Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

James Forsyth

Ukip’s breakthrough night

Ukip has won its first by-election: Douglas Carswell is the party’s first elected MP. In a stunning night for the party, it also ran Labour mighty close in Heywood and Middleton—coming in just 617 votes behind. listen to ‘Douglas Carswell’s Clacton victory speech’ on audioBoom

Damian Thompson

Ukip is a disaster for Labour. And then there’s Scotland…

Heywood and Middleton is a far worse result for Labour than for the Tories: we can agree on that, surely. Clacton is grim for Dave, of course, but I’m interested in what happens in the rotten Labour heartlands. Here’s something else for Ed Miliband to worry about: the SNP. Loathsome party, humiliated last month, but so

Moazzam Begg: Islamic bookseller or terrorist trainer?

Moazzam Begg’s lawyer once said that the former Guantanamo Bay detainee was ‘an extremist all right – he believes passionately in charity and justice for all.’ Many seemed to agree. Despite Begg signing a confession at Guantanamo admitting his links to al-Qaeda and terrorism-related activity (which he says was coerced), Amnesty International promoted the terror

The Spectator at war: Knowing one’s place

From The Spectator, 10 October 1914: As we go on in life we do, as a rule, learn our place more or less truly, and we find it is not the one we should have chosen. It may not be lower, but it is almost certainly different from what we expected. As we look over

Grayson Perry has a pitiably phalloscopic perspective

Calm down, dears: the strange coughing noise that was heard across Britain at around 8.30 yesterday morning was not the last gasp of an exhausted Mother Earth, nor was it the harbinger of a country-wide Ebola outbreak. No, it was simply the sound of nation’s middle-aged, middle-class men choking on their cornflakes while listening to

Steerpike

New party, same old politics for Douglas Carswell

Douglas Carswell is not like normal politicians; he’s authentic, genuine and in touch with real people. Or so the spin goes. So what was today’s by-election-day stunt at a polling station in Clacton all about? Emerging with his thumbs up, Ukip’s soon-to-be-MP for Clacton looked every inch the candidate, taking part in the usual election-day

Rod Liddle

Get me out of here: London is the ‘childbirth capital of Europe’

I see that London is now the ‘childbirth capital of Europe’, with the highest birth-rate on the entire continent. London, and the UK generally, previously enjoyed very low birth-rates, among the lowest in Western Europe (together with the other law-abiding, sexually restrained, protestant people of the North West). The cause of this change is, of

Seven foods that will help lower high blood pressure

Consuming certain foods and drinks may help reduce one of the main risk factors for heart attack and stroke. Who knows, you could find you don’t need medication after all – but let your doctor be the judge of that. 1. Gorge on guacamole. Avocados are high in potassium, which lowers blood pressure. Most of

Podcast: police phone hacking, Lib Dem tactics and vicious dogs

In this week’s issue, Fraser Nelson and Nick Cohen examine how police are using the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (Ripa) to run wild in the public’s mobile phone records. Like many curtailments of British liberties, this started off in the name of fighting terrorism. It has now emerged that police forces used these anti-terror powers

Isabel Hardman

Nigel Farage’s Krakatoa day arrives

Tonight Clacton is set to return the first elected Ukip MP to the House of Commons. The Conservatives have already tried to factor in Douglas Carswell’s defection as something they can cope with – and this has been made quite a lot easier by the tribal anger that Mark Reckless provoked when he announced he

Looking for a cure to Ebola? Try a western lifestyle

There is something depressing about the fact that it has taken a sick Spanish nurse to put Ebola back on the front pages. Since the summer, some 3,400 West Africans have died, but interest in the story here had waned. So long as the disease did not make the nine-mile leap across the Straits of

Podcast special: Nick Clegg’s speech

Nick Clegg delivered an aggressive speech this morning. But will it be enough to keep the Liberal Democrats in government? James Forsyth and Isabel Hardman discuss it in this View from 22 podcast special. James’s write-up is here, and Isabel’s is here. listen to ‘Podcast: Nick Clegg’s speech’ on audioBoom

