Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Freddy Gray

Trump’s Chicago interview was magnificently weird

Kamala Harris has been criticising Donald Trump for ducking interviews. Today, however, she avoided a sit-down with the Economic Club of Chicago. Trump, by contrast, showed up and spent an hour facing difficult questions from Bloomberg News’s editor-in-chief John Micklethwait. It was, like all the best Trump appearances, a magnificently weird occasion. Who needs LSD

Steerpike

Sir Keir faces scrutiny over Taylor Swift policing fiasco

Dear oh dear. The Home Secretary, the London mayor and even Sir Keir Starmer’s former chief of staff have all been in the firing line over the Taylor Swift security row – and now the Prime Minister is under the microscope. It transpires that after Labour figures pushed police to give special protection to the

Ross Clark

Should the UK copy Europe on standardised chargers?

You probably know the frustration: you are sitting there trying to stuff a charging cable into your phone before realising that no, it’s the wrong one: it is left over from your last phone, or belongs to some other device. Just how many kinds of near-identical cables and sockets is it possible to produce? It

Working people will pay for Reeves’s NI hike

Who would pay for Rachel Reeves’s increase in employers’ National Insurance contributions? Well yes, in the first instance it is the companies that would have to hand over the cash, but the real burden would be much more widely shared. To see why, start with the simple question: what does a company do if it

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Tesla is in trouble if Kamala Harris wins

In the third century BC the city of Rhodes, in celebration of the defeat of Demetrius I of Macedonia, built the Colossus, a 30-metre-high statue of the sun god Helios. It became one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. Now there is a new Colossus to wonder at, not a statue but a

Thomas Tuchel would be a divisive choice for England manager

Thomas Tuchel, the former Chelsea and Bayern Munich manager, has emerged as the favourite to succeed Gareth Southgate as England manager. The Times reports that he could be unveiled later this week. It is believed that negotiations could proceed quickly, bringing to an end the FA’s search for a successor to Southgate, who quit after

Steerpike

Watch: Farage blasts Labour over Elon Musk snub

Sir Keir Starmer’s investment summit may have concluded, but the row over its invite list certainly has not. Now Nigel Farage has taken to Twitter to lambast the Labour lot for not inviting US tech billionaire Elon Musk to its big business bash. In a video post on the platform, the Reform leader questioned: ‘Why

Britain doesn’t know how to remember the Holocaust

On 27 January next year, the world will commemorate the 80th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. ‘The commemoration will be the last of its kind’, says Michael Bornstein who, having hidden for six months in his mother’s bunk, aged only four, was among the youngest survivors.   What lies ahead regarding Holocaust memory – and anti-Semitism – when Michael

Katy Balls

Can Reeves get away with a national insurance hike?

The Budget is not due for a fortnight, yet with every day that passes its contents seem to become clearer. This morning Keir Starmer gave an interview to the BBC where he twice refused to rule out a rise in employer’s national insurance contributions in the Budget. Instead, he repeatedly stressed that Labour’s manifesto promise

Why Sweden is cracking down on cousin marriages

In Sweden, marrying your first cousin has long been legal, though as in the UK it is widely frowned upon. Yet in response to the growing number of cousin marriages in Sweden after a rise in migration, the government has announced plans to ban the practice next year. A Bill is currently being drafted. In Norway, a

Is Kemi Badenoch right about autistic people being advantaged?

Tory leadership candidate Kemi Badenoch has been criticised for endorsing ‘Conservatism in crisis’, a pamphlet put out by her campaign team that says autistic people like me get ‘economic advantages and protections’. Is this right? The report says that: ‘Being diagnosed as neuro-diverse was once seen as helpful as it meant you could understand your

Steerpike

Sue Gray under fire over Taylor Swift security fiasco

Despite all the free concert tickets the Labour lot received to her gigs, Taylor Swift seems to be causing Sir Keir Starmer’s top team rather a lot of trouble. The US singer’s mother demanded special security measures for her daughter while she performed in London – and Starmer’s crowd capitulated. Today it has emerged in

Is class rather than race a bigger barrier to success in Britain?

