Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

No, thank you, Officer, I will not think before I speak

As my daughter was preparing for her AS level exam on 1984 this week, George Orwell’s dystopian classic loomed back into a news headline: ‘We are not the Thought Police, Chief Constable Tells Government’. Leicestershire chief constable Simon Cole, who’s in charge of the anti-radicalisation Prevent programme, told the press that the Government’s new counter-extremist

James Forsyth

Vote Leave’s £50 million question

If you ask most people if they wanted to win £50 million, the answer would be: where do I sign up? That’s why Vote Leave has launched a competition this morning (here’ the link to enter) offering £50 million to anyone who can correctly predict the result of every game in this summer’s European football

Steerpike

Watch: Ed Miliband mistaken for his brother David twice on Question Time

Poor Ed Miliband. Since his defeat in the General Election, the former Labour leader has seen his influence fade — dropping to number 40 in this year’s Doncaster Power list. Now it seems some are struggling to even remember his name. On last night’s Question Time, Red Ed was mistaken for his brother David Miliband twice by his fellow

James Forsyth

Immigration dominates first BBC EU debate

The Lincoln-Douglas debate it was not, but we have just had the first prime time TV debate of this EU referendum. With Alex Salmond and Alan Johnson for In and Liam Fox and the UKIP MEP Diane James for Out speaking to an audience of 18 to 29 year olds in Glasgow. Many in the

Donald Trump: The impossible has happened

Do you remember when they said it wasn’t possible? When the pointy-headed wonks in Washington DC and the New York journalists with their masters degrees said Donald Trump’s campaign would be hit by scandal, or come undone without the support of experienced Republican party officials who knew how to work complicated caucus states, or that

Business investment falling could be good news for Remain

Today’s migration figures (net migration was 333,000 in 2015, up by 20,000 on the previous year) are bad news for the Remain campaign – but there’s a crumb of comfort for them in today’s GDP and business investment figures. This second estimate of GDP growth is unchanged from last month’s, still saying that the economy

James Forsyth

Cameron’s biggest challenge will come after the EU referendum

The one thing that can be said with certainty about what will happen at Westminster post-referendum is that David Cameron will find governing even harder than he does now. His majority is already the thinnest of blue lines and opposition from Tory backbenchers has already forced the government to u-turn on a host of policies.

We’re failing our children by not teaching them about money

We’re failing our children with financial education by postcode lottery. The subject finally found its way into the curriculum for secondary schools in England two years ago but if anyone thinks the job’s done, they couldn’t be more wrong. It’s true that all English comprehensive schools now have to cover the subject within maths and

Money digest: today’s need-to-know financial news | 26 May 2016

More news about unscrupulous payday loan companies today. The Financial Ombudsman has revealed that complaints about these firms rocketed by 178 per cent in the year to March. That is despite the fact that new controls on lenders were brought in by the regulator several months earlier. There were 3,216 complaints about short-term loans in 2015/16, compared

Damian Thompson

Pope used Argentinian ‘ghostwriter’ for controversial document on the family, claims Vatican expert

The leading Vatican commentator Sandro Magister – a conservative Catholic detested by the Pope’s entourage – this morning published an article that will severely embarrass Francis as he tries to clear up confusion over the Church’s teaching on Communion for the divorced and remarried. Magister, stripped of his Vatican accreditation last year after leaking a draft of the Pope’s encyclical

Steerpike

David Cameron’s new enterprise tsar proves to be a problematic hire

Oh dear. Today at PMQs, George Osborne could not resist boasting about the government’s new enterprise tsar, Sir Alan Sugar. When asked whether he could confirm reports that The Apprentice star would be assisting the government, the Chancellor replied that this was the case — after Sugar had recently told Labour they were ‘fired’. However, for

James Forsyth

PMQs: After a strong start, Angela Eagle lost her way

It was George Osborne v Angela Eagle at PMQs today, with David Cameron at the G7 in Japan. Eagle, who is a far better despatch box performer than Jeremy Corbyn, started off by contrasting Osborne’s handling of Google’s tax affairs with the French authorities raiding the company’s Paris office. She then went on to do what