The unbearable ingratitude of Kevin Pietersen

Seven years ago Kevin Pietersen produced his first attempt at autobiography, Crossing the Boundary: The Early Years in My Cricketing Life. Atrociously written, it demonstrated no awareness of the world outside himself. This time round Mr Pietersen has taken the precaution of hiring an excellent ghost writer, David Walsh of the Sunday Times. It is

Steerpike

A new low for NHS doublespeak

Orwell had it that political writing is ‘defence of the indefensible,’ and that ‘political language has to consist largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.’ For the latest example, look no further than the statement circulated on Tuesday by the Colchester Hospital Foundation Trust, regarding Dee Hackett, who was appointed last November as director

One dog down, in Spain’s Ebola panic

[UPDATE: The dog is now dead, WSJ reports.] For anyone concerned about Spain’s ability to contain Ebola, after a Spanish nurse’s aide tested positive for the virus, fear not: Madrid’s regional government plans to euthanize the infected woman’s pet dog in the interest of combatting contagion. The dog, a 12-year-old mutt named Excalibur, shows no sign of

Steerpike

Gleeful end to Lib Dem conference

listen to ‘Podcast: Nick Clegg’s speech’ on audioBoom Nick Clegg put in an appearance at Glee Club last night – albeit only in 2-dimensional form as a cardboard cutout – while Lib Dem activists sang a timely (or perhaps inappropriate) song about bombing Iraq called the ‘Iraqi-cokey’: Mr Steerpike was in attendance, too, although he

Ten reasons to give up smoking

Earlier this year a research study revealed that people were more likely to quit smoking when confronted with the reasons why they should give up rather than being told how they should do it. With that in mind, here are some convincing grounds for stubbing out those cigarettes for good: Cigarettes contain poisons. Each one

The Spectator at war: Stiff upper lip

From The Spectator, 10 October 1914: American visitors have been surprised at the apparent absence of emotion in England at such a crisis as the present. They can see, they say, no signs that we realize the tremendous nature of the points at issue. The English people, they think, are not taking things seriously. Yet all the

Isabel Hardman

Nick Clegg to announce waiting targets for mental health

Nick Clegg will, as promised, use his conference speech today to announce waiting time targets for mental health treatments. The Deputy Prime Minister, as part of government efforts to bring mental and physical health onto an even keel, introduce targets for the first time and pledge some (although not very much) more money to help

Damian Thompson

Anglican bishop to address Ukip. Now that’s courage for you

The former Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, has agreed to talk to members of Ukip about ‘Magna Carta and the Perfectly Virtuous Pages of our History’. I blogged earlier about the bishop’s bravery in calling on Rome to defend Christians from Islamism, and in the process endorsed the Catholic Ordinariate for ex-Anglicans. But this demonstrates courage of

Camilla Swift

Hunting is history – so why would the BBC pretend otherwise?

Of all the BBC’s output, the Antiques Roadshow is one of the programmes least likely to cause a row. Alright, so you might disagree with the odd estimate, or argue that some of the ‘treasures’ unearthed from attics aren’t bona fide antiques. But on the whole, it tends to be pretty inoffensive. Well it was, at least,

‘Unfunded tax cuts’: a verbal disease from America

The notion of ‘unfunded tax cuts’ seems set to be a central theme in next year’s election. David Cameron’s promise last week to raise the income threshold for the 40 per cent tax rate has led the Liberal Democrats to accuse him of planning ‘unfunded tax cuts’ for the rich – which they, being the guardians of fairness, would put

To statin or not to statin: a new test could help decide

In the context of the ongoing and increasingly sterile debate about the pros and cons of statins to lower cholesterol, it is refreshing to hear something new. At a recent meeting in Quebec, researchers made the case that it might be more sensible to better identify individuals at heightened risk of heart attacks and strokes