Elon musk

Elon Musk is the real leader of the opposition

From our UK edition

No wonder the left hates X so much. Elon Musk is using it to carve himself a role as Britain’s unofficial opposition – a role at which he is proving rather more effective than the official opposition. His latest interjection into UK politics is deadly. Responding to Scottish politicians who would like him to set up a Tesla factory in Scotland he replied simply: ‘very few companies will be willing to invest in the UK with the current administration.’ Ouch! It is so damaging to the Keir Starmer and his ministers because Musk is exactly the person whom they should want to be investing in Britain. He makes all the stuff which this government, and its predecessor, have tried but failed to get Britain making. Electric cars?

My run-in with the GP receptionist

From our UK edition

‘We don’t have an appointment for you!’ yelled the woman sitting behind the reception hatch. My 87-year-old father stared back at her. He had made this appointment at his local GP surgery in the Midlands and I had flown from Ireland to be with him and my mother when they attended it. We had the right day and time and he had the confirmation text to prove it. But the receptionist couldn’t find it on her system. ‘You need to move!’ she shouted at my father. ‘I’ve come a long way…’ I tried, to which she shouted back ‘Who are you!’ and didn’t wait for the answer. It wasn’t a question. Then the receptionist looked beyond my father and fixed a very warm smile on the woman behind him in the queue: ‘Can I help you?

Trump was elected to change the status quo

It turns out that the campaign was the easy part. For Donald Trump, winning the election was just securing the beachhead. Now the real work begins. Cities must be retaken. The enemy’s fortifications stormed. Subject populations must be liberated. As I write, Trump is still trying to assemble his cabinet. You will probably know at least the major dramatis personae by the time you read this. Matt Gaetz, Trump’s embattled pick for attorney general, has bowed out of the confirmation process to avoid “becoming a distraction” for the Trump/Vance transition. How about RFK Jr.? Will he be confirmed as secretary of the sprawling Department of Health and Human Services? Will Tulsi Gabbard make it as director of national intelligence? Will Pete Hegseth become secretary of defense?

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oligarchs

The battle of the oligarchs

Money and power have rarely been strangers; often nations are made to shudder when the ruling elites battle each other. Britain’s late empire was divided between liberal manufacturers and aristocratic interests, whose conflicts hastened the rise of the Labour Party and the end of empire. In the United States, opposition to powerful trusts defined progressive politics for decades, ultimately laying the basis for the New Deal and a greater scope for government. In the West today we are witnessing a similar divide among the uber-rich class — epitomized by Elon Musk’s embrace of Donald Trump — that is already reshaping politics. Until 2016 the US establishment, both Republican and Democratic, embraced similar views on national security, global trade and multilateral institutions.

Trump floats taking back Panama Canal

President-elect Donald Trump on Sunday gave his first rally speech since winning the 2024 presidential election, delivering the keynote address at Turning Point USA’s AmericaFest conference for young conservatives. The former and future president spoke for more than an hour and made plenty of headlines with his suggestion that the United States take back control of the Panama Canal, a rejection of the Democrat attack that he is a shadow puppet of billionaire Elon Musk, and a renewed promise of his second-term priorities.

Congress hits spending stalemate

Congress is once again trying to avoid a holiday-eve government shutdown by ramming through a last-minute continuing resolution to fund the government through the new year. The process, per usual, is angering various factions within the House of Representatives as Democrats, budget-hawk Republicans and the establishment GOP are at odds over how much to spend and what to spend it on and whether or not to raise the debt ceiling.Johnson’s “Plan A,” which was a 1,500-page boondoggle negotiated primarily with Democrats, would have funded the government until March.

mike johnson congress spending
kamala harris

Portraits of Kamala Harris

Who’s in charge of the executive branch? That question has been on many lips throughout the duration of President Joe Biden’s term, and has been asked even more often since his decision to stand aside as Democratic nominee in July. Perhaps the White House itself offers some visual clues to the answer: a source who has been heading in for transition meetings with the outgoing administration notes that virtually all of the jumbo portraits inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue feature Vice President Kamala Harris — visiting foreign countries, making speeches and the like. Biden, meanwhile, is barely featured. Perhaps all of his impressive pictures are displayed in the basement at Rehoboth Beach...

