Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

John Connolly

Introducing the Northern Research Group: the trade union for Tory MPs

Boris Johnson has not had the easiest of relationships with the north lately. While the Prime Minister started his premiership promising to ‘level up’ northern regions, during the pandemic he’s ended up spending more time clamping them down, as Covid restrictions have been introduced across swathes of the north, and he’s clashed with local MPs

Patrick O'Flynn

Burnham’s gamble could collapse around him

If they were to give out awards for best use of an anorak to communicate stroppy defiance then Andy Burnham would be about to break the stranglehold of former Oasis frontman Liam Gallagher. In a city where it rains on more than 150 days a year, it is perhaps unsurprising that the anorak has become

Stephen Daisley

The SNP, trans rights and the war on women

For a while, it seemed as though Scotland was taking the lead on challenging the new gender orthodoxy. Despite all the odds (and taxpayer funding) being on the other side, gender-critical feminist campaigners secured a last-minute pause in the Scottish government’s plans to banish medical experts from the gender recognition process and shift to self-identification. 

What lockdown sceptics get wrong

One of the more peculiar features of Covid is just how cleanly the crisis has split us down political lines. As a serving Tory councillor, you may assume that my views on masks, lockdown and the virus are predictable. But I’m also a microbiologist and I’m dismayed by the attitudes of some fellow travellers.  Pandemics,

We need to stand up for Rosie Duffield

Rosie Duffield, the Labour MP for Canterbury, should be seen as a feminist hero. When she stood up in the House of Commons last year during a debate on the domestic abuse bill, Duffield moved several colleagues to tears as she recounted the hell she had endured at the hands of a violent male partner.

John Connolly

Boris Johnson piles the pressure on Andy Burnham

In a press conference this afternoon, Boris Johnson stepped up his war of words with Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham, after the government failed to reach an agreement with the region about moving into Tier 3 coronavirus restrictions again today. The Prime Minister first singled out for praise the Liverpool mayor Steve Rotheram, London Mayor

James Forsyth

Boris’s Covid strategy could lead to stricter lockdowns

Boris Johnson will hold a press conference later this afternoon to discuss the new local restrictions — and how they’ll work. Even if he wanted to do a national circuit-breaker lockdown it is now almost politically impossible for him to do so given that Keir Starmer has now called for it, I say in the

Fraser Nelson

Is the NHS at risk of being overwhelmed by Covid?

It was never the plan for the NHS to deal with a second wave of Covid. The official strategy, all through the summer, was for the £12 billion Test and Trace system to come along and zap new cases. Decisions for NHS investment this winter were made on the assumption that hospitals would be fine

Ian Acheson

Rural Britain isn’t racist

Is the British countryside racist? BBC Countryfile presenter Ellie Harrison thinks so. ‘Even a single racist event means there is work to do,’ she said. ‘In asking whether the countryside is racist, then yes it is; but asking if it’s more racist than anywhere else — maybe, maybe not.’ As a native Northern Irishman who has been warmly welcomed on

Katy Balls

Are we heading for no-deal again?

11 min listen

Boris Johnson today told Brits to prepare for a no-deal Brexit, saying the European Union were ‘not willing’ to offer a Canada-style trade agreement. Is this really the end of the talks, or is progress being made behind the scenes? Katy Balls speaks to Fraser Nelson and James Forsyth.

Katy Balls

Boris Johnson talks down the chances of a Brexit deal

In recent months, Boris Johnson and his team have been keen to suggest there is a hard deadline when it comes to agreeing a Brexit deal. The Prime Minister argued last month that both sides ought to walk away from the talks and prepare for no deal if there was no agreement by the EU summit on October

Ross Clark

How deadly is Covid-19?

What percentage of people who are infected with Covid-19 will go on to die of the disease? The dramatic response to the pandemic on the part of almost all governments around the world has been based on the idea that Covid-19 is a far more lethal disease than seasonal flu, which is often quoted as

Why the Dutch can’t stop bending the Covid rules

Half an hour before a partial lockdown began on Wednesday night, scores of people packed into tents outside a bar in the Hague to drink and party. Their celebrations were perhaps characteristic of how the Dutch have handled the pandemic. Metres away, in the Dutch lower house, parliamentarians were at that moment enacting a partial

Building an Islam of the Enlightenment

What is it that today, in our society, endangers our Republic, our ability to live together, and inform you of the decisions taken as a result which are the result of methodical work carried out for nearly three years? The problem is not secularism. Secularism in the French Republic is the freedom to believe or

