Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray

Freddy Gray is deputy editor of The Spectator

2022: The year in review

30 min listen

Freddy Gray and Jacob Heilbrunn reflect on an eventful year, looking back at the response to the invasion of Ukraine, the American economy and the makeup of the new Congress. Plus, will Joe Biden or Donald Trump be making a return to the White House? And will Jacob be buying a Trump NFT..?

What have the Twitter files uncovered?

Freddy Gray talks to the Spectator’s contributing editor Chadwick Moore about the release of the so-called ‘Twitter files’ and what they reveal about the extent of censorship and coverup before, during and after the 2020 election campaign.  Chadwick Moore’s book ‘So You’ve Been Sent to Diversity Training’ is available now from all good retailers. 

War of the Windsors

46 min listen

This week: For his cover piece in The Spectator Freddy Gray asks who will win in the battle between the Waleses and the Sussexes. He is joined by historian Amanda Foreman to discuss the fallout Harry and Meghan’s new Netflix documentary (01:00). Also this week: Should the House of Lords be reformed or even abolished? This is

The Windsors are warring over their womenfolk

Wouldn’t it be amusing to see an actual fly-on-the-wall job about Netflix’s new Harry & Meghan documentary? Imagine the scenes behind-the-scenes. The Duchess rehearses her crying face in consultation with her make-up specialist. The Duke glares at himself in a mirror. ‘I had to protect my family,’ he repeats over and over as he fingers

The Twitter Files just got a lot more interesting

As I wrote earlier, last week Matt Taibbi, the journalist chosen by Elon Musk to reveal what really happened behind-the-app during the 2020 presidential election, published the first instalment of the ‘Twitter Files’. He did it as a long Twitter ‘thread’ which showed various panicky corporate communications about the ethics of suppressing intriguing political information.

How Twitter suppressed the Hunter Biden laptop story

For weeks now, Twitter’s new chief Elon Musk has been promising to reveal what really happened behind the scenes at the social media platform in the run up to the 2020 presidential election.  Well, yesterday, Musk did — through the journalist Matt Taibbi. It’s a big story, one that free speech supporters everywhere should take

Is Kanye West really out to derail Trump?

American conservatives like to say that the way to stop Donald Trump in 2024 is to hit him from the right. Compared with his own political movement, they argue, Trump has always been something of a squish when it comes to issues such as Covid vaccines, gay marriage, criminal justice, or border control. He never

Is Kanye West really out to derail Trump? 

American conservatives like to say that the way to stop Donald Trump in 2024 is to hit him from the right. Compared with his own political movement, they argue, Trump has always been something of a squish when it comes to issues such as Covid vaccines, gay marriage, criminal justice, or border control. He never

The squeeze: how long will the pain last?

40 min listen

This week: How long will the pain last? The Spectator’s economics editor Kate Andrews asks this in her cover piece this week, reflecting on Rishi Sunak and Jeremy Hunt’s autumn statement. She joins the podcast with Professor David Miles, economy expert at the Office for Budget Responsibility, to discuss the new age of austerity (00:58). Also

Is Donald Trump the Jeb Bush of 2024?

Donald Trump has been running for president for at least a decade. His campaign did not start on 16 June 2015, when he descended that golden escalator in that eponymous tower in New York. It began on 19 November 2012, days after President Barack Obama had defeated Mitt Romney, when Trump registered a trademark application

Will Trump run?

‘I don’t think anyone knows,’ someone close to Donald Trump told me at the end of last week. ‘My guess is he does but that’s just a guess.’  My question, of course, was ‘Is Donald Trump still going to announce?’ — despite the mid-term disappointments for his movement and the increasing certainty among Republican analysts

Is Nixon the most misunderstood president in history?

Has the reputation of any American statesman been more effectively trashed than that of Richard Milhous Nixon? Donald Trump’s, perhaps – certainly the forty-fifth president inspires loathing on a scale matched only by the thirty-seventh. Nixon and Trump have a few other points in common. Both men built coalitions through appeals to forgotten voters. They

Could Georgia decide the midterms?

30 min listen

This week Freddy is joined by Matt McDonald, US managing editor of The Spectator, who is covering the midterms from Georgia. What will the result of the run-off be there and could this decide who takes control of the Senate? 

Midterm madness

37 min listen

On the podcast: In his cover piece for the magazine, The Spectator’s deputy editor Freddy Gray says the only clear winner from the US midterms is paranoia. He is joined by The Spectator’s economics editor Kate Andrews to discuss whether the American political system is broken (00:52). Also this week: Isabel Hardman writes that Ed Miliband is the power

Midterm madness: the only clear winner is paranoia

Election night, folks – America decides! Except, it doesn’t. On 8 November 2022, as on 3 November 2020, the polls closed, the votes came in and, er, nobody appeared to have won. Everybody now looks nervously again to the state of Georgia, which is probably too close to call and will be decided in a run-off