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Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

James Kirkup

If Jeremy Corbyn can rise from the depths, why can’t Theresa May?

When John Curtice speaks, listen. That’s one thing we learned in the general election. This week we hosted John at the Social Market Foundation, where he explained just what actually happened on June 8. Among his many observations was that Jeremy Corbyn really had done something unprecedented: he changed the way voters saw him, for the better. In

Where there’s a will, there’s a way

Once upon a time, there lived a very bored (but exceptionally diligent) paralegal. Everyday she would head to the office and stare at the same Excel spreadsheet. It contained a litany of things that really don’t belong in an excel spreadsheet – friends and family members, photographs, old records, engagement rings, a collection of saucy

Fraser Nelson

At long last, Theresa May offers assurance to EU nationals

After a year of prevarication, it has emerged that the Prime Minister has agreed to offer permanent residency to all EU nationals who were living in Britain. Under current rules, anyone who has been here for five years can apply for permanent residency status: not quite the same as citizenship, but it confers the same rights

Brendan O’Neill

The anti-tabloid snobs are the real bigots

So now we know who’s really responsible for the horrible attack at Finsbury Park Mosque: it was the Sun wot done it. And maybe the Daily Mail too. No sooner had Darren Osborne allegedly crashed a hired van into Muslim worshippers than certain so-called liberals were stringing up the tabloids. The low-rent press poisoned his

Nick Hilton

The Spectator Podcast: The dying of the right

On this week’s episode, we look at conservatism’s apparent decline, how society has responded to the Grenfell Tower tragedy, and whether young people have had their critical faculties vanquished by a certain boy wizard. First up: This time last year many were wondering whether the left, in Britain and abroad, was in terminal decline. The Brexit vote

The ‘hate preacher’ hypocrisy

Well this is interesting.  I had got used to the standard response to terror.  I had thought that when 22 young people get blown up by a suicide bomber in Manchester we were meant to say that it made ‘no sense’, that it ‘wouldn’t change us’ and that ‘love’ must overcome ‘hate’. I thought that

Steerpike

Too hot to trot: how the Day of Rage flopped

In case you missed the memo, yesterday was officially the ‘day of rage’. Hard-left activists took to the streets, vowing to ‘bring down the government’. Although protesters’ claimed that they were seeking justice for the victims of the Grenfell Tower fire, this was dismissed by a charity representing those effected; ‘they do not want their grief hijacked

Spectator Events: 5 ideas to change the world

How best to challenge the status quo? A week after an election result that surprised just about everyone, today’s best free thinkers descended on Church House, Westminster, to put forward their ideas to change the world. As Jo Coburn took a night off from BBC politics to chair Spectator Event’s ‘5 ideas to change the

Rod Liddle

Labour should form a coalition with the DUP

So, they limp on, and Corbyn is justified in holding aloft the Queen’s Speech in jubilantly derisive fashion. Some of you Tories are no doubt hoping that Theresa May ‘recovers her mojo’ and that the past six weeks have been some weird transgression from her norm. No, sorry. She does not have a mojo. She

James Forsyth

Theresa May holds the fort

Theresa May has never been a scintillating parliamentary performer. She has never been particularly comfortable with that very House of Commons brand of humour that marks occasions such as today. So, in her first major appearance at the despatch box since the election, May played to her strengths. She largely eschewed humour and was instead

Steerpike

Listen: Boris Johnson’s car crash Radio 4 interview

Oh dear. Although Theresa May has managed to make it through the Queen’s Speech today, the real test will come next week when MPs vote on it. With the Prime Minister’s authority already weak, talk has turned to who will be her eventual successor. So, it was a helpful coincidence that the frontrunner to be

Steerpike

Kwasi Kwarteng lightens the mood in the Chamber

Although a Queen’s Speech tends to be a joyful occasion for the government in power, today’s has been rather sombre for the Conservatives. Theresa Mays legislative plan for government is rather sparse now that she has binned the majority of the 2017 Tory manifesto. Happily, Kwasi Kwarteng was on hand to cheer downcast MPs in

Queen’s Speech: Full text

My Lords and Members of the House of Commons. My government’s priority is to secure the best possible deal as the country leaves the European Union. My ministers are committed to working with Parliament, the devolved administrations, business and others to build the widest possible consensus on the country’s future outside the European Union. A

Freddy Gray

The Democrats still don’t know how to counter Donald Trump

Another election night in America, another failure for the Democratic Party. Having spent a mind-boggling $23 million trying to win a congressional seat in Atlanta, Georgia, the Democrats lost to Republican candidate Karen Handel. The Democrats had been desperate to paint the contest in Georgia as a ‘referendum’ on the Trump presidency, especially since the

Katy Balls

Queen’s Speech: Theresa May bins her manifesto

Today’s Queen’s Speech is notable not for what’s in it, but for what’s been left out. With no Tory majority and no agreement with the DUP, Theresa May has had to gut her 2017 Conservative Manifesto. The fact that the legislation ‘trailed’ on the eve of the speech included plans to tackle nuisance whiplash compensation

Don’t be apathetic – take charge of your savings

It’s obvious to see how far cash savings have fallen over the years and how increasingly difficult it is to avoid inflation eroding your nest egg. In stark contrast are the striking potential returns that can result from investing in stocks and shares. But it’s worth remembering that fund values can fall as well as

The one big lesson Tories must learn about young voters

It’s the youth wot won it (almost). The day after the election turned into a day of self-congratulation for young voters, as initial reports indicated 72 per cent turnout among 18-24 year olds. As post-election data comes in, it is obvious that the so-called ‘youthquake’ was exaggerated. Nevertheless, there was undeniably an upward trend in engagement.

The price of being single

The average cost of attending a wedding is £800 per couple, according to a press release from Nationwide which landed in my inbox earlier this week. The building society completely ignored the fact that single people attend weddings too. Nationwide says wedding attendance costs can really mount up ‘especially if you’re going as a couple’.

Feeling full of rage? Blame the summer heat

Bicycling up Regent Street in the intense June heat last week, I was cut up by a black cab driver. When I remonstrated with him, he leapt out of the cab and assaulted me, with a violent shove in the small of my back, trying to push me off my bike. It was the heat

Steerpike

Watch: Dennis Skinner’s Queen’s Speech quip

Dennis Skinner is no fan of the Monarchy. But he used his traditional quip at today’s Queen Speech to try and do Her Majesty a big favour. The rescheduling of the speech – which had been due to take place on Monday – has made things tricky for the Queen to make it to one

Tom Goodenough

What the papers say: Terror returns to London

‘Another week, another grotesque terror attack on peaceful civilians’, says the Daily Mail. While in the Finsbury Park attack the alleged perpetrator ‘may have different coloured skin’ from those who have carried out previous atrocities, ‘their motivation was the same – to sow hate and division in our tolerant society’. Already, the Mail warns, ‘extremist groups’

Stephen Daisley

Gerard Coyne’s show trial is a stark warning to Labour moderates

‘There is no step, thought, action, or lack of action under the heavens,’ wrote Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, ‘which could not be punished by the heavy hand of Article 58’. Unite the Union’s rules appear to operate on much the same basis as the Soviet provision against ‘counter-revolutionary action’. Gerard Coyne, Unite’s West Midlands secretary, has been

Isabel Hardman

DUP pushes a hard bargain as talks with Tories stall

Tomorrow Theresa May will present a Queen’s Speech that doesn’t have the formal support of a majority of the House of Commons. Her negotiations with the DUP still haven’t concluded, with party sources this afternoon warning the Conservatives that they won’t be ‘taken for granted’ and criticising the way May and her team have conducted