Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Steerpike

Dehenna Davison pricks Rayner’s ego

It’s day one of Tory conference and the panels are well under way. As despairing hacks waited in line for their passes – and bemoaned Lord Frost’s dodgy queue jumping behaviour – elsewhere Douglas Ross was earnestly telling the Scottish Tories how he’d smash the ‘yellow wall,’ following the wake of the destruction of the ‘red

Shortages may last until Christmas, PM admits

The Conservative party conference is just beginning in Manchester and, as is tradition, the Prime Minister sat down with Andrew Marr to discuss some of the most important issues facing the country. Marr began by asking about the case of Sarah Everard, who was abducted, raped and murdered by serving policeman Wayne Couzens. Johnson told

Steerpike

Exclusive: anti-Tory threat at conference

The Conservative party conference kicks off today in Manchester and there already signs that delegates may not be receiving the warmest of welcomes from the more sinister factions of the city’s left. This morning commuters from Salford were greeted with the sight of a banner reading ‘Remember we only have to be lucky once’ hanging

James Forsyth

Boris’s tetchy Marr interview showed the risks he is taking

Boris Johnson’s rather testy interview with Andrew Marr this morning revealed the political gamble that he is taking. Johnson is calculating that the electoral benefits of higher wages will cancel out the public irritation with supply chain issues caused by labour shortages. During the interview, he repeatedly stressed that he thought that the UK’s low wage

Kate Andrews

What’s this EFFing crisis about?

15 min listen

Ministers are bracing for the ‘EFFing crisis’ – that’s energy, fuel and food. As shortages are set to continue for months ahead, the knock-on effects have started to snowball. Will families have a turkey for Christmas? Will inflation cause the costs of living to spiral out of control? Can businesses cope with labour shortages? Katy Balls

Steerpike

Will Starmer move against the Socialist Campaign Group?

The Conservative party conference begins tomorrow in Manchester. Coming at a time of fuel shortages, tax rises and post-Covid drift, many disgruntled activists will be hoping to see some sign of dissent from backbenchers uncomfortable at the government’s direction of travel. Yet however bad those divides are, they’re surely nothing compared to those on show at

William Nattrass

Czexit could be closer than we think

Is Czexit closer than we think? Ahead of the Czech general elections in October, the rise of an anti-EU party as a potential kingmaker is making a referendum on EU membership a distinct possibility. ‘No to EU dictates,’ ‘Freedom to think, speak and breathe,‘ ‘Lockdown is not a solution,’ read election posters plastered around Prague

Freddy Gray

The rise and rise of hate hoaxing

Last week, some racist graffiti was found at Parkway North and Parkway Central schools in the Midwest American state of Missouri. Somebody had scrawled ‘HOPE ALL BLACK PEOPLE DIE’ and the n-word across the bathrooms. A protest erupted. Students ‘boycotted’ classes to show their disgust. But then the sense of outrage suddenly fell flat after

William Moore

America’s campus culture wars come for St Andrews

The University of St Andrews has been keen on American imports for some time. Americans make up 16 per cent of undergraduates, by far a larger proportion than any other British higher education institution. The university, hungry for foreign money (international students pay £25,100 a year, compared to £9,250 a year for English, Welsh and Northern

Steerpike

Six of the worst Humza Yousaf scandals

It can be a difficult task picking out the most incompetent minister in the Scottish government. There’s Sturgeon’s deputy John Swinney, the man who faced two votes of confidence in seven months. There’s Shona Robison, resurrected in May having been forced to resign in 2018 amid near-universal criticism of her management of the health brief. And

Katy Balls

Is the petrol crisis good for the government?

15 min listen

A shortage of HGV drivers has led to empty petrol pumps and talk that supermarket shelves could be empty come Christmas. Delivery firms want the government to ease immigration rules to fill the gap, but, aside from allowing a small number of emergency visas, they have refused to step in. Why? Katy Balls speaks to

Keir Starmer and the agony of the Corbynistas

Carole Vincent briefly became the unexpected poster girl of Labour’s remaining Corbynites when she heckled Keir Starmer during his leader’s speech. For her pains, Vincent’s voice was drowned out when many (but not all) in the conference hall stood to applaud Starmer and show their support for him: she even gave the Labour leader the

Don’t let the assisted-suicide lobby hijack ‘dignity’

The assisted-suicide debate begins with a contest over language, a war over a word. That word is ‘dignity.’ The Swiss assisted suicide clinic, where every eight days one Briton travels to die, is called Dignitas. In 2006, the Voluntary Euthanasia Society changed its name to Dignity in Dying. And Oregon’s 1998 liberalising law – the

Stephen Daisley

Why is the SNP gagging charities?

