Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Lionel Shriver

The truth about ‘affirmative action’

I’ve never cared for the expression ‘affirmative action’, which puts a positive spin on a negative practice: naked, institutionalised racial discrimination – that is, real ‘systemic racism’, which was initiated in the United States long before the expression came into fashion. After all, following the Civil War, the 13th, 14th and 15th amendments to the constitution

Gavin Mortimer

France is in danger of descending into anarchy

France endured its worst night of rioting yet on Thursday as violence continued across the country. For the third consecutive evening, youths went on the rampage in most major cities, despite the presence of 40,000 police. Shops were looted, town halls attacked, police stations firebombed and vehicles were hijacked in extraordinary scenes of urban warfare.

Steerpike

Macron hobnobs with Elton John as France burns

France is in chaos after another night of violence sparked by the shooting of a teenager by a Paris policeman. Cars have been torched, roads barricaded and hundreds of people arrested. But while the country’s security forces have been struggling to keep order, France’s president Emmanuel Macron has been keeping himself busy: attending an Elton

The genius of Nancy Mitford

Nancy, the first – and perhaps most famous – of the six Mitford girls, died half-a-century ago on 30 June. The lives of the Mitford sisters seem as remote today as Jane Austen’s Bennett sisters. It is almost impossible to separate the family from their fictional equivalents. The books that made them so, Nancy’s The

Katy Balls

Is Rishi’s Rwanda plan dead?

12 min listen

It never rains but it pours for Rishi Sunak, as the Court of Appeal has today ruled against his Rwanda plan, raising concerns about the safety of asylum seekers. It now looks as though Rishi could be set to fail in all five of his pledges. Is the prime minister heading for embarrassment?  Katy Balls

Why judges ruled against the Rwanda plan

It’s unusual – not to say uncomfortable – for the most senior judge in England and Wales to be overruled by two of his colleagues. But that’s what happened this morning when the Court of Appeal stopped the government sending migrants to Rwanda. Lord Burnett of Maldon, the lord chief justice, agreed with the government.

The Rwanda ruling is nothing to cheer about

The government’s loss in its Rwanda appeal spells trouble for Rishi Sunak. But liberals are delighted: ‘Massive result,’ said the barrister Adam Wagner after the Court of Appeal ruled that would-be asylum seekers cannot be sent to the African country while their claims are processed. Sunak plans to seek permission to appeal to the Supreme Court –

Theo Hobson

If only there were more Anglicans like Wes Streeting

Why is Wes Streeting, the shadow health secretary, not more strident on the subject of religion and sexuality? The Labour MP has spoken in the House of Commons about his dismay at the Church of England’s feet-dragging over gay marriage. Yet in an interview with Theos think tank, ahead of the publication of his memoir,

Steerpike

Cleverly shares his diplomatic tips

To the House of Lords, where last night the neophyte neoliberals of the Adam Smith Institute were toasting three centuries of Scotland’s greatest economic thinker. And while Rishi Sunak preferred to spend his night cracking jokes about Boris Johnson at the nearby Policy Exchange party, his Foreign Secretary was on hand to offer some much-need

Steerpike

The curse of Zahawi strikes again

Who could have seen it coming? Daniel Korski’s shock decision to drop out of the London mayoral race yesterday took most of Westminster by surprise, coming after he had spent several days trying to rebut allegations of inappropriate sexual misconduct. But Mr S can reveal that he, exclusively, knew it was all over for Korski

Isabel Hardman

The privileges committee was right to scold Boris’s supporters

Did the privileges committee really need to bother with a report scolding a number of Boris Johnson’s supporters for what it has called a ‘co-ordinated campaign of interference’ in its work? Today it has published its verdict on seven MPs and one peer, Lord Goldsmith. This special report finds ‘disturbing’ examples of behaviour designed to

Lisa Haseldine

Has Putin had Sergei Surovikin locked up?

When Evgeniy Prigozhin started his armed insurrection, it was clear that he had allies within the ranks of the Russian military. His Wagner Group walked unopposed into Rostov, the HQ of the Russian military in the south and they were almost entirely unmolested as they came within 120 miles of Moscow. Vladimir Putin granted him

Katy Balls

Rishi’s Rwanda asylum plan ruled to be unlawful

It never rains but pours for Rishi Sunak. After a difficult few weeks for the Prime Minister, the Court of Appeal has this morning ruled that the Rwanda scheme is unlawful. The ruling means that the previous decision of the High Court that the scheme is lawful and Rwanda is a safe third country is

Will New Zealand regret kowtowing to China?