Trump won’t admit it, but he’s in trouble

President Donald Trump and former vice president Joe Biden were supposed to debate in front of the American public last night. The debate, however, was called off after Trump refused to do it via video link. So instead, Americans were treated to two different town-halls on two different U.S. television networks. While Trump was talking

Isabel Hardman

Angry Burnham takes on No. 10

Keir Starmer has made life difficult for Boris Johnson this week with his demand for a circuit-breaker lockdown. But the Labour leader’s colleague Andy Burnham is currently presenting a far greater threat to the Prime Minister. On Thursday, the Mayor of Greater Manchester gave a furious speech in which he accused the government of being

John Connolly

Why has Boris’s Covid strategy backfired in the North?

11 min listen

Andy Burnham, mayor of Greater Manchester, today slammed the government for attempting to put the region in the highest tier of Covid-19 restrictions, saying the North would not be a ‘sacrificial lamb’. Why has the three-tier system backfired on the government? John Connolly speaks to Katy Balls and James Forsyth.

Jonathan Miller

Will the French forgive Macron for cancelling dinner?

I spent Saturday night with a dozen French blue bloods, hautes bourgeoises and banquiers at a hunting chateau on the banks of the Hérault river. It was an enchanting autumn evening. We finished pre-dinner apéros and as we were called to table by the ancient retainer (the last servant remaining, after decades of Republican depredations),

Stephen Daisley

Unionists must stop playing by separatists’ rules

Whenever a new poll on Scottish independence is published, my phone begins buzzing so frantically it starts to register on the Richter scale. London-based editors want to know what it means. London-based politicians want to know what can be done to stop it meaning what they fear it means. The polls are not great for

Steerpike

Covid second wave sparks European parliament bust-up

The Covid second wave is hitting Europe, so the European parliament has decided not to up sticks from Brussels and decamp to Strasbourg next week. Instead the parliament’s president David Sassoli has announced that the meeting will be a virtual one. He said: ‘The situation in France and Belgium is very serious and travelling is not advised.’ 

Steerpike

Met police drops Covid MP case

The Metropolitan police has just released a statement announcing that the force is halting its investigation into MP Margaret Ferrier for breaching Covid legislation. The shamed former SNP politician travelled between London and Glasgow after receiving a positive test result for Covid-19. In the statement, the police said:  on detailed examination of [the Health Protection Regulations 2020], and following

William Nattrass

Covid’s second wave is hitting the Czech Republic hard

When the pandemic first hit, other countries turned to the Czech Republic for lessons in how to deal with Covid-19. But while the country coped relatively well back then, the second wave has been rather more brutal.  The Czech Republic now has the highest rate of Covid-19 infection in Europe and one of the highest in the

Dominic Green

Hunter Biden and the Big Tech information coup

There is nothing to see. In 2014, Hunter Biden joined the board of the Ukrainian energy company Burisma on a reported salary of $50,000 (£40,000) a month. Hunter knows nothing about the energy business, and he doesn’t seem to speak Ukrainian. ‘I have never spoken to my son about his overseas business dealings,’ Joe Biden

King Bibi’s pandemic problem

‘They are S-C-A-R-E-D’. So said Binyamin Netanyahu in a famous 1999 election campaign speech, referring to the media. Now he is the one who is scared. The political mastermind who has been Prime Minister for the past eleven years stands to lose his crown. Israel’s political crisis of 2019-2020 saw three general elections without producing

Wales is beginning to split from the rest of Britain

‘I believe in the United Kingdom and in a successful United Kingdom’. For a committed unionist, Labour’s first minister of Wales, Mark Drakeford, has done more than most to fan the flames of nationalism during Covid-19. In taking a markedly more cautious and communitarian approach to the pandemic compared to Downing Street, Drakeford has managed to both improve

Ross Clark

Test and trace has been a phenomenal waste of money

Test and trace, according to the leaked minutes of Sage’s meeting on 21 September, has had a ‘marginal’ impact on the infection rate of Covid-19. But let no one say it has not achieved anything. It has succeeded in the virtually impossible: making HS2 look relatively good value for money. Documents revealed to Sky News

Patrick O'Flynn

Boris’s Covid policy is finally starting to make some sense

Boris Johnson probably thought he emerged from Prime Minister’s Questions this week having maximised his freedom of manoeuvre in the battle against coronavirus. Indeed, at one point he made it explicitly clear that he was not promising that there would be no second national lockdown, declaring: ‘I rule out nothing.’ While that may be the formal