Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Sam Ashworth-Hayes

The shameful silence surrounding David Amess’s murder

Ali Harbi Ali has been given a whole life sentence. But perhaps this is too steep an introduction. Perhaps, like me, you’re beginning to lose track of the various perpetrators of Islamist terror in Britain as the news blurs into a constant revolving track of incidents, arriving to a sense of outrage deadened by repeated

Steerpike

Chris Mason named BBC political editor

At last, the longest running West End drama since The Mousetrap has come to a close. Dark horse candidate Chris Mason was this afternoon named as the BBC’s new political editor to take over from Laura Kuenssberg after a rollercoaster recruitment ride lasting nearly four months. Mason had originally ruled himself out of the running, saying

Katy Balls

Has Boris got away with it?

14 min listen

After the news of the fixed penalty notices, Boris Johnson, his wife Carrie Johnson and Rishi Sunak paid their fines and issued a public apology. For Boris, the reaction has been surprisingly positive compared to the beginning of the year. The majority of cabinet ministers have come out in support of the Prime Minister, but

Stephen Daisley

Douglas Ross has become Boris Johnson’s human shield

If Boris Johnson has a superpower, it is the ability to make others pay the price for his wrongdoing. Today the whipping boy is Scottish Conservative leader Douglas Ross, though it must be said Ross walked clear-eyed into the path of the scourge. That’s another of the Prime Minister’s skills: he can convince people that

Tory MPs have a point about not removing Boris now

According to the Metropolitan police, Boris Johnson broke his own lockdown rules during the Covid crisis and, according to almost everybody else, he repeatedly lied to the Commons and the nation to cover it up. This is presumably why 57 per cent of people surveyed in one snap poll think he should resign as prime

Mark Galeotti

Putin is devouring his children

Like the Greek titan Cronos devouring his own children, Vladimir Putin seems determined to turn against those he was once closest to – out of fear, anger and hubris. In the process, he is only further weakening his regime. The former deputy head of the infamous Federal Security Service (FSB), colonel general Sergei Beseda, has

Steerpike

David Lammy gets it wrong (again)

Oh, those rotten Tories. You’ve got a PM being fined for parties, a Home Secretary making a mess of our borders and a Culture Secretary who can’t even spell the name of the Channel 4 star she’s berating. Sleaze is rife, inflation is back: it’s like the nineties without the hope. What could be worse? Well, there’s always

Katja Hoyer

Zelensky has snubbed Germany’s President

When Volodymyr Zelensky told the German President Frank-Walter Steinmeier yesterday that he did not want to see him in Kyiv, it hit his delegation like a slap in the face. The political class in Berlin still underestimates the depths of mistrust caused by Germany’s Russia policy. Whether trust with Eastern Europe can be rebuilt will depend on

Ross Clark

Boris’s real failure wasn’t breaking lockdown

Boris Johnson made a big error, alright. But it wasn’t walking into a room where his wife had prepared him a surprise birthday cake. It was in overriding his liberal instincts and imposing highly prescriptive lockdown rules in the first place. If, in March 2020, he had stood up to advisers and said that no,

Russia’s failure to communicate

‘So you’ve got one, right, Chris?’ Lev Lvovich leaned in closer, and his beery breath was warm and damp on my face. ‘It’s all OK,’ he reassured me with a slur. ‘We’re friends. You can tell me!’ It was the middle of the evening, already long dark, and Lev and I were playing a drunken

Katy Balls

Has Boris got away with it?

Boris Johnson has had a surprisingly positive 24 hours since receiving a police fine. While not exactly positive, today’s front pages are far from a nightmare selection. A number of Tory-leaning papers call for a sense of perspective with the Daily Mail asking of the PM’s critics ‘don’t they know there’s a war on?’.  On hearing

Ian Williams

The battle for zero-Covid is being fought in Shanghai

Confusion is infecting Shanghai. The authorities are dithering over a promised easing of severe lockdown rules in the face of record cases of Covid-19 and widespread anger over their cack-handed way they have handled the crisis. The city has become a test for China’s faltering zero-Covid strategy, with nervous Communist party leaders sending mixed signals

John Keiger

Even if he wins Macron could be facing disaster

Unaccustomed as political scientists are to florid language, they have nevertheless come up with the ‘theory of the dyke’, to explain the continuing success of the nationalist and identitarian Rassemblement National. A dyke can hold back the flood for so long, but once water has overflowed there is no getting it back. When in 2002

Lloyd Evans

Boris’s crazy defence

‘I was very busy. The party was crap. I’m sorry you’re angry. Now leave me alone.’ That was the gist of Boris’s statement about being fined for attending an event in Downing Street to celebrate his birthday.  A flustered-looking Prime Minister delivered the Partygate Declaration in a small, wood-panelled room with a nicely-lit painting behind

Katy Balls

Rishi Sunak breaks his silence

After Boris Johnson issued an apology (along with a pool clip) over the fixed penalty notice he received for attending a birthday gathering in 10 Downing Street, attention turned to the silent Chancellor. Would Rishi Sunak resign in response to the fixed penalty notice he was handed? It’s clear he’s been uncomfortable with the partygate disclosures

Isabel Hardman

Boris thinks he can ride this scandal out

Boris Johnson has now apologised for receiving a fixed penalty notice for attending a lockdown-busting party. In a clearly very carefully scripted statement read to camera, the Prime Minister also made it clear he hadn’t thought he was breaking the rules by attending the gathering in the Cabinet Room, which lasted ‘less than ten minutes’.

