Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Jake Wallis Simons

Biden’s Rafah plan will only help Hamas

The fathers, brothers and sons who are risking their lives for their country do not want to go into Rafah, on the Egyptian border of the Gaza strip. The ordinary Palestinians who hate Hamas and wish for a swift Israeli victory – and there are more of them than you think – do not want

Katy Balls

Reform close in on Tories in new poll

On Wednesday night, Rishi Sunak urged his party to ‘dig deep and fight’ in the face of difficult polling. The Prime Minister will be hoping this morning that the message landed as another damaging poll has been released. The latest from YouGov/Times puts the Labour lead at 25 points. But the part that will worry

How it all went wrong for Leo Varadkar

Genuinely shocking political announcements are relatively rare in the Republic. It’s a small country, with an even smaller political and media base who all know and frequently socialise with each other. This means that the whisper-streams between politicos and hacks usually ensure that what may come as a surprise to the general population is usually

Katy Balls

Inside Sunak’s showdown with Tory MPs

After a bruising few weeks for Rishi Sunak, the Prime Minister this evening appeared before the 1922 committee of Tory backbenchers to make his case. As MPs prepare to go into the Easter recess, Sunak tried to encourage his party to unite rather than descend further into plotting. He told MPs: This battle will define

Leo Varadkar’s days were numbered

Leo Varadkar’s abrupt resignation today left even his closest allies perplexed. ‘I was very surprised, I didn’t expect it at all’, said his deputy, Micheal Martin, after the announcement. Varadkar said he’s stepping down for reasons that were ‘both personal and political’, to give Fine Gael the best chance of victory. So what made him

Lloyd Evans

PMQs is getting sadder and sadder

At PMQs we saw the next year of politics condensed into a few seconds. Sir Keir Starmer asked the PM why he declined to call an election. ‘My working assumption is that the election will be in the second half of the year,’ said Rishi. So there it is. A date in October rather than

Steerpike

Watch: Lee Anderson’s ‘institutional racism’ takedown

It’s hardly been a week since Lee Anderson defected to the flanks of Reform UK and already the red wall rottweiler is making headlines again. Anderson put Rebecca Knox, chair of Dorset’s fire and rescue authority, on the spot at a Home Affairs Committee meeting today, after she described her own force as ‘institutionally racist’.

Stephen Daisley

The hubris of Scotland’s lofty Net Zero targets

Scotland’s climate goals are ‘no longer credible’ and there is ‘no comprehensive strategy’ to move away from carbon to Net Zero. That is the noxious assessment issued today by the Climate Change Committee (CCC), the statutory body set up in Scotland to advise national and regional government on emissions policies. Underscoring the gap between rhetoric

Ross Clark

Jeremy Hunt should listen to James Dyson

All Sir James Dyson wanted was to do what hundreds of business people and lobbyists have done before him: spend a little time with the Chancellor of the Exchequer and have a good old moan – initially about research and development tax relief but then extending to other subjects such as corporation tax, high levels

China’s threats to Kinmen should be taken seriously

When two Chinese fisherman died last month trying to flee Taiwan’s coastguard, Beijing laid the blame at Taipei’s feet and demanded an apology. The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) also spied an opportunity to advance its territorial claims. China has been targeting Kinmen, an island controlled by Taiwan, more aggressively over the past few weeks. The CCP stated that ‘there is no

Isabel Hardman

Will Sunak or Starmer ever say anything new at PMQs?

Rishi Sunak will have been grateful to have got through Prime Minister’s Questions today with little criticism – at least from his own side. The session opened with a loyal planted question on the inflation figures, which allowed Sunak to tell the Commons that ‘our plan is working’ and underline that this was the steepest

Katy Balls

Leo Varadkar resigns following crushing referendum defeat

The Taoiseach Leo Varadkar is to step down as Ireland’s prime minister and as the leader of his party, Fine Gael. In an announcement this lunchtime in Dublin, Varadkar said he would quit as party leader with immediate effect, but stay in the role of Taoiseach until his successor is appointed. Explaining his decision, Varadkar

Steerpike

David Lammy’s Thatcher u-turn

As Labour prepares for power, the party’s leading lights are busy u-turning: not least on their views on Margaret Thatcher. The Iron Lady is Labour’s inspiration du jour, much to the anger of the party’s lefties. First, the shadow chief secretary to the Treasury Darren Jones claimed that Thatcher oversaw a decade of ‘national renewal’.

Max Jeffery

Did Jeremy Hunt reduce inflation?

12 min listen

Inflation has fallen to 3.4 per cent, it was announced this morning. Jeremy Hunt said it was a sign that the government’s economic plan is working. Is he right? Max Jeffery speaks to Katy Balls and Kate Andrews.

Is Viktor Orbán really anti-Semitic?

