Freddy Gray

Every few weeks, it seems, Carole Cadwalladr drops a long piece for the Guardian or the Observer about how the Trump and Brexit campaigns mind-hacked democracy. On both sides of the Atlantic, people who don’t like Trump or Brexit share these pieces and shriek. The latest article, which lit up the political internet at the weekend, has the added spice of a whistleblower – a pink-haired ‘data science nerd’ straight out of science-nerd central casting. He’s called Christopher Wylie and Cadwalladr reveals that he has been the source for her much-vaunted scoops on Cambridge Analytica, the data firm who worked with the Trump and Brexit campaigns.

Sometimes it’s almost as if Donald Trump wants the world to think he’s a Russian patsy. Yesterday, Rex Tillerson, as Secretary of State, warned Putin that Russia’s alleged assassination attempt on British soil would trigger ‘a response’. Today he’s been sacked. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/973540316656623616?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw But the sacking almost certainly isn’t about Russia. It seems Trump asked Tillerson to go on Friday, a day after Trump agreed to meet Kim Jong-un. So the more likely cause of Tillerson's departure is the most obvious: the sudden rapprochement with North Korea. Tillerson was reportedly blindsided by the announcement that Trump would meet Kim Jong-un.

We should by now be used to Trump's modus operandi. But we aren't. We should all know the art of his deals. But we don't. He is the counterpuncher who quite often smacks first and then retreats. Look at the tariffs story now unfolding. It goes like this: Trump makes fierce opening gambit. This shocks everybody apart from his supporters who say that that is exactly what he said he'd do. Finally, a president who does what he promised, they say. The media starts speculating on the collapse of the liberal world order. Then, amid the hyperventilation, Trump backs down. He does so while pretending that he hasn't. Then he blames the Republican Party for not supporting him. We've seen this with healthcare, with immigration reform, and now perhaps with his protectionism.

He did not address how he might respond to the inevitable debate that will now consume America over the legality of assault weapons. Again, here he differs from Obama, who for instance used his speech in the wake of the Umpqua Community College shooting in Oregon to make an appeal for what he called ‘common-sense gun legislation’. The irony, however, is that whereas Obama consistently fell short in his attempts to ban what he called ‘weapons of war’ and establish tighter legal controls of who can buy guns, Donald Trump might now succeed. The 45th president has so far flip-flopped on the banning of assault weapons – as he has on other culture-war issues such as abortion and gay marriage. In 2000, he said, ‘I support the ban on assault weapons.

On Coffee House today, the Tory MP Johnny Mercer says that Britain lost its ‘strength and leadership’ on 29 August, 2013,  the day we decided not to attack Assad. We've heard this line a lot from a certain sort of politician. Michael Gove and Nick Clegg lost their tempers in the hours that followed the Syria vote. Ed Miliband, who turned against the intervention, was called all sorts of horrible names by all sorts of MPs. George Osborne tells audiences in America with his most earnest face on that Britain lost its mojo that day (We got it back, apparently, when we decided in 2015 to bomb Isis – not Assad, but, hey, whatever!) The let’s-bomb-Syria brigade has never quite recovered from the shock of being rebuffed in Parliament.

Peter Oborne, The Spectator’s associate editor, is something of a legend in Pakistan — as least among the defence establishment types we met there. That’s because every year he takes a cricket team on a tour of the country. Last September, in Miranshah, they played a ‘Peace Cup’ match against an XI consisting of current or retired Pakistani internationals in front of a crowd of about 15,000. The Pakistan army turned the occasion into a PR stunt, since Pakistanis love cricket and the military elite wants young people to take up sport rather than global jihad. I don’t want to detract from Peter’s efforts. Surely, though, our government should do one better and send the England cricket team over?

President Donald Trump, famously, has two modes: flattery and hostility. Theresa May had a taste of the latter following Trump's decision to cancel his trip to the UK. But he has changed mode again for Davos – and is now laying it on thick. At their press conference today, he told the PM: ‘There was a little bit of a false rumour out there, I just wanted to correct it. We love your country. We have the same ideals and there’s nothing that would happen to you that we wouldn’t be there to fight for you ...  We’re on the same wavelength in every respect.' Music to Brexiteer ears.