Steerpike

Boris and Carrie apologise for lockdown fines

This evening the Johnsons have apologised for the fines dished out by the Metropolitan police earlier today. First up was Carrie Johnson who it appears organised the infamous birthday party in June 2020 that led to her husband and next-door neighbour both being fined. Whoops! A spokesperson for the First Lady of Downing Street said that: ‘Mrs Johnson

Ross Clark

What Rishi should do next

How tempting it must be for Rishi Sunak to chuck in his job as Chancellor. ‘My chances of ever becoming PM have plummeted to next to nothing,’ he must be thinking, ‘so why not go off and earn some serious money instead, away from the spotlight?’  I have no insight into the state of the

Robert Peston

This is a constitutional crisis

The police have today concluded that Boris Johnson, the Chancellor and the PM’s wife all attended illegal parties that breached Covid laws written by the PM. This is most serious for the prime minister of the three of them because it was he who told MPs on 8 December that he had been ‘repeatedly assured’ there

Isabel Hardman

Boris and Rishi fined: what happens next?

15 min listen

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have been told that they are going to be fixed penalty notices by the Metropolitan Police over parties held in Downing Street. The Chancellor has already had a tough week – might he now resign? Could Tory MPs push the Prime Minister out of No. 10? Isabel Hardman speaks to

Patrick O'Flynn

Why Boris may well survive

When the original Sue Gray report was published at the end of January it seemed indisputable that Boris Johnson would be toast if he received a fixed penalty fine as a result of the partygate furore. Back then the PM was hanging on to majority support on the Tory benches in Parliament by his fingertips.

Steerpike

Six times Boris and Rishi denied breaking the law

Well, that’s that then. This afternoon the Metropolitan Police fined the Prime Minister and the Chancellor of Exchequer for breaking lockdown laws. It follows an investigation into alleged Covid law-breaking at 12 gatherings in Whitehall and Downing Street. Both Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak have maintained their innocence right up until this week. Below are six of

Alex Massie

The Prime Minister must go

It isn’t just the fines. It isn’t just the behaviour that has led to the Prime Minister being issued a fixed penalty notice by the Metropolitan police. It isn’t just the lies told about that behaviour, lies issued with the most sweeping confidence inside and outside the House of Commons. It isn’t just the fines

Isabel Hardman

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak fined over partygate

Boris Johnson and Rishi Sunak are both to receive fixed penalty notices for attending lockdown parties, it has just emerged. The police fines for breaking Covid laws, which these two men created, throw everything around the Prime Minister and the Chancellor into the air. Previously, many Tory MPs had said this would be a resigning matter

What next for Imran Khan, Pakistan’s ousted leader?

On Sunday, Imran Khan became the first prime minister in Pakistan’s history to be ousted by a no-confidence vote. Followers of Khan’s Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party naturally took to the streets; much of their anger has been directed at the generals who engineered their leader’s downfall. It was a clash with the all-powerful military that, like

Gabriel Gavin

Is Putin using chemical weapons in Ukraine?

In 1942, as Hitler’s forces swept through the Soviet Union, the Red Army went underground. Outside the city of Kerch in Crimea, 10,000 Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian soldiers dug into the caves of a limestone quarry, ready to defend their position to the last man. Intent on flushing them out, the Nazis bombed them from

Why are councils blocking homes for Ukrainian refugees?

Over the course of three days in September 1939, 1.5 million evacuees were sent to rural locations across Britain considered to be safe from the impending war. In a staggering logistical feat facilitated by thousands of volunteer helpers – from teachers to railway staff – children were swiftly relocated, with gas masks around their necks,

Freddy Gray

Will Hunter Biden finally bring down his father?

It was meant to be a kumbaya moment for the Democrats. Barack Obama, the still revered 44th President, would make his first formal visit to Joe Biden’s White House – and sprinkle some of his leadership magic over a struggling administration. Barack and Joe, the old duo, were to mark the 12th anniversary of what

Steerpike

Defra director: I’m with Extinction Rebellion

Westminster’s favourite millionaire environmentalists are it again. It seems that one or other of the Goldsmith brothers can’t go three months without sticking their foot in it. Today it’s the turn of Ben, the less prominent but no less gaffe-prone millionaire, who is one of the non-executive directors in Defra – the environment department in which