Freddy Gray

You wait decades for landmark reforms in America and then, like culture-war buses, two come along at once. Earlier this week, the Senate passed a gun control bill – the most significant firearm control legislation in US history. Now, the Supreme Court has voted 6-3 to overturn Roe v. Wade – as everyone expected since Justice Samuel Alito’s draft opinion was leaked on 2 May. 'The Constitution does not confer a right to abortion; Roe and Casey are overruled; and the authority to regulate abortion is returned to the people and their elected representatives,' a syllabus of the opinion said. Barack Obama has tweeted that the news is ‘devastating’ There will be lots of anger all over the world – on social media and the streets.

Are we living in the age of the strongman – or the weak man? Politics in the 21st century has so far been defined by a global drift away from liberalism, whatever that was, and towards authoritarianism – Xi in China, Putin in Russia, Erdogan in Turkey, Modi in India, Orban in Hungary, Bolsonaro in Brazil and that delightful Mr Duterte in the Philippines. In the 2020s, however, in our supposedly more advanced democracies, the political leitmotif has been one of feeble and failing leadership. Look around the world. Boris Johnson is often accused of being a wannabe dictator – an egomaniac desperate to achieve his childhood ‘world king’ fantasy. That doesn’t seem to be going very well.

Let’s get the boringly obvious out of the way. What happened in Washington on 6 January, 2021 was bad. Very bad. America, the world’s most powerful democracy, looked a horrible mess. Rioting is always wrong. Rioting on Capitol Hill on the day when power is meant to be peaceably transferred is anti-democratic and anti-conservative. Even if you believe the presidential election of 2020 election was rigged, as many ardent Trump supporters do, it is never acceptable to smash up federal property. To target America’s most important building is especially egregious. It doesn’t matter how angry you are. Obvious point two: from the election in November to January, Donald Trump behaved irresponsibly, dangerously and stupidly.

Did the Trump movement get a bloody nose in last night’s Republican primaries? It’s a story that most of the media and important parts of the Republican party – desperate to move on from the Orange Years of 2016 to 2020 – really want to be true. But the evidence so far is mixed. In North Carolina, the wheel-chair bound Trump devotee Madison Cawthorn, once a darling of the Make America Great Again movement, was ousted by state senator Chuck Edwards. Cawthorn had faced a number of scandals in recent weeks, but the Donald called on voters to look past his sins. On his new social site Truth Social, the 45th President wrote: ‘Recently, he made some foolish mistakes, which I don’t believe he’ll make again ...