Today on Coffee House

‘Is that all there is?’ a dejected Peggy Lee mused in her sixties jazz number of the same name. Humza Yousaf’s statement in the Scottish parliament this afternoon left me musing along much the same lines, and no less dejectedly. The SNP justice minister had come to Holyrood with a peace offering for opponents of his hate crime bill, but it turned out to be half a piece at most. Such is the bill’s authoritarian overreach, it has prompted an unlikely alliance between Catholics and secularists, cops and lawyers, and, even more remarkably in Scotland, nationalists and unionists.

Gasps abounded in the Commons this afternoon after a testy exchange between Defence Secretary Ben Wallace and his Labour opposite number. A clearly riled Wallace decided that he had had enough of John Healey's interventions during the second reading of his bill to limit prosecutions of servicemen and women. The cabinet minister told the House:  Much of the mess we are having to come and clean up today is because of your illegal wars, your events in the past and the way you have run this, the, the, the.

Martial law was declared yesterday. And today Boris was expected to arrive at PMQs dressed in jackboots, an olive tunic and wraparound shades, with a Glock 18 machine-pistol tucked into his holster. Instead he wore a plain business suit. Perhaps he wanted to give his people a friendlier impression of their overlord. He seemed unusually jovial and upbeat at the despatch box, despite all the barmy rumours swirling around the internet.

When Chancellor Rishi Sunak extended the furlough scheme back in May, he committed more support than anyone expected. In June and July, the government continued to pay 80 per cent of employee wages (with a cap of £2,500 per month) and has also picked up the majority of the tab in August and September.  But as the scheme comes to an end after 31 October, calls have grown louder for it to be extended again. So far Sunak has been adamant that it won’t be, telling the House of Commons in July that it could not continue forever.