Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Stephen Daisley

Holyrood’s trans rights pause is a good thing

A revolution stopped in its tracks is an uncanny sight. After impatiently pursuing reforms to the Gender Recognition Act (GRA), the Scottish Government has suddenly hit the brakes. Shirley-Anne Somerville, SNP social security minister, announced the halt in a statement to the Scottish Parliament on Thursday. Although Nicola Sturgeon, at her minister’s side for support,

James Kirkup

This tape will always threaten Boris Johnson

It’s not hard to work out the ‘lines to take’ that are being handed out from Boris Johnson’s team to his surrogates in politics and the media after the police were called to the flat he’s been living in. ‘It’s a private matter. It’s an invasion of privacy. The neighbour who taped the incident, called

Melanie McDonagh

Boris has to get out of Camberwell

Well! Just when it looked like the only political question anyone would be talking about is the start of the leadership hustings, what do you know? All anyone can think about is Boris Johnson’s row with his girlfriend on Thursday night. The one police were called to. Just after he’d seen off Michael Gove and

History will wonder how we trusted Boris with Britain

I am besieged by media folk asking when I shall make good on a four-year-old threat to flee to Buenos Aires should Boris Johnson become prime minister. How can I get on to a flight, I ask, when so many other voters are already waitlisted? In truth, however, we are being served successive courses in

Can gaffe-prone Joe Biden learn to act like a president?

Joe Biden may have the nickname ‘Middle-Class Joe’ but in truth, the former vice president is a career politician. He was elected to the Senate in 1972 at the ripe age of 29 and kept his seat for 36 years until he decided to gamble on Barack Obama’s presidential campaign by joining his ticket. With

Dominic Green

Trump fears the reality of war

If truth is the first casualty of war, the second casualty of war is credibility. Last week, much of the American media chose not to believe Mike Pompeo when he presented a Central Command video which, he said, showed an Iranian crew tinkering with limpet mines and an oil tanker. ‘Tankers Are Attacked in the

My night at the Mansion House climate protest

There we were in the gold embossed classical elegance of the Egyptian Room of Mansion House, all dressed up in black tie, politely listening to the Chancellor’s swan song – his last Mansion House speech – when the kerfuffle started at the back. Women in red dresses started pouring in from the rear doors with

Donald Trump and the politics of Netflix

Given that there’s apparently no aspect of American life where culture wars don’t rage, the only surprise about Netflix’s latest controversy is that it hasn’t been going on for at least three years. After all, this is a company whose CEO, Reed Hastings, called for a Hillary landslide in 2016, because ‘Trump would destroy much

Robert Peston

Mark Field’s behaviour was inexcusable

The video of Mark Field pushing a Greenpeace activist by the neck is so upsetting. Watch as Tory MP for Cities of London & Westminster @MarkFieldUK grabs a Greenpeace protester who interrupted a Philip Hammond speech in London tonight https://t.co/wZTzEC8lKF pic.twitter.com/tJuwCZ1P0X — ITV News (@itvnews) June 20, 2019 The climate-change protestors were, according to the

Fraser Nelson

Job vacancy: a researcher for The Spectator

The Spectator is growing – and hiring. We’re looking for a researcher for fact-checking, data reporting and editing news for our daily emails. We’d like someone who can find a story in figures, perhaps someone familiar with Google Analytics (or capable of learning about it). The advantages: no two days in the office will be

Damian Thompson

Why is big business so fanatically liberal?

This week’s Holy Smoke podcast is about the hypocrisy of ‘woke’ capitalism. Netflix, Disney and other corporations are both ruthlessly capitalist and ruthlessly liberal – at least when it comes to America. They’re throwing a fit because there’s been a conservative and Christian backlash against gruesome late-term abortions. They’ve also become risibly obsessed with Pride

John Connolly

Mark Field suspended after Mansion House incident

Number 10 has confirmed that Mark Field has been suspended from his position as a Foreign Office minister, after he used force to remove a climate protestor from a banking event at Mansion House last night. Video footage of the incident showed Field grabbing a female Greenpeace protestor before escorting her from the building. The

Ross Clark

Why are our MPs so pathetically in thrall to Extinction Rebellion?

Why are MPs so pathetically in thrall to Extinction Rebellion? This morning, while the world was focused on the Conservative leadership campaign six Commons select committees (Treasury, BEIS, Environmental Audit, Housing, Communities and Local Government, Science and Technology, and Transport) jointly launched a ‘Citizens’ Assembly’ on climate change. If you think you have heard that

John Connolly

Did Boris’s dirty tricks help Hunt over Gove?

Boris Johnson and Jeremy Hunt are through to the final stage of the Tory leadership contest, after the results of the fifth round of voting were announced this evening. Michael Gove has been knocked out of the competition, after falling just two votes short (75 vs 77). Cries of foul play have followed, with suspicion

Stephen Daisley

Does Rorymania have a future in the Conservative party?

‘Rorymania is over,’ Isabel Hardman pops into my inbox to tell me, in last night’s Evening Blend. Rory Stewart’s elimination from the Conservative leadership race cuts short a seductive insurgency that began with pseudo-selfies and flirted with the opportunity, however wishful, of a political realignment. One place Rorymania never took off was inside the Conservative

Steerpike

Rupa Huq: no-deal Brexit will lead to scurvy

Britain has become rather used to hysterical prognostications about the threat of a no-deal Brexit from our MPs ever since we voted to Leave in 2016 – with some parliamentarians suggesting that supermarkets will be left empty and drug supplies will vanish if we don’t get a deal or extension by October 31. But Labour’s Rupa

Steerpike

George Osborne’s change of heart

For a long time George Osborne was more likely to be found taking snipes at his one-time political rival Boris Johnson than supporting his political efforts. In 2016, the former chancellor mocked Johnson by saying that were he to go for the party leadership he would not ‘fumble the ball’ – a thinly-veiled attack on Johnson’s

James Forsyth

The new PM’s Rory Stewart problem

In this contest, Rory Stewart has established himself as the new champion of the Tory left. He has become a significant figure in the party. The interests of party unity mean that any new prime minister would want to have him inside the tent rather than on the backbenches where he would be the natural

Robert Peston

Boris Johnson’s secret superpowers

David Davis gave away Boris Johnson’s big secret, live on the Today Programme: the Tory MP set to be our new prime minister has superpowers. The point is that the former Brexit secretary says he is wholly persuaded that Johnson will take the UK out of the EU, deal or no deal, by 31 October