Not even close: how Trump confounded the pundits
What makes American politics abnormal is that partisanship has become akin to sectarianism
Niall Ferguson
Niall Ferguson is the Milbank Family Senior Fellow at the Hoover Institution, Stanford University and a Bloomberg Opinion columnist
Friday
Thursday
Not even close: how Trump confounded the pundits
It was supposed to be close. On the eve of election day, Donald Trump was up just 0.1 per cent in the RealClearPolitics polling average. FiveThirtyEight projected a tiny Trump advantage. PredictIt had Kamala Harris ahead. A celebrated pollster ran 80,000 simulations, and Harris won 50.015 per cent of them, versus 49.985 per cent for
Sunday
Why Kemi was the right choice
A version of this article was originally published in last week’s issue of The Spectator. What set Margaret Thatcher apart from so many other Conservatives in the 1970s was that she had read Friedrich von Hayek. In Richard Cockett’s Thinking the Unthinkable – his indispensable account of the intellectual origins of Thatcherism – he describes how Thatcher
Sunday
Why would British universities want to be like Harvard?
The founders of sociology — I think especially of Max Weber — would have been fascinated by Israeli society
Thursday
Why would British universities want to be like Harvard?
A visit to Jerusalem last week reminded me of the enduring value of sociology as a discipline, despite its lamentable politicisation in recent times. The founders of sociology – I think especially of Max Weber – would have been fascinated by Israeli society. In their politics, Israeli citizens are deeply divided: there are 12 parties
Thursday
Students annoyed their elders in the 1930s, too
Just over ninety years ago, the Oxford Union carried the motion ‘That this House will in no circumstances fight for its King and Country’
Christmas Special 2023
70 min listen
Welcome to this festive episode of the Edition podcast, where we will be taking you through the pages of The Spectator’s special Christmas triple issue. Up first: What a year in politics it has been. 2023 has seen scandals, sackings, arrests and the return of some familiar faces. It’s easy to forget that at the
Students annoyed their elders in the 1930s, too
Astriking generation gap in the western world has been revealed by the responses to the 7 October atrocities in Israel. Noting in these pages the surge in pro-Palestinian sentiment among young people on both sides of the Atlantic, my old friend Douglas Murray worries that ‘When it comes to Palestine, the kids aren’t all right’.
Tuesday
Niall Ferguson: Why AI won’t kill you and what Sam Altman got wrong
33 min listen
Celebrated historian Niall Ferguson, author of 17 books including Civilisation, a biography of Kissinger, a biography of the Rothschild family and Doom: The Politics of Catastrophe comes into to discuss AI. He recently wrote that the AI doomsdayists, including those behind the petition for a six month moratorium on AI development, should be taken seriously.
Saturday
Trump’s second act: he can still win, in spite of everything
The campaign of lawfare against him has already started to backfire
Thursday
Trump’s second act: why he can still win, in spite of everything
47 min listen
This week: Having been found guilty of sexual assault, is Donald Trump still in the running for the White House? In his cover piece, Niall Ferguson says he could still defy gravity. He joins the podcast alongside Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of The National Interest. (01:00) Also this week: Journalist Andrew Watts interviews the Reverend Canon
Wednesday
Trump’s second act: he can still win, in spite of everything
Everyone knows F. Scott Fitzgerald’s famous line from the end of his unfinished novel The Last Tycoon: ‘There are no second acts in American lives.’ But Fitzgerald wasn’t talking about second chances. He meant that, unlike in a traditional play – where Act I presents a problem, Act II reveals the complications and Act III
Saturday
Volodymyr Zelensky is a hero of our time
In an age when the democratic world has grown accustomed to phony leadership, it gives you a jolt to encounter the real thing
Wednesday
Volodymyr Zelensky is a hero of our time
When the Queen died, I was on my way to Kyiv. My mind focused on the war in Ukraine, I found myself uncharacteristically lost for words when I was asked to comment. I took refuge in the complexities of the journey, which involved a delayed flight from Rome to Lublin, a frantic drive to Chelm
Thursday
Vlad the Invader
35 min listen
In this week’s episode: What does Putin really want for Russia? For this week’s cover story, Niall Ferguson writes about how Putin seems to be trying to recreate the Russia of the Past, while this week’s diary by Timothy Garton Ash says the West has misunderstood his intentions, Niall and Timothy join the podcast along
Vlad the Invader: Putin is looking to rebuild Russia's empire
Peter the Great is his hero, much more than Stalin
Vlad the Invader: Putin is looking to rebuild Russia's empire
‘War’, in Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz’s most famous dictum, ‘is nothing but a continuation of politics with the admixture of other means.’ A generation of Democrats — the American variety, but also European Christian and Social Democrats — have sought to ignore that truth. Appalled by the violence of war, they have vainly
Thursday
The predictive power of science fiction
The pandemic is not quite over, but we are getting used to its inconveniences. What disaster will be next? An antibiotic-resistant strain of the bubonic plague? Climate collapse? Coronal mass ejection? Will the next catastrophe be natural — perhaps a massive volcanic eruption, the likes of which we have not seen for more than two
Thursday
The China model: why is the West imitating Beijing?
26 min listen
In this week’s podcast, we talk to the author of our cover story, eminent author, historian and broadcaster Niall Ferguson, who advances the theory that the West and China are in the throes of a new cold war which the Unites States is on course to lose, should the Biden administration continue to following Beijing’s
The China model: why is the West imitating Beijing?
‘There’s an osmosis in war, call it what you will, but the victors always tend to assume the… the, eh, trappings of the loser,’ says one of the officers in Norman Mailer’s The Naked and the Dead. ‘We might easily go fascist after we win.’ Americans have long been haunted by the notion of the