Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

A grooming gang inquiry will expose Labour’s guilty men

Sir Keir Starmer claimed in January that those who were concerned about the systematic rape and abuse of little girls were ‘calling for inquiries because they want to jump on a bandwagon of the far right’. Yesterday, Yvette Cooper, the Home Secretary, promised that victims would finally get the full national inquiry which campaigners have been

Will the Maga isolationists forgive Trump for Iran?

That was fast. In the space of a few weeks, President Donald J. Trump has gone from being the idol of the Republican isolationists to the hero of the hawks. Only a few days ago, the Wall Street Journal editorial page was complaining that ‘Maga isolationists want the President to pressure Israel to stop the war before Iran’s nuclear

Michael Simmons

The good and bad news about the UK-US trade deal

Donald Trump and Keir Starmer’s transatlantic trade deal has finally been signed. Before making an early exit from the G7, the US president approved an executive order giving legal effect to parts of the US-UK deal. The outline of the agreement was settled weeks earlier during a conference call, with Trump in the White House

How Iran is piercing Israel’s state-of-the-art missile defences

Since the beginning of ‘Operation True Promise III’ – launched after Israel’s strikes on Iranian nuclear infrastructure, leadership targets, and military sites – Iran has fired over 370 ballistic missiles at Israel, according to the Israeli Prime Minister’s Office on Monday. This is not the first time Israel has faced large-scale Iranian missile attacks. Similar volleys

The remarkable quest to identify Captain Cook’s Endeavour

The announcement that a shipwreck in Newport Harbor, 200 miles up the coast from New York City, has been proven to be James Cook’s HMS Endeavour, will not surprise those who have followed the search for years. In 1768, when Cook set out to record the transit of Venus in Tahiti, the first of his

Steerpike

Is this the worst Labour MP in parliament?

The publication of Louise Casey’s report into rape gangs was a sobering affair. But not, apparently, for Shaun Davies, Labour MP for Telford since July 2024. He previously served as the Shropshire town’s council leader from 2016 to 2024. More than 1,000 children in Telford were sexually exploited over decades, according to the Independent Inquiry for

Israel will not be cowed by Iran

Yesterday morning, as families in central Israel emerged from bomb shelters after yet another sleepless night, the air was once again rent by sirens and the thunder of incoming missiles. Fires ignited across multiple cities. In Petah Tikva, a building lay smouldering from a direct hit. In Haifa, Iranian missiles struck near the port, severely

Is France succumbing to the British disease?

Sometimes one can almost get away from today’s worries. I spent the other weekend at a big family get-together in a village overlooking a famous cathedral city – the great church was visible on the horizon. There were people from all walks of life, all ages, and from many parts of the country. People smiled

Stephen Daisley

Why is the US so reluctant to fight Iran?

MAGA (Make America Great Again) isolationists all agree: the United States must not be drawn into the Israel-Iran war. Donald Trump was not elected president to become entangled in pointless foreign conflicts. Over on Truth Social, Trump’s hokey-pokey routine continues – in, out, in, out, send the Fifth Fleet out? – and America Firsters despair

Max Jeffery

Ballymena got what it wanted

Thursday evening. All quiet in Ballymena so far, after three nights of wrath. On the kerb of Waring Street – just off Larne Street, which rioters tore through on Tuesday and left burning and beaten – sit James and Casper, both 16. James is wearing a balaclava with a Rottweiler’s face printed on the front.

Freddy Gray

Operation Rising: will Trump get dragged into the Israel-Iran conflict?

20 min listen

Relations between Iran and Israel are deteriorating rapidly, with comparisons being drawn to Israel’s 1981 strike on Iraq’s Osirak nuclear reactor. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu appears to be advocating for regime change in Tehran, reportedly encouraging the United States to take military action. Donald Trump, who previously came close to authorising a strike, is

Grooming gangs: will this inquiry be different?

11 min listen

Following Keir Starmer’s decision to call for a national inquiry into grooming gangs, the Home Secretary Yvette Cooper spoke in the Commons today about the ‘collective failure’ to address questions about groomings gangs’ ethnicity in the Casey report. Elsewhere this week, Welfare reform legislation is being tabled, with a vote expected before the end of

Baroness Casey has not held back

Baroness Casey’s ‘national audit’ of child sexual exploitation was published this afternoon, and it’s now clear why the government changed course so quickly over the weekend, and why they’ve immediately accepted all of Casey’s recommendations. She doesn’t hold back. She identifies the scale of the rape gangs, the specific ethnic groups who make up the

Kemi was at her best skewering Labour on grooming gangs

Yvette Cooper had come to the House of Commons to shut, as loudly and with as much gusto as she could manage, a stable door long after the horse had bolted. The government was finally doing what it had long derided as ‘a far-right bandwagon’ and agreed to a national inquiry into the Pakistani rape

