Latest from Coffee House

In many ways, it has been absurd to have police spend months (and £460,000) to investigate birthday cakes, glasses of wine and garden parties. Lord Finkelstein, the Tory peer and commentator at the Times, has come out against it (‘Playing politics is no business of the police’) and the front page of yesterday’s Daily Mail lambasts the cost. I respectfully disagree. If partygate focuses political minds on the wisdom of lockdown rules, it’s well worth it.

‘Grenfell is a story about a failed evacuation.’ These are the words of Professor Ed Galea, an internationally respected expert in fire safety and evacuations who, among other things, wrote a pivotal study into the attempted evacuation of the World Trade Centre on 9/11. But this is something the British state, and particularly the Home Office, appears utterly unable to accept. For decades, this country has relied on telling residents in burning tower blocks to ‘stay put’.

Australia’s Prime Minister, Scott Morrison, is fighting a war on two fronts. Polling suggests his Liberal-National Coalition is set to lose to the Australian Labor party in the federal election today. But the PM is also being outflanked by independent candidates running in his party’s blue-ribbon, right-leaning heartland – but on a climate change ticket. More than 20 so-called ‘teal’ independent seats are challenging sitting Liberal and National party members of Australia’s lower-house on a common platform of greater action on climate change and restoring integrity to politics.

The Russian military has performed far worse in Ukraine than anyone could ever have predicted. After failing to take Kyiv, Russian troops have now been forced to focus on the Donbas region. Despite this greater concentration of forces, they are still struggling to make any major gains beyond the final capture of Mariupol, which had been under siege since the first days of the invasion without resupply or relief. For Vladimir Putin this represents a grand humiliation.