New Zealand is reliant upon China, a country that makes up about a third of its export market. So, when the country’s prime minister, Chris Hipkins, visited Beijing this week, it is hardly a surprise that he avoided saying anything to offend his hosts. The Global Times, China’s state-run tabloid, said New Zealand’s ‘proactive’ diplomacy and

Steerpike

Privileges Committee shames the Boris backers

Hell hath no fury like a select committee scorned. Fresh from chastising Boris Johnson, the Privileges Committee has now turned its guns on the Tory MPs who vociferously backed him during their investigation. The seven-strong panel has identified eight Boris backers who interfered with their 14-month long probe into whether or not Johnson lied to

Gavin Mortimer

France is a country in chaos

Emmanuel Macron is facing arguably the gravest crisis of his presidency after another night of rioting across France. Much of the trouble was in the Paris region, particularly Nanterre, to the west of capital, where on Tuesday police shot dead a 17-year-old after he sped away from a vehicle checkpoint.   On a night of extreme

Bright, poor students are being badly failed by Britain’s schools

Britain’s flagging productivity is commonly thought to be the root of the country’s present economic struggles. And as successive governments have painfully discovered – not least Liz Truss’s – there is no quick fix for it. Looking longer-term and investing in the skills of the future workforce satisfies nobody’s desire for instant results. Yet it’s actually

Kate Andrews

Is Thames Water about to sink?

Thames Water appears to be in trouble. The company, which has billions in debt, is in talks with the Treasury about a possible bailout. We may soon be adding the firm, which serves one in four Brits, to the list of victims of rising interest rates. ‘Victim,’ in this case, is perhaps the wrong word. It’s hard

James Heale

Korski drops out after groping claims. Now what?

11 min listen

Daniel Korski, the former David Cameron aide who was standing to be the Conservative candidate for London mayor, has dropped out of the race after a woman claimed he groped her in a meeting in 2013. Korski had won the support of a number of high-profile Tory MPs, and was seen as the likely candidate

Katy Balls

Daniel Korski withdraws from London mayoral race

Daniel Korski has pulled out of the race to be the Conservative candidate for London mayor. The former adviser to David Cameron cited the allegation by TV producer Daisy Goodwin that he had groped her during a meeting at 10 Downing Street in 2013 as the reason he is withdrawing. In his statement announcing the

Lloyd Evans

PMQs: Rishi whirs like a supercomputer

‘Hold your nerve.’ Rishi’s ill-judged advice to voters last Sunday was perhaps his worst blunder yet. At PMQs it came up half a dozen times. Sir Keir Starmer made the first attempt but he was too verbose to inflict real damage. ‘Rather than lecturing others on holding their nerve why not locate his?’ He exposed

Rostov returns to reality after Wagner’s botched coup

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine last year, it always seemed likely that the war would come back to Rostov-on-Don, the city which until then had been my home. Rostov isn’t just close to the border but feels it. Most of my university students were from the Donetsk and Lugansk, refugees from the 2014-2022 war. It’s

Parents have a right to know what’s in sex education classes

Rishi Sunak tends to shy away from social issues so it has been left to a backbencher, Miriam Cates, to introduce a Bill which would oblige schools to disclose to parents the materials whichare being used in their children’s sex education classes. The Bill is necessary because the Conservative government has allowed sex education in

Isabel Hardman

Sunak and Starmer clash on housing

Rishi Sunak used today’s Prime Minister’s Questions largely as an opportunity to attack the Labour party, and specifically Keir Starmer’s policy U-turns. This is fertile territory given there have been so many, even if the Labour leader is now adopting better positions than ones he naively took earlier on in his tenure. It does also

Tom Slater

Jonny Bairstow shows how to deal with Just Stop Oil

Give Jonny Bairstow a knighthood. Whatever else happens at the Ashes, or indeed throughout the rest of his cricketing career, the England wicketkeeper has already earned his place in history, with his quick-thinking response to a Just Stop Oil activist who tried – and failed – to disrupt play at Lord’s this morning. Immediately after

Nato’s leadership race is a miserable advert for the alliance

Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, has conceded defeat in his bid to succeed Jens Stoltenberg as secretary-general of Nato. Wallace had been a strong contender for the job, owing to his role in supporting Ukraine after Russia’s invasion. But now it seems the role will go to a character in the mould of the incumbent,

How Pride lost the public

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve probably witnessed the backlash to Pride. There have been mass boycotts of Bud Light after the beer company partnered with trans woman and TikTok influencer, Dylan Mulvaney, sending her a custom can to celebrate her first year of ‘girlhood.’ Target was next to come under fire for

Steerpike

Newsnight’s bizarre NHS ‘birthday’ tribute

It’s the 75th anniversary of the creation of the National Health Service next week, which can only mean one thing: mass, ostentatious displays of affection for a creaking arm of the British state. Still, even Mr Steerpike was taken aback by how quickly our state broadcaster descended into bizarre jingoistic tub-thumping for ‘our’ NHS ahead