Freddie Hayward

Washington, D.C., United States

US Correspondent at The New Statesman

Writer at Morning Call (The New Statesman)

US correspondent, @NewStatesman Contact: [email protected]

Articles

Zohran Mamdani is teaching the left a lesson

3 days ago | newstatesman.com | Freddie Hayward

For once, money has not prevailed in American politics. The social democrat Zohran Mamdani is set to become the Democratic candidate for New York mayor after beating the former governor Andrew Cuomo by over ten points in the primary. It is the most pivotal progressive victory since Trump returned to power, one that could steer the party to the left and catalyse its populist instincts. This was a match-up between stale and new, young and old, establishment and outsider.
Ro Khanna interview: American optimist

3 days ago | newstatesman.com | Freddie Hayward

The Phillies baseball team was one run up in the sixth inning when the Democratic congressman Ro Khanna gazed at the crowd, turned to me and said: “I’m American. Americans are optimistic.”Nihilism, cynicism and fascism are buzzwords in America today. Optimism, less so. But people did look happy. Families knocked their heads together for selfies, squinting through the sunlight at their phones. Young bros munched hotdogs with one hand and slurped Miller Lites with the other.
How Benjamin Netanyahu beat America First

6 days ago | newstatesman.com | Freddie Hayward

“Iran, the bully of the Middle East, must now make peace,” Donald Trump told the world from inside the White House last night. Earlier that day, B-2 bombers had dropped their bunker-busting payloads on three Iranian nuclear facilities, marking America’s entrance into the conflict between Israel and Iran. This is not peace through strength, but peace through war. What happens now depends on the Iranian response.
Where have all the anti-war Democrats gone?

1 week ago | newstatesman.com | Freddie Hayward

To bomb or not to bomb? President Trump treats waging war with the same gravity he might deploy when deciding whether to play golf. He said this week that “I may do it. I may not do it. I mean, nobody knows what I’m going to do”. Call it strategic ambiguity, or flagrant honesty. You get the sense that the president doesn’t know himself whether he will give the order. The White House line right now is that the president will decide over the next two weeks.
Israel’s war threatens Trump’s Maga agenda

1 week ago | newstatesman.com | Freddie Hayward

JD Vance once compared Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel to that trigger-happy group around George W Bush who invaded Iraq, otherwise known as Maga’s chief nemeses: the neoconservatives. Or at least, that was how he framed the Israeli war leader in an interview last year. The vice-president quietly heads the isolationists within the administration. The neocons fought an armed retreat in Trump’s first term, which the isolationists are now hoping to turn into a rout.
Elon Musk's surreal war on Donald Trump will fail

3 weeks ago | newstatesman.com | Freddie Hayward

Few predicted Elon Musk’s time in the White House would end with him accusing the president of cavorting with convicted paedophile Jeffrey Epstein. But here we are. Perhaps it was inevitable. The split between Musk and Trump was fast, public and potentially fuelled by ulterior substances.
It’s time to go long on Farage-coin

4 weeks 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.
Even Peter Mandelson thinks globalisation is dead

1 month 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.
What Biden's cancer diagnosis means for his legacy

1 month 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.
The Biden cover-up

1 month 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.