Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Isabel Hardman

Starmer prepares to make his pitch

Keir Starmer is giving his big speech at noon today, the first one he’s been able to give to a packed conference hall since becoming leader. He seems to think that this means he needs to reintroduce himself to his own party and the electorate, and to that end we’ve been promised more detail on

Steerpike

Watch: Rayner sings Grease duet

In recent years the Labour shadow cabinet has never done much singing from the same hymn sheet. But last night, in a rare display of front bench solidarity, three of Sir Keir Starmer’s top team took to the stage at the Daily Mirror shindig to mark the final night of their party conference in Brighton.  Health

The Spectator’s events at Tory party conference

The Spectator is back at Conservative party conference, where we’re delighted to be hosting a packed schedule of entertaining fringe events. We’ll be discussing the biggest topics of the day with a range of exciting guests, hosted by our top team of political journalists. Every event includes a free G&T – make sure to arrive

Jonathan Miller

Eric Zemmour is eating Marine Le Pen alive

French opinion polls are best taken with a generous bucket of sel de Guérande but this evening’s drop of a Harris Interactive survey of intentions to vote in the 2022 presidential election might genuinely be described as explosive. This poll contains the crucial assumption that Xavier Bertrand will emerge as the candidate of the centre-right

Isabel Hardman

Why is Labour ignoring the fuel crisis?

12 min listen

With petrol and gas supply issues still continuing Labour doesn’t seem to be focusing on this important issue gripping the nation. Instead, though Starmer had a victory in pushing through his changes in regards to Labour leadership voting, his parade was rained on by the resignation of Andy McDonald over disputes about the minimum wage.

Katy Balls

Starmer tries to show his winning streak

It’s been a bruising few days for Keir Starmer at Labour conference. The Labour leader has had to deal with internal warfare and in the process lost a member of his shadow cabinet. Tomorrow, Starmer will attempt to move past the turbulence of the last 48 hours and set out his vision to the public.

Brendan O’Neill

The trouble with ‘Angiemania’

The most annoying thing about Angela Rayner’s branding of the Tories as ‘scum’ was not that it offended some Tories, though no doubt it did. It wasn’t even the sad story it told us about the calibre of left-wing politicians in the 21st century, who seem more adept at reaching for playground insults than at

Nick Cohen

How the far left killed itself

The Labour right is as happy as I have seen it in a decade. It thinks it has its party back, and the far left has rolled itself into a ball and tossed itself into the dustbin of history. This week’s media coverage of the fights and back stabbings at the conference is missing a

Ian Acheson

The problem with having a happy clappy prison service

The new Justice Secretary Dominic Raab has said in the past that he wants prison to be ‘unpleasant.’ To that extent he should be pleasantly surprised. Our prisons are indeed engines of despair, indolence, violence and incivility. Our Prison and Probation Service, notoriously allergic to transparency and accountability, has been able to camouflage this to

John Connolly

The Manchester refugee charity representing the best of British

In October The Spectator will be heading to Manchester for Conservative party conference for the first time in two years, after last year’s event was cancelled because of the pandemic. While the return of party conferences is a welcome sign that things are finally getting back to normal, it’s also a reminder of the damage

Steerpike

Labour in terf war as Rayner slaps down Duffield

Whether it’s scum-gate, party democracy, membership expulsions or the minimum wage you’d think Labour had had enough splits this conference. But to add to that (growing) list of disputes is the issue of transgender rights in the wake of Rosie Duffield’s decision not to attend conference, as first reported by Mr S.  Tensions have played

Isabel Hardman

Starmer is missing a major trick

Labour’s party conference slogan is ‘stronger future together’. It’s sufficiently anodyne that despite it being emblazoned all over a massive set in the hall, no one mentions it at all. Instead, the slogan the party’s senior figures seem to have adopted is ‘why didn’t the government have a plan for this?’ Call for parliament to

Von der Leyen is the real winner of the German elections

The bald guy who leads the Social Democrats. The earnest looking Green lady. Or perhaps the guy in the charcoal-grey suit who leads the oddly named Free Democrats — free from what exactly? — who may end up picking the next chancellor. Lots of commentators will argue for a long time about who is the

No, America couldn’t have been Canada

What if William Howe, the dithering British commander, hadn’t let the American army escape in the Battle of Long Island in 1776? What if he had nipped the whole damn thing in the bud? In that case, as dual Canadian-American citizen Adam Gopnik complains in the New Yorker, ‘We Could Have Been Canada’. That’s not

Steerpike

Labour conference 2021 in pictures

As day four of Labour conference begins here in Brighton, Mr S has been touring the conference centre and World Transformed festival to see how Keir Starmer’s party is preparing for government. It’s the first time the party has had an in-person jamboree for two years and thus far the occasion has lived up to expectations.  Whether