Much of the criticism directed at Viktor Orbán, Hungary’s long-serving populist prime minister, is richly deserved. Orbán poses as the bête noire of the EU, despite Hungary being a net recipient of EU largesse. Another source of the opprobrium directed against Orbán is his opposition to aiding Ukraine in its existential war against Russia. This

Kate Andrews

Inflation drops to its lowest level in two years

Inflation has slowed once again, to 3.4 per cent in the 12 months to February, down from 4 per cent in January. This takes the inflation rate to its lowest level in two and a half years, and keeps inflation on track for the Bank’s target of 2 per cent this spring. The fall in

Rachel Reeves

Five takeaways from Rachel Reeves’s Mais speech

We live in an age of stunts and soundbites so it was refreshing to hear a politician stand up and, for the best part of an hour, explain their political philosophy to an audience savvy enough to shred it. That’s what Labour’s Rachel Reeves did at last night’s Mais lecture.  She summoned the ghosts of

Kate Andrews

How big will Rachel Reeves’s state be?

Every year the Mais lecture, hosted by Bayes Business School, gives its speaker a chance to lay out their vision for the economy. It’s how we knew Rishi Sunak would prioritise fiscal prudence over tax cuts long before he entered Number 10. Last night it was Rachel Reeves’s turn.  The message seemed to be: build up the

Philip Patrick

Football is in enough trouble without a ‘regulator’

Unlike David Cameron – who famously got in a muddle about which team he supported – Rishi Sunak is a genuine football fan. But this makes the government’s latest wheeze of introducing a football regulator hard to take. Sunak says the outfit will help to prevent the ‘financial mismanagement’ of ‘unscrupulous owners’. It is, he

Isabel Hardman

Does Rachel Reeves have the answers?

Rachel Reeves has given her much-anticipated speech about what she’d do as the first female chancellor in history. As briefed, her Mais lecture was a look at Labour’s ‘securonomics’ economic policy, with promises to beef up the Treasury, as well as analysis of Nigel Lawson’s 1984 Mais lecture, and an insistence that ‘I don’t want

Stephen Daisley

How to fix the elites

Few things get the British quite as worked up as private schools. To the left, they are factories of inequality that turn scions of privilege into the elite of tomorrow. To the right, they are an expression of parental choice and part of Britain’s schooling heritage. To ambitious mothers and fathers, they are a way

Freddy Gray

Are we suffering from ‘Trump outrage fatigue’?

Freddy Gray talks to political science lecturer Damon Linker about the latest developments in the Biden and Trump campaigns.  Why did Biden’s fiery State of the Union Address provide him no uptick in the polls? In what ways does Trump fatigue affect each candidate’s chances? And does Trump’s greater popularity with non-white low propensity voters

Isabel Hardman

Rachel Reeves is making mischief for the Tories

Rachel Reeves has a busy day: the shadow chancellor is giving her big speech tonight, where she is expected to outline the broad brush of her economic policy and claim there is a ‘new chapter in Britain’s economic history’ just waiting to start under a Labour government. Reeves was in the Commons this morning for

Steerpike

Simon Case’s five worst WhatsApp moments

At long last, Simon Case has received his hearing date for the UK Covid Inquiry. The most senior civil servant in the country was initially excluded from the Inquiry for health reasons, but now that he’s back and fighting fit, the top mandarin has been told to appear in front of Baroness Hallett on 23

In defence of private members’ clubs

The members list of the men-only Garrick Club in London’s West End has remained a closely-guarded secret – until now. King Charles, Richard Moore, the head of MI6, and Simon Case, the cabinet secretary, have been named as members of the club after the Guardian revealed what it called ‘the roll call of (the) British

The Tories are stuck in a Net Zero trap of their own making

The Prime Minister’s pronouncement that Britain needs investment in new gas-fired power stations to keep the lights on is a rare moment of realism in the fog of Net Zero delusion. The government’s analysis shows that ‘we will need gas generation in the immediate term to meet rising demand’, Rishi Sunak wrote in the Telegraph last week. With

The genius of the ‘Noon against Putin’ protest

On Sunday, the final day of voting in Russia’s presidential election, Russians came out in an unorthodox protest against the Kremlin. At midday, they showed up at polling stations within the country and at embassies across the globe to take part in the ‘Noon Against Putin’ movement.  The strategy, assembled piece by piece by the

Ross Clark

Ed Miliband’s dangerous net zero fantasy

Ed Miliband set Labour back a decade when he not only failed to win the 2015 general election but went backwards, losing a net 26 seats and helping to usher in the disastrous era of Jeremy Corbyn. But could he now be about to undermine a Keir Starmer government too? Miliband has a little fantasy

Isabel Hardman

Could a fight over Rwanda get Sunak the poll boost he needs?

Downing Street has warned that peers will show a lack of ‘compassion’ if they do not pass the Rwanda Bill unamended. At this morning’s lobby briefing, the Prime Minister’s spokesman said: ‘Not acting is not an option and it certainly wouldn’t be a compassionate route.’ The government rejected all the amendments made by peers to

Why Israel targeted Gaza’s al-Shifa hospital

Gaza’s largest hospital, al-Shifa, was once again turned into a battlefield yesterday. Five hours of fighting between Israel and Hamas at the hospital, viewed by Israel as a base used by terrorists, led to some 80 Palestinians being detained. Israel claimed to have killed about 20 terrorists in the precision raid, including Faiq Mabhouh, the head