Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Camilla Swift

Don’t chicken out of labelling food

Do you know where the chicken in your lunchtime sandwich came from? Where it lived and how it died? For most people, the answer’s probably no, so it might have been a surprise to discover that many restaurants, supermarkets, and even schools have been selling halal meat without labelling it as such. Of course there

Lara Prendergast

The ‘selfie’ protest

The kidnapping of the 276 predominantly Christian schoolgirls by Islamic terror group Boko Haram is an atrocity, but it is not the first atrocity they have committed. It is just the first one to trip the West’s interest switch. A girl’s right to an education has become an important pillar in western ideology, and an

Rod Liddle

Jenny Willott is right about PMQs. It is dreadful

Oh dear, I don’t suppose I’ll get much support in these parts for what follows. But I’m sorta with Jenny Willott, the Liberal Democrat MP and Business Minister. She has stated that she hates Prime Minister’s Question Time “with a passion” and goes out of her way to avoid attending it. Her implication is that

Alex Massie

Today in #middleclassproblems: worrying how your lamb was killed

It doesn’t matter. It really doesn’t. At least not very much. The notion, apparently scandalous, that the Great British food market is being contaminated – sorry, infiltrated – by meat slaughtered according to traditional religious practices is the most #MiddleClassProblem of the year. I mean, you know it’s serious when Waitrose is in the dock.

James Forsyth

George Osborne’s Waterloo

Hougoumont should be a place known to every Briton. It was the site of one of the finest feats of arms in the history of the British military. If this farmhouse had fallen to Bonaparte’s forces during the battle of Waterloo, Napoleon’s 100 days would have become a French 100 years. But history has not

Ed West

Why I’ll be voting Liberal Democrat on May 22

One of the interesting things I learned from a recent Lord Ashcroft poll was the startling fact that three times as many people identify themselves as Labour voters, tribally, as Tories (around 30 per cent versus 10), despite the two parties having roughly similar base support in general elections. This says something about the different

Nick Clegg is wrong on knife crime – we need minimum sentences

In today’s Guardian Nick Clegg sets out his reasons why he is stopping the government tabling clauses that would require mandatory sentences on second conviction for possession of a knife. Quite simply: I don’t agree with Nick. His argument for doing nothing further is simply that we are doing enough already. True, the latest Crime

Hurrah! A setback for the enemies of free speech

This has been a bad month for those who want to shut down free speech in Britain. First there was the wholesale failure of Fiyaz Mughal (whose ‘work’ I have written about before). Readers will recall that Mr Mughal – whose website, Tell Mama, claims to record and counter ‘Islamophobia and anti-Muslim hatred’ – used

Nick Cohen

How to be a traitor

No one is as hated as deeply as the apostate. Ordinary opponents are nothing in comparison. They are unbelievers, who know no better. It is not their fault if the light has not fallen on them. The apostate, by contrast, has known the truth and rejected it. There can be no excuses for his treachery,

James Forsyth

The 2015 conundrum

One of the striking things about the next election is how what is going on at the macro level looks so different from what is happening at a micro level. On the macro front, things seem to be moving the Tories’ way. The economy is growing at a good clip and that is set to

Five things you need to know about the Myners Co-op report

The Myners Report into the Co-operative Group (pdf) has been published today, and it doesn’t make for pleasant reading. Following the discovery of a £1.5 billion black hole in their finances, followed by the Paul Flowers ‘crystal Methodist’ scandal, the Co-op commissioned the former City Minister Paul Myners to look into the group’s problems and

Lloyd Evans

Complacent Cameron slips on Miliband’s bananas

Easy triumphs soften victors. Cameron demonstrated this truism today as he took two unexpected blows from Ed Miliband at PMQs. The Labour leader led on his new policy of rent controls. Cameron, rather weakly, seemed amenable to the reform but offered no concrete proposals of his own. Miliband struck. ‘That was a pretty quick U-turn,

Steerpike

London as you’ve never seen it before

The new Shangri-La hotel opened its doors to Mr S last night. Located on floor 35 of The Shard, the luxurious establishment was only, in fact, semi-open, since three ‘signature suites’ and an infinity pool are yet to be unveiled. The exhibited areas were abundant in opulence and splendour. The great and the good of

Alex Massie

Tories and ethnic minorities: lessons from George W Bush

Dan Hannan makes many good points in today’s Telegraph as he considers the Conservatives’ grim failure to attract support from black and ethnic minority voters. This isn’t merely a problem for the Tories, it is a crisis. As I pointed out yesterday, the Tory share of the BME vote in 2010 was exactly the same

Ed West

Will the Union be a victim of multiculturalism?

One of the more striking statistics in yesterday’s Policy Exchange report on multi-ethnic Britain is the revelation that only 25 per cent of white Britons identify as British. This low figure may reflect people not wishing to fill out two boxes (that’s what Alex Massie says, anyway), but it certainly follows a noticeable trend of