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Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

How Putin plans to fund a forever war in Ukraine

Vladimir Putin’s costly war in Ukraine has transformed Russia as the president has forced the country to pivot onto a war footing to support it. Now, going a step further, Russia is embarking on a significant tax regime overhaul, a move that hasn’t been seen in almost a quarter of a century. The tax shake-up

The hardest part of climbing Mount Everest isn’t what you think

Everest is, we’re told, ‘the highest garbage dump in the world’. It’s a place, if you believe the reports from this year’s climbing season, that is increasingly crowded. Terrifying video footage released last month showed climbers waiting their turn at the very top of the mountain shortly before two of them fell to their death.

Steerpike

Gavin Williamson in fresh ‘dirty tricks’ row

Is the master of the dark arts at it again? Sir Gavin Williamson is back in the headlines following a row about an alleged last-minute stitch up in his Staffordshire seat. With Reform riding high in the polls, every Tory MP is fearing for their future, given Richard Tice’s pledge to stand candidates across the

Will my generation still remember D-Day?

In the town of Sainte-Mère-Église, just inland of Utah Beach on the coast of Normandy, a crowd had gathered before an outdoor projector to watch the British, French and American heads of state pay respects to those who served and the thousands who gave their lives on D-Day. While the dancing and drinking and celebration

Why Biden’s Gaza ceasefire proposal failed

Ceasefire deals to end the war in Gaza have come and gone. President Biden’s unexpected announcement of the latest formula for a settlement, supposedly proposed by Israel, has already fallen by the wayside. In fact, Biden’s three-stage ceasefire deal looked remarkably like the previous ones: a six-week halt to fighting and withdrawal of Israeli troops

Jonathan Miller

French healthcare shows there’s another way for the NHS

Nigel Farage says the NHS ‘isn’t working’ and has suggested the UK adopt a French-style heathcare system. He’s evidently been reading my articles here and here. French healthcare isn’t perfect but compared to the bedlam of what most British politicians refer to as ‘our’ NHS, it’s fabulous. I speak from knowledge. I have experience as a

Fraser Nelson

Nigel Farage’s Tory manifesto

I’d say that Nigel Farage gave the best performance in last night’s debate. You might expect that: he’s a full-time television host, so he talks politics to cameras for a living. But of the seven that were on stage, he’s also the most experienced street fighter. He knew how to use humour and had a

A short history of cricket in Ukraine

Since the start of Vladimir Putin’s cold-blooded invasion of Ukraine in 2022, the stories and images being broadcast from the country are horrifying. War is gutting Ukrainians’ lives, but the ambitious and quirky place where I have lived and worked is still there. Many people are surprised, for example, to learn that Ukraine has several

Why was George Orwell a socialist?

When George Orwell’s publisher, Fredric Warburg, read the manuscript of Nineteen Eighty-Four in December 1948 he wrote a rapturous report to his colleagues, saying that the book was ‘worth a cool million votes to the Conservative party’. He described it as ‘a deliberate and sadistic attack on Socialism and socialist parties generally. It seems to indicate a

Philip Patrick

Can a government dating app solve Japan’s birth crisis?

The Tokyo metropolitan government has announced that it will soon be in the online matchmaking business. It is launching a dating app, which will hopefully appear in the summer, its latest attempt to get people to do their duty to the nation by finding a partner, getting married and procreating ASAP. The rules of the

Tom Slater

The troubling truth about the Greens

Wind farms. Heat pumps. Hamas apologism. It’s a curious combination, but one that an alarmingly high number of Green party candidates seem keen to pursue at this General Election. Yes, the political party nominally devoted to a single issue – ‘saving the planet’, at the cost of ordinary people’s living standards – has landed itself

Nigel Farage will be disappointed by his BBC debate performance

It had been called the dinner party from hell. A seven-strong convention of the also rans. But only one dinner guest really mattered: Nigel Farage. The populist politician’s last-minute decision to stand as a Reform candidate in Clacton has struck fear into the hearts of Conservative MPs across the country, but especially in the 60 marginal

Isabel Hardman

Mordaunt’s debate strategy was to pretend Farage wasn’t there

How is it possible that a seven-way debate between the main parties in this election was more civilised than the two-way stand-off between Keir Starmer and Rishi Sunak earlier this week? Tonight’s BBC debate was bizarrely better viewing. Sure, the party representatives interrupted one another, attacked each other, and flung about fake figures. But it