Steerpike

Comrade Bercow hails his new leader

It’s been a tough few days for Keir Starmer. Unloved by his party’s activists and outmaneuvered by his union barons, his conference season has had more rows than Hollyoaks. Still, the under-fire leader will no doubt be delighted to discover one Labour member is still happy to uncritically sing his praises – new recruit John

Stephen Daisley

Labour is still overrun with anti-Israel cranks

As unhinged Labour conference motions go, the party’s anti-Aukus resolution will likely capture the headlines. The text describes the new defence pact between Australia, the UK and the US as a ‘dangerous move that will undermine world peace’. Sir Keir Starmer is on record backing the alliance but the Labour leader can at least take

Isabel Hardman

Andy McDonald’s resignation spells trouble for Starmer

Andy McDonald has resigned from Labour’s shadow cabinet after Keir Starmer refused to back raising the Minimum Wage to £15 an hour. In his resignation letter, he writes:  ‘Yesterday, your office instructed me to go into a meeting to argue against a National Minimum Wage of £15 an hour and against Statutory Sick Pay at

Katy Balls

Does Labour have a message?

-7 min listen

With images of long queues at the petrol station dominating social media this weekend, not due to lack of petrol but lack of drivers, the Labour party conference continues in Brighton. Shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves made more of an impact with her speech than some others, but Labour’s real problem at this conference seems to

Ross Clark

Harry and Meghan are wrong about Covid vaccine patents

Pharmaceutical companies might think it a bit rich being asked to waive the patents on their Covid vaccines by Harry and Meghan, a couple who have rejected the concept of public service in an attempt to monetise their royal status. But let’s overlook the charge of hypocrisy and ask whether there really is any substance

Kate Andrews

The flaw in Labour’s economic attacks

Labour avidly disagrees with the Tories’ plan to fill budget gaps by hiking National Insurance. So what would they do differently? This was one of the many tasks Rachel Reeves had today as the shadow chancellor delivered her speech at Labour party conference. Reeves not only had to set out an alternative tax-and-spend policy but also

Joanna Rossiter

Sabina Nessa and the truth about stranger danger

The brutal murder of primary school teacher Sabina Nessa in Kidbrooke, South London this month has prompted more anger about female safety on British streets. It’s reminiscent of the aftermath of the horrible case of Sarah Everard, another instance of a killer targeting a female victim – seemingly out of the blue – in a

Prince Andrew has no good options

It’s not a good look, aged 61, to be hiding behind your mother. The ninth in line to the throne joined the Queen at Balmoral, making it difficult for papers to be served in the Virginia Giuffre civil case. The Aberdeenshire estate may cover 50,000 acres, but it hasn’t provided refuge — a state of

Katy Balls

What is Andy Burnham up to?

Who is the busiest politician at Labour conference? One could be forgiven for assuming it would be Keir Starmer. But Andy Burnham is giving the Labour leader a run for his money.  The mayor for Greater Manchester is down to speak at 11 fringe events in total – after missing out on a slot on the

James Forsyth

The German elections are good news for Macron

The German election result means that a three party coalition will almost certainly be needed to form a government. Olaf Scholz, the SPD leader, has made clear just now that he is going to try and form a coalition with the Greens and the Free Democrats. Whoever succeeds her will take time to build up

Isabel Hardman

What does Starmer’s Labour actually stand for?

What does the Labour party stand for? That’s the big question that Keir Starmer needs to answer this week, and so far it’s proving rather more difficult to answer than you might imagine. Its frontbenchers are mostly working on policies that won’t be announced this week, so they are resorting to talking about the party’s

Wolfgang Münchau

Who will succeed Merkel?

The results of the German election have shifted somewhat since last night’s exit poll. What we know for sure is that a red-red-green coalition — between the centre-left SPD, far-left Die Linke and the Greens — is short of a majority, which is contrary to what every single opinion poll projected in the last few

Steerpike

Seumas Milne makes his comeback

Much like Brighton’s weather, Labour’s conference started brightly but has now become a much more gloomy affair. As ‘scumgate’ rumbles on, cranks scrap in public while frontbenchers take subtle pot shots at one another. Still, despite all the bleakness and infighting, Mr S is delighted to bring news of one ray of light amid the

Steerpike

Fact check: how popular is Insulate Britain?

Long-suffering commuters have had further misery this month, thanks to the shenanigans of eco-warriors Insulate Britain. The group are an offshoot of Extinction Rebellion and have today blocked the M25 for a sixth time – despite a High Court injunction warning that they face jail if they carried on disrupting traffic on the UK’s busiest motorway. Members

No, Keir, trans women like me do not have cervixes

Andrew Marr’s question was simple and straightforward, ‘[Is] someone who thinks that only women have a cervix welcome in the Labour party?’ As a party member who still clings to science and reason, I willed Keir Starmer to give a simple and straightforward answer. Instead, he blustered: Well, Andrew, we need to have a mature,