Steerpike

Listen: Thought for the Day bishop’s bizarre grooming gang claim

Well, well, well. As Baroness Casey prepares to publish her review into Britain’s grooming gang scandal, a rather curious speaker was invited on to Radio 4’s ‘Thought for the Day’ this morning. Step forward, the Bishop of Manchester, Reverend David Walker, who told us that… This is not a pattern of offending confined to any

Steerpike

Lefties abandon Stella Creasy’s abortion amendment

A real cheery week in the Commons is looming for our lucky legislators. There’s assisted dying, grooming gangs and a welfare row to enjoy. But tomorrow attention will switch to abortion, with Labour MPs now pushing to ‘decriminalise’ the practice in England and Wales. Unfortunately, a bit of a row has broken out between Tonia

Steerpike

Will the assisted dying vote be delayed?

All is not well with the Labour lot. It has emerged that more than 50 lefty MPs submitted a letter to the Leader of the Commons, Lucy Powell, at the weekend – demanding she intervene to delay this Friday’s final third reading vote on Kim Leadbeater’s controversial assisted dying bill. The letter blasts the limited

Iran is too weak to wage a ground war against Israel

As Israel advances its surgical reduction of Iran’s nuclear facilities and senior command, and Iran continues to launch missiles randomly at Israeli population centres in response, it is interesting to note what is not happening. Notably absent is any ground element to the war, which is currently being fought entirely between air and missile forces.   Israel

The delusion of western Palestine activists in Egypt

As the news cycle shifts its gaze to Iran and the escalating war to prevent the psychotic Islamic theocracy from going nuclear, spare a thought for the few hundred virtue-signalling westerners who thought it would be clever to traipse through Egypt and attempt to approach the Gaza border, armed not with aid or expertise, but

Steerpike

Watch: Treasury minister’s car crash interview

Dear oh dear. It’s never a good look to go onto the airwaves to boast about your department’s new infrastructure fund to then, er, promptly forget the details of the project you’re funding. The unlucky minister who found herself in this position today was the Treasury’s Emma Reynolds, who appeared to forget both exactly where

Will Trump respond to Iran damaging the US embassy?

The US embassy in Tel Aviv has been damaged by an Iranian ballistic missile attack which landed close by, raising the prospect of President Trump retaliating against Tehran. The overnight incident, during a barrage of Iranian missiles fired at Tel Aviv and the port city of Haifa, came after Trump warned the US would attack

Gavin Mortimer

The quiet desperation of Macron’s Greenland visit

Emmanuel Macron spent his Sunday in Greenland on what can best be described as an anti-Trump visit. The French president dropped in on the Danish autonomous territory en route to this week’s G7 summit in Canada. Flanked by Danish Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen and Greenland’s Premier Jens-Frederik Nielsen, Macron told reporters he was there in

The markets don’t care much about Israel and Iran

As missiles fly across the Middle East as Israel and Iran embark on what could well become a wider regional conflict, you might expect turmoil in the financial markets. After all, if the beginning of a third world war doesn’t knock a few dollars off the Apple share price it is hard to know what

Sam Leith

Does anyone really want AI civil servants?

Of course they’ve called it ‘Humphrey’. The cutesy name that has been given to the AI tool the government is rolling out across the civil service with unseemly haste is a nod – as those of an age will recognise – to the immortal sitcom Yes, Minister. But it may also prove to be more

The danger of recognising a Palestinian state

As Western leaders prepare to gather in New York this week to discuss international recognition of a Palestinian state, a stark signal from Washington demands their attention. US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee has openly stated that he does not believe Palestinian statehood remains an American foreign policy goal. ‘Unless there are some significant things

Rod Liddle

Does the BBC doubt Iran wanted a nuke?

I don’t monitor this stuff all the time. It would be soul destroying. All that happens is that I tune in, often by accident, and there is something which once again betrays the long term, institutional, anti-Israel bias of the BBC. So, Friday night’s television news and the Middle East Correspondent Lucy Williamson. Reporting on

Why Russia wants war between Israel and Iran

Israel’s assault on Iran represents a double helping of good news for the Kremlin. Years of two-track diplomacy have allowed Vladimir Putin to position himself both as a friend to Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and to the Iranian leadership. That will make Russia an indispensable partner for the US once it embarks on the

Dominic Cummings has run out of answers

On Wednesday, The Spectator dispatched me to Dominic Cummings’s Pharos lecture in Oxford. Packed into the Sheldonian theatre was an interesting crowd. I spotted several X anons, my A-Level politics teacher and Brass Eye creator Chris Morris. For many in the audience, this was a rare opportunity to see their hero; for one or two