The SNP handles criticism as well as the Incredible Hulk handles irritation. It’s why the party’s own parliamentarians are banned from making critical comments. The Nationalists are an independence-first organisation and rely on two important psychological tools. The first is projecting Nicola Sturgeon as the ‘Chief Mammy’ (her own term; ‘mammy’ being Scottish slang for

John Ferry

The SNP’s NHS meltdown

When he’s not falling off his scooter like he’s auditioning for the role of Inspector Clouseau in the Pink Panther franchise, the gaffe-prone Scottish health minister, Humza Yousaf, is mired in a multitude of Scottish NHS crises. This month saw Britain’s armed forces parachuted in to prop up the Scottish Ambulance Service. Nicola Sturgeon was forced

Cindy Yu

Should Cressida Dick go?

14 min listen

As Wayne Couzens receives his sentence today, Harriet Harman has called for Cressida Dick to resign over the Met’s handling of the death of Sarah Everard. It’s not the first time Dick has faced pressure to resign (not even this year), but her tenure as police chief was renewed only earlier this month. So will

The Met must face the truth about Sarah Everard’s murder

‘We are sickened, angered and devastated by this man’s crimes which betray everything we stand for,’ said the Metropolitan Police in response to the sentencing of Wayne Couzens. He is the former police officer who, when in service, kidnapped, raped and murdered Sarah Everard, later setting fire to her body. The case in March sparked

Isabel Hardman

Harriet Harman calls for Cressida Dick to resign

Labour’s Harriet Harman has called for Cressida Dick to resign as chief of the Metropolitan Police after Wayne Couzens was sentenced to a whole-life order for the murder, rape and kidnapping of Sarah Everard. He is the first police officer to receive such a sentence. In a letter to the Commissioner, Harman writes that ‘women’s confidence

Was furlough the worst £70 billion ever spent?

Concorde obviously. The Iraq War perhaps? Or Scottish devolution? It is not hard to come up with a list of really terrible ideas that the British government has wasted money on over the last 50 years. Even so, and despite some tough competition, we now have a fresh contender. It looks as if the furlough

Katy Balls

Was Labour conference a success for Starmer?

There is relief in the opposition leader’s office this morning following a broadly warm reception to Keir Starmer’s speech at Labour conference. An Opinium poll found that when chunks of the speech were surveyed on a group of 1,330 people, 63 per cent agreed with what he had to say and 62 per cent said he

Philip Patrick

Meet Japan’s latest unloved leader

Japan will soon have yet another new prime minster: Fumio Kishida. He will be the country’s third leader in as many years, and news of his appointment has been met with neither enthusiasm nor much concern – mainly because nobody really knows who he is, or what to expect from him. Kishida, the 64-year old

Starmer’s big speech showed how far the far left has fallen

For much of Keir Starmer’s life, Labour leaders have often found themselves delivering ‘make-or-break’ speeches at their party’s annual conference – and they have generally turned out to be neither. Unlike in the Conservative party, Labour tends to stick by its leaders between general elections, however hopeless they might be. The only time MPs tried

Lloyd Evans

Labour’s bid to lose the next election has begun

Sir Keir stamped the Labour conference with his personality today. And the mark he left was very bland, vague and colourless – but hard to dislike. Mum and Dad featured prominently. Sir Keir treats his parents like a couple of pet hedgehogs whose habits still amuse him as he looks back on his childhood. His

Isabel Hardman

Did Starmer’s speech save Labour conference?

15 min listen

After a rocky few days, Sir Keir Starmer has delivered his first in person speech as Labour leader to conclude the 2021 Labour Party Conference. The 90-minute speech featured hecklers, multiple references to ‘tools’ and 17 standing ovations. But was it enough to win over the country or even his party?  Katy Balls speaks to

Isabel Hardman

Starmer’s speech will go down as a success

Keir Starmer gave a very long speech on the final day of Labour conference. It lasted an hour and a half, and had 17 standing ovations. But it will largely be remembered as the speech in which the Labour leader was repeatedly heckled by the hard left. These heckles worked hugely in his favour and made