Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

All the latest analysis of the day's news and stories

James Heale

DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson resigns after sex offence charges

Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has this afternoon quit as leader of the Democratic Unionist Party after he was charged over historical sexual allegations. A 57-year-old woman has also been charged with aiding and abetting in connection with the alleged offences. Both were arrested on Thursday morning by PSNI detectives and were questioned before being charged on

Ian Acheson

Who will take responsibility for our appalling prisons?

We know our prison system is awash with drugs but just what are they smoking at the Ministry of Justice? A shocking story in the Times yesterday revealed what a desperate state Britain’s jails are in. Paul Morgan-Bentley, an undercover reporter, was hired at breakneck speed to work as a uniformed Operational Support Grade (OSG)

Gavin Mortimer

The French want weed, not wine

Across France this Easter families will gather to eat, drink and, in many cases, smoke drugs. There are five million regular cannabis smokers in France and a further 600,000 who are classified as cocaine addicts. The number of people who consume wine on a regular basis is just over seven million (11 per cent of

Humza Yousaf isn’t cut out to be SNP leader

It is now exactly a year since Humza Yousaf, Scotland’s First Minister, rose to the pinnacle of Scottish politics. Pretty much everything that has happened since entitles those who doubted his leadership skills, political judgment and basic competence to mutter ‘I told you so’. Even his most diehard supporters within the SNP must be starting

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How to stop illegal immigration from Afghanistan

Spring is here. For Afghanistan that means more violence by the Taliban and other terrorists – and more refugees leaving our country on small boats for the United Kingdom and elsewhere.   As a proud patriot it gives me nothing but shame to see the name Afghanistan ever more prominent in British Home Office data

Why I used to hate Good Friday

If you’re of a certain age and you were brought up Catholic, you’ll remember ‘Good Friday’ as the most awful misnomer. It was the most miserable day in the Catholic calendar – the day we commemorated the death of Our Saviour. Any display of happiness or cheer was strictly forbidden on Good Friday. A dark

Where have the West’s liberal values gone?

Russia is ramping up preparations for a ‘large-scale’ war with Nato. That’s the verdict of the Washington-based Institute for the Study of War, which reports several indications that Moscow is preparing for war with Nato ‘not imminently but likely on a shorter timeline’ than many Western analysts believed. Is the West ready for war? Its

Who would trust Holyrood with legalising euthanasia?

Would you trust this lot with assisted dying? The Scottish parliament’s record on issues of personal liberty has been pretty dire. Yet MSPs seem mustard-keen to introduce medically-supervised suicide as proposed by the Liberal Democrat MSP, Liam McArthur. His Assisted Dying for Terminally Ill Adults (Scotland) Bill, published today, is the third such Bill to hit Holyrood

Barristers should be allowed to join the Garrick

The Garrick Club affair has taken a new and slightly worrying twist, this time courtesy of – of all bodies – the Bar Council. Hot on the heels of calls for judges to resign en masse from the club because it remains single-sex, the Council now apparently wants to go even further. It is hinting that

When the gender debate doesn’t belong in the classroom

Kevin Lister has lost his case at an employment tribunal in Bristol. I am not surprised. The former maths teacher was dismissed by New College Swindon for gross misconduct in September 2022 after he failed to refer to one of his students by their preferred name or pronoun. There was a clash of beliefs. The student identified

When will Prince Harry stop punishing British taxpayers?

Wherever you go in the world, there are always two things that are never cheap: lobsters and lawyers. The British taxpayer has learned this painful reality as it picks up a bill of more than half a million pounds for defending the government’s case against Prince Harry. The Duke of Sussex has brought a case

Katja Hoyer

Germany’s Holocaust dilemma

‘In 2024, Jewish money is once again being confiscated by a German bank’. This is a headline that makes for uncomfortable reading in Berlin. It is part of a story currently making the rounds on social media and being described as a ‘worrying echo of history.’ But there is more to this story than meets the eye.

Steerpike

Will Angela Rayner take her own advice?

It seems Angela Rayner is in hot water again. The Labour deputy leader might have thought she had escaped unscathed from claims about the sale of her ex-council house. But Greater Manchester Police (GMP) now says it is reassessing its previous decision not to investigate allegations that she gave false information on official documents, in a

Have NeverTrumpers found a way to hit Donald where it hurts?

With Donald Trump confirmed as the Republican nominee, a group of NeverTrump conservatives have tried to hit the former president somewhere vulnerable: the musicals of Andrew Lloyd Webber. The Lincoln Project, an organisation led by old-school Republicans, has released a video parodying one of the tunes most associated with Trump’s rallies – the theme song

Humza Yousaf’s first year has been a disaster

When Nicola Sturgeon stepped down as First Minister of Scotland a year ago, she said she’d reached the conclusion that she could no further advance the cause of independence. It was time for a new leader with new ideas to energise the campaign to break up the United Kingdom. Responsibility for invigorating the separatist movement

Steerpike

Galloway suggests Obama involvement in Moscow attack

The fall-out continues from Friday’s attack on Moscow concert hall attack in which 139 people were reported dead. Russian officials have directly accused Ukraine and the West of being involved – despite, er, the Islamic State claiming responsibility and releasing video of the atrocity. But in their bid to prove their side of events, the

Kate Andrews

Britain is falling out of love with the NHS

Rishi Sunak doesn’t speak much about his five priorities these days, apart from inflation, which ‘halved’ as promised. On NHS waiting lists, small boats, the economy and the public finances, the news hasn’t been nearly as positive – and people have noticed. Satisfaction with the National Health Service has hit its lowest point since records

Steerpike

When will Sunak’s next deputy chair resign?

In the two months since Lee Anderson’s resignation as Tory deputy chairman, there’s been something of a vacancy at CCHQ. Who could fill the gap left by the red wall rottweiler, to motivate the grassroots and energise the base? Well now it seems we have our answer: Jonathan Gullis, a close friend of Anderson and

The justice system is failing domestic abuse victims

Remember the days when our TV screens were full of men cracking jokes about ‘giving the missus a backhander’ if she complained about him coming home drunk? That was back when rank misogyny dominated police forces, and domestic violence was described as a private matter ‘between a man and his wife’.   Then along came those

The painful truth about Gareth Southgate’s England

Football, so they say, is a results business – except when it comes to Gareth Southgate, the England manager. In his case it is apparently about so many more things than winning. It is about the harmony he brings to the dressing room, his grown-up relationship with the players, the way he conducts his press

Katy Balls

The most striking appointment in No. 10’s mini-reshuffle

Another week, another set of Tory MPs announcing their retirement plans. This time it’s serving ministers. As MPs head into the Easter recess, defence minister James Heappey has ended the parliamentary term by following through on his promise to step down as armed forces minister. Meanwhile Rob Halfon has announced he is resigning as an

Why North Korea hates Alan Titchmarsh’s jeans

Alan Titchmarsh presumably did not expect to see his programme Garden Secrets, filmed in 2010, air on North Korean state television this week. He would perhaps have been even more surprised to see the network blur out his blue jeans for viewers. In the mid-to-late 1990s, under the rule of Kim Jong Il the anti-jeans rhetoric heightened

Fraser Nelson

The UAE bid for The Spectator is over

In the end, it was watertight. The House of Lords has just voted through a new law banning foreign governments from owning British newspapers and magazines. Any ‘material influence’ has been banned, so neither the United Arab Emirates or any ‘foreign power’ will be allowed so much as a 0.1 per cent stake in The