Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Katy Balls

Backlash grows over Sunak’s D-Day mistake

When Rishi Sunak’s team were mapping out this week, Wednesday and Thursday were viewed to be non-political days as the Prime Minister and most UK political leaders would be focusing on the D-Day commemorations. Yet somehow Sunak has found himself facing the biggest backlash of his campaign to date over his attendance at the anniversary.

Why did Sunak leave the D-Day commemorations early?

13 min listen

It’s yet another gaffe for Rishi Sunak. At yesterday’s D Day anniversary celebrations when it came time for official photographs with Joe Biden, Olaf Scholz and Emmanuel Macron, it was Lord Cameron, not Rishi Sunak, who did the honours for Britain. With the prime minister reportedly leaving early to do a pre-recorded political interview with

The Green party is terrifying

Is the Green party the most controversial force in British politics? It’s certainly giving Reform a run for its money. In the past few months, the Greens have suspended a former London Assembly member and two-time London mayoral candidate after he lamented that colleagues had denounced the Cass Review. After the local elections, one councillor sparked outrage by

The Tories don’t have a plan for the criminal justice system

The Conservative party fought the 2019 general election with a manifesto commitment to establish a Royal Commission on Criminal Justice. The promise was welcomed by almost everyone involved in criminal justice. But despite repeated attempts over the last four years to hold the government to its word, notably by the former Prisons Inspector Lord Ramsbotham,

Isabel Hardman

Sunak apologises for leaving D-Day commemorations

Rishi Sunak has just apologised for missing the international D-Day event in Normandy to fly back early to the UK for an interview with ITV. There has been a mixture of outrage and total bewilderment about why the Prime Minister chose to leave after the British event, putting foreign secretary David Cameron in his place,

Stephen Daisley

Why is Douglas Ross standing for parliament again?

Not content with being a referee and leader of the Tories in Scotland, Douglas Ross seems bent on making himself even more unpopular with the punters. In doing so, he has alighted upon David Duguid, the Conservative MP for Banff and Buchan since 2017, who wrestled that once true-blue redoubt back from the SNP after

Steerpike

Why did Sunak leave the D-Day commemorations early?

Politics took a back seat on Thursday as the great and good of the British establishment marked the 80th anniversary of the D-Day landings. Both Rishi Sunak and Keir Starmer took a break from election campaigning to head to Normandy, where they joined the King and other world leaders in commemorating the occasion. But when

When did Gareth Southgate get quite so ruthless?

Gareth Southgate, England’s semi-intellectual, waistcoat-strapped manager, knows he’s on his last chance at Euro 2024. He’s failed to bring a trophy home three times now and four will be unacceptable. This perhaps explains his newfound ruthlessness: he’s cut his most heroic failures from the squad who will travel to Germany. Jack Grealish, who brought good vibes but not a trophy, is gone. Jordan

Isabel Hardman

Alex Salmond: We are not splitting the SNP vote

Is Alex Salmond feasting on the misery of an SNP that, having hit its high watermark, is now having to work hard to hold onto its Westminster seats? Not at all, according to the Alba leader, who told Andrew Neil on Times Radio today that he was in fact trying to help the cause of

Steerpike

Could Labour change its tune on Trident?

As election day looms closer, parliamentary candidates continue to wreak havoc on party campaigns. This time Labour is in the spotlight over the issue of national security, defence and, specifically, its position on Trident — one of the issues on which the public rate the Tories over Starmer’s army. Sir Keir Starmer promised his party

Ross Clark

What happened to the ‘gigafactories’?

Remember all those ‘gigafactories’ that were going to decarbonise our road transport and create many thousands of green jobs into the bargain? Now comes yet one more sign that all is not going according to plan. The Automotive Cells Company (ACC), a joint venture between carmakers Stellantis and Mercedes-Benz, and energy company Total Energies, has suspended

Freddy Gray

What will Trump 2.0 do to the economy?

24 min listen

Freddy Gray is joined by Christopher Butler who is executive director at Americans for Tax Reform to discuss what Trump’s trade policy might look like in a second term. Should economists be worried about a 10 per cent tariff?

Lisa Haseldine

Olaf Scholz unveils Germany’s deportation plans

‘Anyone who threatens our freedom and disturbs our peace should be afraid.’ That was Olaf Scholz’s message today as he stood up in the Bundestag to announce that foreigners who commit serious crimes in Germany are no longer welcome in the country – even if they are refugees or asylum seekers.  The Chancellor announced that

Sunak’s crime crackdown won’t pay off for the Tories

The Tories are pledging to reshape our homicide laws if they win re-election. There could, as in many US states, be first-degree murder for intentional killing, second-degree murder for manslaughter because of diminished responsibility or death arising from a deliberate wrong. Rishi Sunak is also promising to get tough on domestic abuse, with a minimum

Katy Balls

Has there been a CCHQ candidates stitch up?

14 min listen

Conservative grassroots are up in arms over the installment of Tory party chairman, Richard Holden, as the candidate for Basildon and Billericay, a safe seat. The local association was given a shortlist of one by CCHQ. Katy Balls talks to James Heale and commentator and Conservative peer, Paul Goodman. Produced by Cindy Yu.