UK interest rates held, plus could Musk fund Reform?

From our UK edition

10 min listen

The Bank of England has voted to hold interest rates at 4.75%. The Spectator’s economics editor Kate Andrews joins Katy Balls and Freddy Gray to discuss the decision and what this means for the economy.  Also on the podcast they discuss how a potential donation from Elon Musk to Reform UK has rattled politicians across the political spectrum. Could Labour seek to reform political donation rules to limit donations from foreign owned companies? And is this a sensible move, or could those in favour of changing the rules face a charge of hypocrisy? Produced by Patrick Gibbons and Oscar Edmondson.

mike johnson

Trump is already tiring of Mike Johnson

Mike Johnson's status as an accidental speaker, thrust into his role in part because it was so undesirable or impossible for other longer-tenured members to achieve, was always going to be tested once there was a Republican in the White House again. And since that Republican turns out to be Donald Trump, currently the acting president in everything but title, Johnson's decision-making was going to become all the more controversial, subject to the whims and leanings of Trump's political instincts.  It turns out we didn't even have to wait until the inauguration to find out what that looks like.

donald trump continuing resolution

The ever-Continuing Resolution

In the 1870s, Gustave Flaubert assembled Le Dictionnaire des idées reçues, a humorous collection of “received ideas” and clichés then current in French society. A new version needs to be produced for contemporary America. As in the original, the humor would often turn on the contradiction or subterfuge implicit in the word or phrase. “Affirmative action” would merit an entry, since it is supposed to be about battling discrimination when in fact it enshrines discrimination in law. So would the current favorite, “Continuing Resolution” (“CR” among the cognoscenti). The phrase carries the aroma legislative diligence.

Elon Musk is wrong about the Roman Empire

From our UK edition

I was in Washington D.C. during The Election, living halfway between the Capitol and White House. Concerned friends suggested I move to some boutique hotel in Virginia for election week, in case of ‘trouble’ in Washington. Or at least, they said, I should stock up the freezer, as I might not be able to get safely to the shops for several days if the results were bitterly contested. I took the freezer option (plus an enhanced cellar) and planned a week of working from home, to follow the news from each swing state, fortified by my supplies. It was all for nothing. By the time I woke up on the morning after the election, everything was settled: Mr Trump had incontestably won. So I gave up the working-from-home option and walked to my office on the Mall.

‘The public sector is the illness’: Javier Milei on his first year in office

From our UK edition

Buenos Aires ‘I never wind down,’ says Argentina’s President Javier Milei when we meet in his Presidential Office at the Casa Rosada. ‘I work all day, practically… I get up at 6 a.m., I take a shower and at 7 a.m. I am already at my desk working. And I work all the way until 11 p.m. I enjoy my job. I enjoy cutting public spending. I love the chainsaw.’ It was a photo of Milei with a chainsaw – who was then the insurgent candidate – that propelled him to international fame last year. He waved it on the campaign trail as a symbol of what he would do to government regulations and bureaucracy if elected to the presidency. He had previously gone viral in a video showing him shouting ‘Afuera!’ (‘Out!’) while ripping names of government departments off a whiteboard.

Why Elon Musk shouldn’t be kicked out of the Royal Society

From our UK edition

Bishop did not wish to be associated with ‘someone who appears to be modelling himself on a Bond villain’ In a notorious interview in the Sunday Times in 2007, the Nobel Prize-winning geneticist James Watson said, among other things, that aborting babies with gay genes was ‘common sense’ and that ‘all our social policies are based on the fact that their [blacks] intelligence is the same as ours [whites] – whereas all the testing says not really’. He also defended the explanation offered by Larry Summers of why there are fewer female professors in Stem subjects than male – there are more men at the right-hand tail of the IQ distribution curve.

