Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Steerpike

Watch: Boris struggles to say if he’ll change nappies

After a prolonged spell of avoiding media interviews, Boris Johnson finally came out of hiding today and appeared on breakfast television. The Prime Minister was interviewed by Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield on ITV’s This Morning. And while Boris handled questions on the coronavirus,  flooding and the Priti Patel bullying scandal with relative ease, in the end it was a

James Kirkup

Could coronavirus change British politics?

Even if the Covid-19 coronavirus does not become a mass killer on the scale of, say, the Spanish Flu in 1918, the mere possibility of such severity still carries huge weight. Just the potential for a disastrous pandemic demands a response whose seriousness and nature will have political and social implications. Even in this first

Nick Cohen

Is Boris Johnson serious enough to take on the coronavirus?

Boris Johnson’s handsome election victory was only three months ago, but already it feels like a relic from another age. The coronavirus requires him to be everything he is not: serious, attentive to detail and respectful of expertise and public servants. He may not be ‘yesterday’s man’, because no replacement is in sight. But he

John Connolly

Starmer and Long-Bailey fail to impress on Andrew Neil

At the beginning of the year Lisa Nandy became the first Labour leadership candidate to subject herself to a grilling by Andrew Neil. It took almost two months, but this evening the two other candidates left in the race, Keir Starmer and Rebecca Long-Bailey, finally appeared on the show as well. And while both survived

Isabel Hardman

Why were there so many loyal questions at PMQs today?

This week’s Prime Minister’s Questions had Tory MPs bursting out of their seats to ask Boris Johnson some lovely easy questions. There were more than usual whose contribution to the session was merely to ask him to agree with them that he had the right priorities and was doing a great job.  Claire Coutinho, recently-elected

Bye bye Bloomberg

‘I’m a believer in using data to inform decisions,’ Michael Bloomberg said in a statement as he ended his campaign. ‘After yesterday’s results, the delegate math has become virtually impossible – and a viable path to the nomination no longer exists.’ And like that, he’s gone. Perhaps the most extraordinary story of the 2020 campaign

Toby Young

Why the Free Speech Union is taking on an Oxford college

The Free Speech Union has submitted a letter of complaint to the Rector of Exeter College after the Oxford history professor Selina Todd was barred from addressing a conference at the college on Saturday. Todd was stopped from speaking about the women’s liberation movement at an event that she had helped organise after trans activists complained about some of her views.  The

Isabel Hardman

Leadsom delivers a parting shot at Bercow

Andrea Leadsom has just given a rather long and very comprehensive personal statement in the Commons following her sacking in last month’s reshuffle. She took no parting shots at Boris Johnson at all, preferring instead to focus any anger on former Speaker John Bercow, with whom she had a very long-running feud. Why did she

Could Joe Biden be the Hillary Clinton of 2020?

The 2020 struggle for the White House is shaping up to look a lot like the 2016 contest. Once more the Democratic field is narrowing to Bernie Sanders and an establishment Democrat who lays claim to Barack Obama’s legacy—this time Obama’s vice president, Joe Biden, rather than his first secretary of state, Hillary Clinton. And

Katy Balls

Why the Tories won’t give Priti Patel up without a fight

Another day, another set of allegations against Priti Patel. When the Home Secretary’s top civil servant Sir Philip Rutnam resigned over the weekend, he used a public statement to accuse Patel of intimidating behaviour towards staff. Since then, more allegations have surfaced over her behaviour dating back to roles in other departments. Today The Sun reports

Biden surges on Super Tuesday

The luck of the Irish was finally with Joseph Biden. Dismissed as a loser by much of the US political class, Biden had never won a primary until South Carolina. Next he had a super-duper day on Super Tuesday, clobbering Bernie Sanders in state after state. Sanders may take Texas and California, but Bernie is

Steerpike

Corbyn snaps a selfie with new Tory MP

Nothing brings people together quite like a late night kebab. That was certainly the lesson that Mr Steerpike learnt on Tuesday evening when the Westminster Village descended on the British Kebab Awards. The annual meat-based bash saw politicians, hacks and restauranteurs rub shoulders at the Park Plaza hotel in Waterloo.  But Mr S wasn’t the only one

Alex Massie

The government’s political capital is waning

Upon how many fronts can a government fight at any one time? Political capital has a short-enough half-life as it is without the risk of it being diluted through simultaneous multiple battles. Concentration of political firepower matters. At a rough count, Boris Johnson’s ministry is currently fighting the civil service, the media, the European Union

John Keiger

Macron lacks Boris’s Napoleonic flair

‘I’d rather have lucky generals than good ones’, Napoleon – or Eisenhower – was supposed to have said, ‘they win battles’. Emmanuel Macron is a good general, but not a lucky one. Since he stood for the presidential election in May 2017, he has demonstrated strategic ability in identifying the reforms France needs to modernise its

Full text: Boris Johnson releases coronavirus battle plan

The government has released its official action plan to deal with the coronavirus epidemic, warning people that ‘we are all susceptible to catching this disease’.  During a press conference at Downing Street this morning, the Prime Minister told reporters that the government’s plan involved four phases: ‘contain, delay, research, mitigate’. Boris Johnson said: ‘Let me be absolutely clear

Britain must fight the EU’s nanny state urges

The UK government has given the EU a Brexit deadline of four months. No. 10 is threatening to walk away from the negotiating table if a broad outline for a Canada-style trade agreement cannot be reached by the summer.  But the UK isn’t really being as radical as it might first appear. For a start, the withdrawal agreement already

Steerpike

Liz Truss urges the WTO to become a global force for free trade

What does Britain stand for post-Brexit? What is our role in the world? Mr Steerpike often wonders: it’s not as if Johnson’s administration has always been entirely forthcoming. For all the talk about opening up to the world, being a proud beacon of economic liberalism, the government has been opaque as to what that means.

Robert Peston

Coronavirus could cost Britain as much as the 2008 crash

UK and Scottish government modelling shows that the economic and fiscal costs of a Covid-19 epidemic could be on a par with the costs of the 2008 banking crisis. According to a senior government source: ‘that is what our modelling shows’. If millions were unable to work and significant numbers of businesses unable to trade

Kate Andrews

What the UK wants from a trade deal with the USA

On Monday, the Department for International Trade released its negotiating objectives for a UK-USA free trade agreement. The 184-page document explains in detail what the UK wants to get out of a trade deal with America. The British government will try to angle the talks, which begin this month, towards securing a comprehensive arrangement – that is,

Sunak’s leaked tax plan sends precisely the wrong message

It is too expensive. It mostly goes to Southerners who already have plenty of money. And it doesn’t even work very well, while the money would be better spent elsewhere. As the Chancellor puts the finishing touches to his Budget, the leaks suggest that the most generous tax relief for entrepreneurs will either be curbed,