Is Britain racist? At times, you’d be forgiven for thinking so. In recent years, our country has experienced considerable turbulence on the subject of race and equality. The spread of the American Black Lives Matter movement on these shores in the summer of 2020 – which led to protests from the Isle of Wight on England’s

Mark Galeotti

The Novichok inquiry raises some big questions for MI5

The inquiry into the death of Dawn Sturgess as an innocent victim of the attempt to murder Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal in 2018 has begun, a mere six years after the event. The question is, what can it tell us that we don’t already know? Britain’s love affair with lengthy, expensive and tardy inquiries continues

Steerpike

Guardian apologises for controversial 7 October review

Back to the Grauniad, the bastion of journalistic integrity. Last week Mr S spotted that the newspaper had first uploaded and then quickly deleted a rather controversial 7 October review – about Channel 4 documentary One Day in October. Today the Guardian has issued an apology over the ‘unacceptable’ way in which the article blasted

Gavin Mortimer

Macron is in office, but is he in power?

Emmanuel Macron is said to be appalled by his new right-wing government. A confidant of the French president conveyed to AFP the depth of his despair. ‘I did not choose this government,’ Macron reportedly told his inner circle. ‘They make me feel ashamed.’ Macron’s approval rating has fallen to its lowest level of his second

Ross Clark

Tim Davie and the death of BBC ‘talent’

Has anyone ever come up with a better put-down for Nick Robinson? It is even better that it came from his own boss. Interviewed on the Today programme yesterday morning, BBC director-general Tim Davie said ‘we often refer to people like yourself as ‘talent’, but I’ve kind of banned that.’ From now on, he intimated,

Gareth Roberts

Thank God for Elon Musk

Like many people this weekend, I couldn’t tear myself away from videos of the booster rocket of Elon Musk’s Starship shrieking back to earth, to be clutched in the giant ‘chopstick’ arms of a towering metallic cradle. I must have watched it now about 50 times from varying angles. The most impressive are the videos recorded at

Israel’s murder problem

A wave of violence is convulsing Israeli society. It’s not caused by Hamas, Hezbollah, Houthi, or Iranian attacks. Instead, it’s the daily violence meted out, not by terrorists or enemy governments, but by citizen against fellow citizen. Amidst the chaos of war, Israel is suffering a crime wave. Murder is a crime that happens in every

Is Kemi Badenoch scared of Robert Jenrick?

Is Kemi Badenoch running scared? It’s not an accusation often levelled at the shadow housing secretary, who is usually criticised for being too keen on a scrap. Badenoch’s campaign team say she wants to tell the Conservatives ‘hard truths’, and that she is the opponent Keir Starmer would most dread across the despatch box. But

Kate Andrews

Will Labour keep its promise not to hike National Insurance?

Despite getting off to a rocky start – including nearly losing £1 billion worth of investment – Labour’s much-anticipated Investment Summit seems to be delivering exactly what ministers had hoped for. The good news, including a combined investment of £6.3 billion from four US technology firms to expand data-centre infrastructure in Britain – is rolling

Steerpike

Watch: ‘Apparatus of state turned on Alex Salmond’

Heartfelt tributes were paid to the late Alex Salmond in the Commons today. A number of politicians from across the house shared memories of the former first minister of Scotland in a series of points of order, with the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn first to speak on the ‘most talented, formidable and consequential politician

Jonathan Miller

SpaceX has put Europe to shame

The flawless launch of SpaceX’s 5,000-ton Starship and its Super Heavy Booster, and the precision recovery of the booster on its launch pad, has opened the way to a manned mission to the moon next year and perhaps to Mars as soon as 2030. One giant leap for Elon Musk’s company on Sunday was one