The complicated etiquette of the empty train seat

From our UK edition

The empty train seat looked inviting, and all three of us stared at it, then looked away, not daring to either take it, or offer it to the other. This train from Clapham Junction to Surrey was absolutely packed. But when someone got up and there was a seat right next to me, I realised that under the prevailing conventions relating to equality, I could neither take it nor offer it. I was squeezed between two ladies, one quite elderly who looked exhausted and desperate for a seat. She was standing slightly behind me, so, technically speaking, I was in line for the seat. But as she clearly had a good 20 years on me and looked tired, she should have the seat, the way I was brought up.

Trump’s tariff threat

President-elect Donald Trump’s threat of 25 percent, across-the-board tariffs on Mexico and Canada has already shocked the system. The US dollar rose against its neighbors’ currencies, as stocks dropped and rose.Floating an additional tariff on China is one thing, but adding America’s two neighbors makes the move especially ambitious. If implemented, the US would effectively levy tariffs against its top three trading partners, which together make up around 40 to 50 percent of total trade between America and the world. That’s revolutionary.One thing that’s for certain is that tariffs would hurt the countries they target more than they hurt the US. More than 75 percent of Mexican and Canadian exports are to the Land of the Free.

From Gabbard to Gaetz: Ambassador John Bolton on Trump’s ‘crackpot’ Cabinet

From our UK edition

20 min listen

John Bolton has served under both Republican administrations of the 21st Century: first as US Ambassador to the United Nations under George W. Bush, and then under Donald Trump where he was – surprisingly – his longest serving National Security Advisor. In this episode of Americano, Freddy Gray discusses the incoming second Trump administration with Amb. Bolton. From Tulsi Gabbard to Elon Musk, what does he make of Trump’s appointments? How could U.S. foreign policy change? And what are the implications for Ukraine?  Produced by Patrick Gibbons.

How DOGE is planning to cut down the feds

President-elect Donald Trump’s appointees for his new Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) are planning to crack down on employees who work from home — those who are left, anyway, after the duo’s round of “large-scale firings.”In an op-ed published by the Wall Street Journal Wednesday, Elon Musk and Vivek Ramaswamy laid out “the DOGE plan to reform government,” in which they purport to “reverse a decades-long executive power grab” while “following the Supreme Court’s guidance.

appointments

What Trump’s appointments tell us

Donald Trump may have a four-year term, but he has far less time to make a real difference. In practice, he may have a year or perhaps eighteen months before the midterm election looms and Congress slows to a crawl. If Trump wants to be a transformational president — and he clearly does — then he will have to move fast. That’s exactly what he’s doing. He’s beginning with a series of rapid-fire appointments, most of which require approval from the new, Republican-majority Senate. (His White House aides, such as national security advisor, do not require Senate approval.) What message is Trump sending with his appointments so far? First, he demands loyalty — to him and to the agenda he articulated clearly on the campaign trail.

Democracy on the ballot

Democracy won, apparently. More than 73 million people voted for Donald J. Trump, who won 312 Electoral College votes and the popular vote, making him the 45th and 47th president of the United States. In the end, it wasn’t particularly close, and the exit polls from the night paint a pretty bleak picture for Vice President Kamala Harris and the Democratic Party. By now, you will have read most of the breakdowns — she lost ground with Hispanics, whites, blacks, married people, non-college-educated people, et cetera. In fact, the only demographic group that she gained ground with was college-educated white women — she even somehow managed to lose ground from 2016 and 2020 with black women, a stunning and impressive feat. Tim Walz lost his home district in deep-blue Minnesota.

Democracy
donald trump won

The three reasons Trump won

Bishop Butler once observed that probability is “the very guide of life.” This is true. It follows that possibility is cheap, an errant muse. Yes, we must stash away in the back of our mind the admonition that “in this life... we must always distinguish between the Unlikely and the Impossible” (that’s the philosopher R. Psmith, courtesy of P.G. Wodehouse). Nevertheless, we should not run our lives or write our columns on that basis.   “Why Trump won.” That is my assignment. I shall treat it as a declaration, not a question. And even though I write before the returns are in, I can give you the reasons. After all, I have been predicting that Donald Trump would win “in a landslide” at least since July.