Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Should starvation ever be used as a weapon of war?

Sorry to disappoint antisemites, but Operation Starvation is not an Israeli plan to murder millions of Palestinians; it was a US plan to starve Japan into submission at the end of the Pacific War. However, comparisons with Israel Defence Force’s (IDF) current strategy for defeating Hamas, and the changing legal landscape of warfare since World

The tyranny of GCSEs

Deep within the workings of an electric motor lies a split-ring commutator. It reverses the current flowing through the coil every half rotation so that the force on the coil also reverses as it spins between a pair of opposing magnetic poles. If ever it was necessary to recall such esoteric minutiae, the time is

It isn’t right-wing to worry about our falling birthrates

Births in the United Kingdom are halving every 55 years. While headlines still focus on overpopulation – driven by urban growth, longer life expectancy, and immigration – the real demographic trajectory is heading sharply in the opposite direction. If current trends continue, by 2080 Britain will need only half as many neonatal units, kindergartens, and

Disposable vapes save lives. Why ban them?

In a week’s time, it will be illegal to sell disposable vapes in Britain. Politicians from both parties will pat themselves on the back. The ban was introduced by Rishi Sunak and backed by Keir Starmer, and was hailed as a moment of non-partisan unity. In truth, it’s a policy disaster.  I used to smoke ten

Why Iran wants a deal with Trump

For Iran, the re-election of Donald Trump in November 2024 was its worst nightmare. Waking up the morning after the US election, Tehran feared President Trump’s unpredictability – and remembered the hard line he’d taken on Iran in the past and his killing of the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Quds force commander Qassem Soleimani

Britain has wronged the Chagossians again

I could not resist rushing to the High Court to witness the eleventh-hour challenge to the deal to give away the Chagos archipelago to Mauritius, brought by two valiant Chagossian women. Outside, their supporters chanted ‘Chagossians British’ and waved their passports. Inside, it was a legal massacre, with the government’s lawyers insisting that the Foreign Secretary’s

Why ‘woke’ is now just a right-wing fetish

There’s been a late entry in the competition for most cretinous misunderstanding of international trade policy. For anyone who’s been distracted by the ongoing meltdown of the global order, this week Britain finally signed a deal with the EU. The deal is sane and sensible enough to be slighty disappointing all round, which has not

How to stop secondary schools becoming misery traps

‘Transition’ is a word much bandied about in education circles. No, this is not about gender. Rather, when school staff talk about transition they mean that pivotal moment between primary and secondary school. This is the moment when a child moves from a small (average roll number of 280 pupils) and familiar place, probably within

Gavin Mortimer

France is waking up to the threat of the Muslim Brotherhood

Emmanuel Macron assembled some of his top ministers at the Élysée on Wednesday. Their purpose was to devise a strategy to counter the growing expansion in France of the Muslim Brotherhood. The nebulous organisation, formed in Egypt in 1928, has as its aim a global caliphate and it is in Europe where it is enjoying

Brussels is dropping a bureaucratic bombshell on Europe

Brussels makes one thing better than anywhere else: regulation. Reporting duties, due diligence checks, ESG disclosures, and endless frameworks for climate and labour compliance – if it can be mandated, Brussels has a directive for it. Now Brussels has outdone itself with a directive that makes companies legally liable for the behaviour of every entity in

Illegal gold mining is blighting Peru

It was gold that brought the Spanish conquistadors to Peru in the 1500s. More than 500 years on and the precious metal is still causing problems. Gold mining came into sharp focus at the end of April when 13 miners were found, naked, bound and gagged, at the bottom of a mine in Pataz which

In defence of seagulls

We Brits used to rub along pretty well with seagulls. Their distinctive call conjured memories of happy days out at the seaside and it was strangely hypnotic to watch them circle above the waters as we breathed in the salty air. But now they’re in danger of becoming public enemy number one as the tabloids

Philip Patrick

Great football writers are different

Brian Glanville, who died this week at the age of 93, was a unique voice in the crowded and often hysterical field of football writing and a uniquely important one. His historical reach was unparalleled. He published his first book (a ghosted autobiography of Arenal striker Cliff Bastin) at the age of 16 and attended 13 World Cups, starting with the 1958 tournament in Sweden.  His lean, elegant, novelistic style, informed

Katharine Birbalsingh is right about our worship of victimhood

One of the main accusations levelled at the trans movement is that the tidal wave of youngsters claiming to be gender dysphoric in recent years is a form of social contagion, especially among rich, progressive households. Katharine Birbalsingh, the former government social mobility tsar and head of Michaela Community School in northwest London, seems to

Svitlana Morenets

Putin orders new offensive

‘You want a ceasefire? I want your death,’ said Russia’s chief propagandist Vladimir Soloviev during prime time television, the camera zooming in on his face. His message was aimed at both Ukrainians and Europeans urging the Kremlin to stop the war. Soloviev, alongside a chorus of other Kremlin loyalists and military experts, has lately been

Ross Clark

Britain is enjoying another Brexit dividend

Has there ever been a day when Brexit seemed such a good idea? The story of Brexit began to change on ‘Liberation Day’ on 2 April when Donald Trump announced a 10 per cent tariff on imports from the UK and a 20 per cent tariff on those from the EU. No longer was it

Kim Jong Un is mad about a boat

Kim Jong Un is not a happy man. Only a month after he unveiled North Korea’s first 5,000-ton destroyer, another similar warship was seriously damaged as it was launched yesterday. North Korean state media issued an unusually lengthy report following the destroyer’s failed launch, mentioning how the ship’s hull had been damaged, the ‘launch slide

Israel should not listen to Keir Starmer

Benjamin Netanyahu should not be Prime Minister of Israel. It is a stain on Israel’s political system that after the massacre of 7 October, the man whose entire selling point to voters was that he alone could keep Israel secure has been able to remain in power through a deal with extremist Israeli politicians.  But

James Heale

David Gauke on prisons, probation & the political reaction to his review

18 min listen

Former Justice Secretary and Lord Chancellor David Gauke joins James Heale to talk about his review into prison sentencing. The former Tory minister was appointed by the current Labour Justice Secretary Shabana Mahmood, but says there is a clear centre-right argument for prison reform. He talks James through his policy proposals and the political reaction

Steerpike

Labour MP backs Lowe’s calls to free Lucy Connolly

The case of Lucy Connolly, the wife of a Tory councillor who was jailed over an offensive tweet, has sparked outrage across the country – and now even a Labour MP is calling for her release. Mary Glindon, MP for Newcastle upon Tyne East and Wallsend, has put her name to an early day motion

Steerpike

Netanyahu accuses Starmer of siding with Hamas

To Netanyahu, who has taken aim at Prime Minister Keir Starmer after the deaths of a young Jewish couple in Washington DC on Thursday. 31-year-old Elias Rodriguez was charged with murder yesterday evening after allegedly killing Israeli embassy staff Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Lynn Milgrim who planned to get engaged next week in Jerusalem. In

Labour’s spending is out of control

To borrow a phrase that was once famously used about the Pentagon, ‘a billion here, a billion there and pretty soon you are talking real money’. The Labour government has certainly been spending some ‘real money’ this week. If you tot up the total amount it has added to spending over the last five days,

Ross Clark

Only now are Britain’s high streets busier than before Covid

Finally, in a horrible week for Rachel Reeves which has seen inflation surge, the public finances take a dive and her authority undermined by Angela Rayner’s memo and the Prime Minister’s U-turn on the winter fuel payment, a glimmer of good news. Retail sales rose by 1.2 per cent in April. The Office for National