the era of lads mags (1:07); John Power reveals those unfairly gaming the social housing system (6:15); Susie Moss reviews Ripeness by Sarah Moss (11:31); Olivia Potts explains the importance of sausage rolls (14:21); and, Rory Sutherland speaks in defence of the Trump playbook (18:09).  Produced and presented by Patrick Gibbons.

Thursday

Peter Jones

Elon Musk and the art of flattery

Flattery will get you everywhere, as the sycophants that surround Donald Trump, Kim Jong-un, Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping know. Which makes Elon Musk’s defection rather interesting. Trump’s policies meant that Musk simply could not flatter him any more just to satisfy his inexhaustible self-love, which, says the Greek essayist, biographer and diplomat Plutarch (d. c. ad 120), is what gives the kolax (‘flatterer’) his foothold: the person he wishes to flatter, his victim, will be only too happy for the kolax to endlessly proclaim his qualities and abilities. Naturally, the kolax does not pay attention to poor, obscure or unimportant persons – where is the gain in that? –

Rory Sutherland

In defence of the Trump playbook

The standard explanation for why charges for plastic bags reduced waste is economic. People were reluctant to pay 10p for a bag and so brought their own instead. This is partly true. But it would still be highly effective if the charge for a bag were merely 1p. That’s because charging any amount, however trifling, was sufficient to change the implicit assumptions about normal retail behaviour. Previously, if you went into Boots and bought, say, a toothbrush and a tube of Anusol, the default was for the cashier to put them in a new bag – it would have seemed rude not to do so. Suddenly, however, the imposition of

The Spectator

Portrait of the week: Spending review, LA protests and Greta Thunberg deported

Home Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, was the last minister to agree funding in the government spending review. Once the NHS and defence were settled there wasn’t enough to go round. The police wanted more. Everyone over the state pension age in England and Wales with an income of £35,000 or less will receive the winter fuel payment after all, at a cost of £1.25 billion, Rachel Reeves, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced. Capital spending included £39 billion on social housing over the next ten years. The government also committed £14.2 billion for the new Sizewell C nuclear power station, but did not say where the money was coming

Monday

Freddy Gray

Left-wing violence is being normalised

19 min listen

In the new edition of Spectator World, author and anthropologist Max Horder argues the US is experiencing a change in its psyche, and left-wing violence is being normalised. He joins Freddy Gray on the Americano podcast to discuss the various examples attached to this, and what the dereliction of democratic disagreement means for us all.

Friday

Kate Andrews

Did the swamp drain Elon Musk?

23 min listen

Billionaire Elon Musk and US President Donald Trump have had a very public falling out. Musk, whose time running the Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) came to an end last month, publicly criticised Trump’s spending bill (the ‘One Big Beautiful Bill Act’). The row then erupted onto social media with Trump expressing his disappointment with Musk, Musk accusing Trump of ‘ingratitude’ – and even making insinuations about Trump’s relationship with Jeffrey Epstein. Tesla’s stock has taken a hit, Trump and Musk are yet to speak and there could be implications for the government contracts that Musk’s companies have, but the full consequences are yet to be understood. What do this