Steerpike

Watch: Sunak heckled by local GP

When it rains for Rishi Sunak, it pours. Just hours after the Prime Minister was forced to apologise for leaving D-day commemorations early to film a pre-recorded ITV interview, Sunak was faced with more challenges on the election trail. During a campaign visit, a frustrated member of the public — who is also a local

As it happened: Mordaunt clashes with Rayner in BBC election debate

Nigel Farage traded blows with Labour’s Angela Rayner and the Tories’ Penny Mordaunt in tonight’s seven-way BBC election debate. Rishi Sunak’s decision to leave D-Day commemorations in France early was also a big talking point in the debate which involved Daisy Cooper, deputy leader of the Lib Dems, the SNP’s Stephen Flynn, Rhun ap Iorwerth of Plaid Cymru and

Steerpike

Watch: Galloway blasts ‘believers’ who support Labour

Oh dear. While Prime Minister Rishi Sunak struggles to fend off criticism about leaving Thursday’s D-day commemorations early, another party leader is causing controversy elsewhere. A video of George Galloway of the Workers Party of Britain is doing the rounds in London WhatsApp groups. In a heated campaign speech, Galloway blasted Sir Keir Starmer’s Labour

Stephen Daisley

Sunak is out of touch, and always has been

Rishi Sunak says it was a ‘mistake’ to leave the 80th anniversary commemorations for D-Day early. That’s one way to describe ditching a memorial to the liberation of Western Europe to record an election interview for the telly. We have heard the various reasons as to why this was such an error. It was dreadful

Gavin Mortimer

Why are Europe’s progressives often intolerant?

For Robert Fico it was a bullet, for Nigel Farage it was a milkshake. The targeting of both men demonstrates the alarming rise of intolerance spreading across Europe. Most of it is perpetrated by people whose political ideology can best be described as progressive, but they are extremists, prepared to make the leap from words to

Steerpike

SNP’s musical campaign efforts fall on deaf ears

With only four weeks to go until the general election, party campaigns are rapidly ramping up. Politicians and staffers are desperately searching for more creative (and crazy) ways of getting voters’ attention — and north of the border the Nats have mobilised the musical wing of their party. Taylor Swift is in town for the

James Heale

Will Labour’s manifesto contain a surprise?

14 min listen

Overnight, details of Labour’s manifesto were leaked. There are several new policies, but how surprising are they, and how will they land with voters?  Elsewhere, Rishi Sunak has denied he planned to skip D Day events altogether since our episode this morning. Can the row get any worse? James Heale speaks to Isabel Hardman and

Kate Andrews

Nigel Farage’s biggest gift to the Labour party

Labour has a lot of reasons to be thankful for Nigel Farage. Reform was already creeping up on the Tories in the polls, even before the party’s honorary president announced this week that he would take up the role of leader and stand in Clacton. Now the polls are nearly neck-and-neck. The most recent YouGov survey –

Ross Clark

How many more houses will Labour actually build?

Is Labour really going to help get 80,000 people on the housing ladder over the next five years under its Freedom to Buy scheme, as it is claiming this morning? Given the rather light ambition of this target, I would say it probably has a chance of hitting that target, although it won’t transform the

Steerpike

Watch: Sunak grovels over D-day ‘mistake’

Oh dear. The story of the day may well become the story of the election campaign as Prime Minister Rishi Sunak struggles to explain why he missed part of Thursday’s D-day commemorations in Normandy to film a pre-recorded ITV interview. On Friday morning, Suank apologised on Twitter for snubbing aspects of the 80th anniversary events

Patrick O'Flynn

Rishi Sunak is bad at politics. Who knew?

Everyone is finally noticing that Rishi Sunak is rubbish at politics. Given the scale of his faux pas in bailing out of D-Day commemorations early to get back on the campaign trail, it is hard not to. As a longstanding member of the ‘Rishi is Rubbish’ club, I find it difficult not to feel the

Sunak’s D-Day departure was extraordinarily disrespectful

Rishi Sunak’s decision to leave Thursday’s 80th anniversary commemoration of D-Day in Normandy was extraordinary, stupid and disrespectful. He accompanied the King to a British ceremony at Ver-sur-Mer in the morning, at which Sir Keir Starmer, the leader of the opposition, was also present. But Sunak returned to the UK before the afternoon’s international event

Freddy Gray

How can you stop Donald Trump?

29 min listen

Freddy Gray is joined by Alex Castellanos, Republican Party strategist who has served as media consultant to seven U.S. Presidential campaigns. They discuss Donald Trump’s presidential campaign, his search for a vice president, and if there’s any way Joe Biden can tarnish his image. 

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.