Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Isabel Hardman

Michael Gove’s fantasy Labour education team

Michael Gove and his colleagues have enjoyed poking Labour on education policy recently. His catty letter exchange with Stephen Twigg last week left Twigg with the victory for style with a supremely bitchy reply, while Gove won on substance (largely because he asked whether Labour’s education frontbench possessed any). Today he tried to assemble his

James Forsyth

David Laws fires first shot in Lib Dems’ anti-Labour offensive

David Laws’ decision to hand Liam Byrne’s infamous ‘there’s no money’ note to ITV  is intriguing. It suggests that the Liberal Democrat leadership intend to escalate their attacks on Labour. Laws must know the power of this image. For when he first mentioned it at an early Osborne/Laws press conference, Andy Coulson pushed hard for

Isabel Hardman

Doctors pass motion of no confidence in Jeremy Hunt. Good.

The health service that employs you is under more scrutiny than ever before, with shocking cases of bad care, ‘never events’ and serious lapses crawling out of the woodwork. The regulator that was supposed to keep an eye on all of this is under attack, not just for missing it, but also for apparently deciding

Nick Cohen

Edward Snowden shouldn’t play the coward

If you run, you look like a coward. It may be that you have good reason to be cowardly. It may be that anyone else in your position would run as far and fast as you do. There is nothing wrong with taking the cowardly course, unless like Edward Snowden, you claim to be engaged

Rod Liddle

Prepare to be bored

Something very odd is going to happen in your newspapers and on your television screens, perhaps this week, perhaps not. Soon, anyway. It looks likely that poor old Nelson Mandela is on his last legs and will very soon expire. As soon as he does, just you watch. You will hear of nothing else for

Isabel Hardman

Tories must tread carefully in NHS battle

It is clear now that we have reached a tipping point where it is no longer enough to repeat ‘I love the NHS’ or swear allegiance to Danny Boyle’s Olympic caricature of the health service. So what now? Labour and the Tories are scrapping over who still really, truly loves the health service: the latest

James Forsyth

Spending review: All departments settle

All departments have now reached agreement with the Treasury in the spending review. Vince Cable’s Business Department, which was not expected to settle until the last possible moment, settled earlier this evening bringing the round to a conclusion. Finishing things off with two and a half days to spare is an achievement for George Osborne.

James Forsyth

Cable talks going to the wire

The Treasury is keen to downplay any sense of drama surrounding the spending review. On Marr this morning, George Osborne declared that he was ‘confident’ that he and Vince Cable would agree the BIS budget ‘in short order.’ He emphasised that the differences between them were not that large. Indeed, I’m informed that the differences

Nick Cohen

In defence of paranoid hysteria

Compare a democracy to a dictatorship and world-weary chuckles follow. The last thing a citizen can do in true tyrannies is call them tyrannies. He or she has to pretend that the glorious socialist motherland or virtuous Islamic republic is not only as free as democracies but has a level of freedom that those who

Fraser Nelson

The battle David Dinsmore will face as new editor of The Sun

David Dinsmore, the former editor of the Scottish Sun, has just been named new editor of The Sun replacing Dominic Mohan. Dinsmore was very well-liked in Glasgow by those who worked for him (he’s also a Spectator reader, which speaks well of anyone). Educated at Strathallan School (where he wrote for its shortlived socialist newspaper Turn

Fraser Nelson

The Tories can steal voters Labour has abandoned

Russell Brand made a good point on Question Time last night. If a party derives half of its funding from a group of people, it’s not going to do anything to annoy that group. He was speaking in the (incorrect) premise that the Tories are bankrolled by the banks, bit his overall conclusion was spot

Isabel Hardman

Backbench row looms on tax break for married couples

The Tory leadership held one of its election strategy meetings yesterday at Chequers. The Prime Minister and his colleagues will have been reassured that their party certainly seems to be turning its face towards 2015, with some of David Cameron’s fiercest critics preferring to get behind the campaign for James Wharton’s referendum bill. I look

Isabel Hardman

Owen Paterson’s thoughtful GM revolution

Bravo to Owen Paterson for making such an extensive and detailed case for the value of genetically-modified crops today. That he gave this speech to Rothamsted Research at all is provocative, but if you read it in full, you will find a thoughtful and far more equivocal argument than the debate surrounding it suggests. The

There’s more to fixing the NHS than chasing A&E waiting times

NHS workers used to enjoy hearty backslaps for their ‘jolly hard work’ to bring down accident & emergency waiting times. Such praise was delivered by the Labour government’s chief nursing officer at a conference I covered back in 2003. Back then, talk was of shrinking queues rather than impending ‘A&E crisis’. Nurses should congratulate themselves,

Tom Hollander on the late James Gandolfini

This is an extract from a piece from December 2011 on Tony Soprano, depression, and the end of the world. You can read the full piece here. The thing with Tony Soprano is that I actually know him. Well, knew him. Well not him, but I knew James Gandolfini, the actor who played him. Because