Freddie Hayward

1 week ago | newstatesman.com | Freddie Hayward

Nigel Farage has had a paradoxical week. On Tuesday, he hit Labour from the left by calling for the two-child benefit cap to go. Forty-eight hours later, he flew to Las Vegas for a conference with Bitcoin magnates to tout his plans to lower taxes on cryptocurrency. All of which poses a question: is Farage for benefits or billionaires? The Reform leader was more at home in Vegas than you might expect.

1 week ago | newstatesman.com | Freddie Hayward

In 2005, Tony Blair said debating globalisation was as worthwhile as debating whether autumn followed summer. Twenty years later, his old cabinet minister Peter Mandelson, now Britain’s ambassador to America, gave a lecture pronouncing the demise of “hyper-globalisation”. Trump, it seems, has the power to reorder the seasons. Mandelson is integrating well into Trump’s America.

2 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | Freddie Hayward

Original Sin, an expose of how Joe Biden’s team covered-up his decline, will be published tomorrow, and the book’s damning stories – such as the fact that his aides debated putting him in a wheelchair – have already blown apart the claim that the US president was always mentally sound while in office. The book has gripped Washington and forced the Democrats to face the reality that their presidential nominee was not fit to do the job.

3 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | Freddie Hayward

Joe Biden took the adage to be “in office but not in power” a bit too literally. The 46th US president would often sit in the Oval Office without the ability to exercise power. Or actually exercise, for that matter. Or work past 5pm. Or speak. Or walk. People could see his infirmity. But the truth was far worse than we thought. We now know Biden was senile during his presidency. He would fail to recognise decades-old acquaintances, or freeze with his mouth agape.

4 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | Freddie Hayward

Peter Mandelson’s brief grimace was the only sign the government knew the ploy was a stretch. He was peering over Donald Trump’s left shoulder in the Oval Office as Keir Starmer’s voice burbled through the loudspeaker on the Resolute Desk. The Prime Minister was extolling the UK-US trade deal as a monument to the Allied victory in 1945. It was the start of an unconvincing sales pitch to those listening back home. The reality lay to Trump’s right.