Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Isabel Hardman

Parties launch tax attacks as Britain heads to the beach

The three main parties are having a fight about tax today. It’s the day the rise in the personal allowance comes into effect, and David Cameron will give a speech describing what is to most people the Easter Bank Holiday as ‘Money-Back Monday’ (which sounds a bit like a gameshow in a pound shop) and

James Forsyth

Tories convinced ‘moment of maximum danger’ has passed

On Thursday night, David Cameron didn’t eviscerate the competition. But nor did he suffer any damage and that, to Tory high command, meant that it was job done. The Tory leadership didn’t want any debates at all, they’d rather not have taken the risk. So, to get through this one debate with the dynamics of

The poll that could mean the end for Nigel Farage

Nigel Farage’s career is on the brink. Aside from his solid performance in the TV debate last week, the Ukip leader isn’t focusing on the party’s national standing. All that matters to Farage now is South Thanet and making sure he is elected as the constituency’s first Ukip MP. But the seat is not a

Don’t let this election turn us into Little Britain

If elections are job interviews, as party leaders like to say, then this interview has so far failed to assess applicants on the one part of the job description that most have no experience in – foreign policy and security. This absence was at its most conspicuous this week when the TV debate didn’t spare

Steerpike

Coffee Shots: Election fatigue sets in

With just five weeks to go till polling day, one happy voter in Bedford has had enough. Mr S suspects that it’s for the best if Patrick Hall, the Labour candidate for Bedford and Kempston, doesn’t pay a personal visit to this address.

Rod Liddle

Radio 4’s woeful ‘fact-checking’ is simply anti-Ukip bias

I’ve been away, in the north, free from Wifi and mobile phone reception, mercifully. I watched Thursday’s debate in a noisy pub so heard none of it and was forced to rely on ITV’s subtitles. I was greatly attracted to the Ukip cause by Nigel Farage’s bold assertion that “Britain needs plain-speaking partridges.” Yes indeed. I

Blessed are the speechmakers?

As the election season finally gets its boots on, office-seeking motor-mouths of every creed and colour would do well to remember the tale of William Henry Harrison, ninth president of the United States of America, who died on this day in 1841, exactly one month after taking office. The ‘pneumonia of the lower lobe of

Lloyd Evans

In a seven-way debate, the truth-evaders can wriggle free

They won’t do that again. Seven leaders lined up like skittles all nervously fingering their plastic lecterns. In charge was Julie Etchingham who’d spent many hours in wardrobe creating a fetishistic look. Severe blonde hair. A spotless high-necked tunic as white as sharks fangs. Heavy black-rimmed specs. She looked like the gorgeous physics genius who

Alex Massie

Who won the leaders’ debate? All of them.

So who won? That’s the question, isn’t it? Well, not really. This debate, like most such affairs, is not a horserace in which the winner is easily determined. Because not everyone was racing to be across the line “first”. That’s not actually the nature of the game. The question is not who was crowned the

Listen: The Spectator’s verdict on the TV leaders’ debate

The snap polls suggest there was no immediate winner of the televised leaders’ debate on ITV — so what happened? In this View from 22 podcast special, James Forsyth, Isabel Hardman and I discuss the first (and last) debate  of the general election campaign with all the party leaders. While the consensus is that Nicola Sturgeon met

Cameron needs to be the reasonable statesman on tonight’s debate

Which David Cameron will take the stage for tonight’s seven-way showdown? Will it be the competent, likeable and reasonable statesman who has steered the economy onto safer ground? Or the tetchy one who calls Ed Miliband a ‘waste of space’ at Prime Minister’s Questions? On Monday, speaking at a lectern outside the door of Number

Steerpike

Max Hastings reveals the contents of a Prince Charles letter about homeopathy

Last month the Supreme Court ruled that Prince Charles’s ‘black spider memos’ to government ministers should be made public. The decision comes following a ten year legal battle between Buckingham Palace and the Guardian, after Clarence House argued that the contents of the letters were private. With the release now impending, Max Hastings has offered a taste of what

James Forsyth

Five things to watch for during tonight’s debate

1) Can Natalie Bennett do enough to spark another Green surge? After Natalie Bennett’s infamous ‘brain fade’ the Green surge faded away. The media stopped giving the Greens the attention they had been and without the oxygen of publicity, support for the party fell away; this morning’s YouGov poll has the Greens on 4%, their

Podcast special: the seven-way TV leaders debate

Tonight’s televised debate between seven of the party leaders promises to be one of the most interesting events of the campaign. In this View from 22 podcast special, Fraser Nelson, Isabel Hardman, James Forsyth and I discuss who is expected to do well, the issues that will be raised, which leaders will gang up on

Steerpike

Revealed: The reason behind Alex Salmond’s pink champagne order

After Alex Salmond was outed as ordering pink champagne in not one but two interviews last week, naysayers were quick to ridicule the former Scottish First Minister for his lavish choice of tipple. However, Mr S has it on the highest authority that Salmond was guzzling in the name of the people. The rosé tipple, Mr S is told, is not