Ian Acheson

Tougher sentences won’t stop women being killed

Manifestos come and go but women continue to be murdered by men they know in grotesquely high numbers. According to the Times, the Conservatives are set to crack down on femicide in their manifesto, with the minimum sentence for murders that take place in the home raised from 15 to 25 years. Will this make any difference?

King Charles’s deeply moving D-Day speeches

Eighty years ago, in the run up to D-Day, King George VI and his Prime Minister Winston Churchill were caught up in an unseemly private squabble. Both men wished to accompany the combined Allied forces into battle, knowing that – as long as the initiative succeeded – it would be an unparalleled public relations coup.

Steerpike

Labour candidate’s D-Day blunder

It’s been a long hard slog for Keir Starmer and his team as they work to prove that he leads a Changed Labour party (honest). But in a bid to prove his patriotism, has one Starmtrooper now taken it too far? Mr S has previously been impressed with Keir Cozens, the well-connected candidate for Great

Steerpike

Scottish Tory leader ousts unwell colleague as candidate

Back to Scotland, where some rather strange events are unfolding. The leader of the Scottish Conservatives Douglas Ross — who most recently was the MP for Moray, alongside being MSP for the Highlands and Islands — this morning brought media from across the country together for an emergency announcement. After months of pledging to step

James Heale

Why Tory MPs are angry with their chairman

Today is the deadline for Conservative candidates to be selected – and one man made it just under the wire. Richard Holden, the party chairman, was last night selected for the constituency of Basildon and Billericay after an acrimonious selection process. Under party rules, if a seat is vacant within 48 hours of the nomination

Steerpike

Tories take £5 million from racism row donor

Oh dear. As election campaigns ramp up, the Tories have found themselves in another spot of trouble. It transpires today that the Conservatives accepted another £5 million donation from donor Frank Hester — the Yorkshire businessman who back in March was condemned by Prime Minister Rishi Sunak for his ‘wrong’ and ‘racist’ remarks about Labour

Isabel Hardman

Labour is breaking one of the last taboos in politics

Labour has decided to lean into the £2,000 tax hike claim by the Tories, and turn it into a row about lying. Keir Starmer yesterday accused Rishi Sunak of ‘lying’, saying: ‘That’s why the choice at the next election is starker now than it was yesterday. It’s a choice between chaos and confusion, the sort of thing

Have the Tories done enough for veterans?

The Conservative party is returning to defence and security for another election pitch and has unveiled a series of measures to support armed forces veterans. The proposals include a Veterans’ Bill enshrining rights, cheaper railcards for former service personnel and tax allowances for those who employ them. Taken with a plan to introduce a form

A Spectator editor’s account of the D-Day landings

Today is the 80th anniversary of the Normandy landings. On 6 June 1944, some 160,000 Allied troops crossed the Channel, as part of the largest seaborne invasion in history. One of those men was Iain Mcleod, who would go on to become editor of The Spectator and then Chancellor of the Exchequer under Edward Heath. In 1964, for

The astonishing achievement of D-Day

Today we are commemorating the 80th anniversary of D-Day – ‘Operation OVERLORD’ – with fitting ceremony and reverence, though, some polls suggest, without much understanding. Some confusion in the public mind about the precise meaning and importance of the Normandy landings is surely understandable. D-Day itself, 6 June, however vital, was the culmination of a long

Keir Starmer and the truth about the Camden cadre

Since 1997, every new government has been defined by an inner-London postcode. Remember the David Cameron era ‘Notting Hill set?’ Tony Blair’s ‘Granita summit’ in 1994 with Gordon Brown and the frequently elicited mockery about the ‘Islington elite?’ Even Liz Truss lasted just long enough for a headline or two about her ‘Greenwich gang,’ which

How a dead French poet helped the Allies to victory on D-Day

D Day, 6 June, 1944, saw put into action one of the most unlikely alliances in the history of warfare: that between the largest military invasion of all time, and French poetry. The episode in question concerned the role played by a poem by Paul Verlaine in that momentous event: an episode immortalised in the

Steerpike

Watch: minister squirms on rising tax burden

Oh dear. As the Conservative £2,000 tax claim continues to implode, poor Bim Afolami has been sent out on the airwaves to prop up his party. Only Sky News aren’t taking his defence quite as well as he might have hoped.  ‘How much has tax gone up under the Conservatives over the last parliament term,

Is Stephen Flynn’s seat really at risk from Labour?

In public, Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour party is all humility. Starmer might currently be heading towards a general election landslide victory but the line is consistent: The party’s taking nothing for granted. Privately? Well, one of two of the party’s candidates and strategists might concede they expect things to go rather well for them on

Vaughan Gething’s impressive failure

Vaughan Gething, First Minister of Wales, has managed to achieve the remarkable feat of losing a no confidence vote – just 77 days into his leadership. Defeat was inevitable after two of his Labour colleagues in the Welsh Senedd called in sick. During an often heated debate, Gething at one point appeared visibly emotional and had