Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Steerpike

Theresa May’s flagship speech is derailed

Theresa May headed to the seaside town of Grimsby this morning to try and inject new life into her flagging Brexit strategy. The prime minister plans to give a speech in the Leave voting town, which piles pressure on the EU to offer her concessions so she can get her deal past parliament. But it

Why ‘nice’ workplaces can be the nastiest of all

For those of us who have experienced life in a ‘woke workplace’, Toby Young’s Spectator cover story this week makes grimly familiar reading. My former workplace might even have a claim to be the worst of them all: Amnesty International. Some years before joining The Spectator, I worked a lowly communications gig at Amnesty’s London

Don’t blame school exclusions for knife crime

For too many people, schools are the solution to every one of society’s problems. Last year my campaign group Parents & Teachers for Excellence – which campaigns to raise standards in state schools – logged 213 calls in the media for schools to teach something extra to address a perceived issue. When something is going

Melanie McDonagh

Why can’t Prince Harry be more like the Queen?

Are you feeling better? Anyone who’s seen Prince Harry address the WE Day – Me into We! – gathering in London yesterday of woke young people, chiefly teenage girls, may have taken time to get over the sheer emetic quality of the performance, but I’m there now, thank you. But have you ever heard more

Steerpike

David Davis tries to widen his appeal

With Theresa May’s departure expected later this year, a host of ambitious males are keen to parade their wares. Frontrunner Boris Johnson has lost weight and is the RSPCA’s new pin-up boy, while Sajid Javid is trying to show his strength through the medium of ostracising Isis brides. On Wednesday night, it was David Davis’s

Steerpike

Listen: Amber Rudd’s ‘coloured woman’ remarks

Amber Rudd has caused a storm of outrage this afternoon after she referred to Labour’s Diane Abbott as a ‘coloured woman’. Rudd was being interviewed on Jeremy Vine’s show on Radio 2 to mark International Women’s Day. Asked by Vine whether online abuse is worse for women in general, the work and pensions secretary replied:

Alex Massie

If May’s Brexit deal passes, then her troubles really begin

Brexit is breaking British politics. Both the traditional powers have been shipwrecked by this storm and show no signs of knowing how to repair their ruined timbers. This is the sort of thing everyone understands. If the Tories enjoy more support than Labour this is only because Labour is so very bad. It is not

Steerpike

Equalities watchdog: Labour may have unlawfully discriminated

It’s been a gruelling couple of days for the Labour Party, as their approach to handling and meddling in anti-Semitism complaints has been held up to scrutiny. But it looks like things may be about to get worse for the party. The equalities watchdog, the Equality and Human Rights Commission (EHRC), has begun the first stages

Sam Leith

The Books Podcast: love, death, and loss with Max Porter

In this week’s books podcast I’m talking to Max Porter, former publisher at Granta and author of the prizewinning debut Grief Is The Thing With Feathers, about his brilliant new novel Lanny (reviewed by Andrew Motion here). He asks: why are we used to novels having 15 page boring bits? What does the Green Man

Eustice and Grieve go head-to-head on Brexit

Last week, George Eustice became the latest minister (the majority of whom have been Brexiteers) to quit the government, resigning in protest at Theresa May’s plan to give MPs a vote on delaying Brexit. In his first interview since leaving the government, Eustice, who held the post of farming minister, went even further, stating that

Ross Clark

It’s time for Mark Carney to come clean about Brexit

What wonderful powers that Mark Carney, governor of the Bank of England, possesses. At a stroke, he has just succeeded in increasing the size of the economy by three per cent. Well, sort of. Only last November, the Bank of England claimed that a no-deal Brexit could cost the UK economy between 4.75 and 7.75

Katy Balls

Why Brexiteers aren’t backing down

Geoffrey Cox is in Brussels attempting to achieve a breakthrough on the backstop. So far, the Attorney General’s efforts have not gone entirely to plan – with the word in Brussels that the first night of talks with Michel Barnier went badly. If Cox cannot win a significant concession on the backstop that will allow

No dealers must dream on: A conversation with Ivan Rogers

Sir Ivan Rogers was in conversation at the Institute for Government. This is an edited transcript of his thoughts on why no-deal isn’t a sustainable outcome, whether there should be a public inquiry into Brexit – and why, when it comes to negotiations, the difficult bit is still to come: Ivan Rogers: Once you get into

A collapsed case shows the perils of policing ‘transphobia’

The bizarre stories of censorship and bullying by trans activists frequently made baffling reading. But the spectacle of Miranda Yardley, a self-identified transsexual, ending up in the dock for apparent ‘transphobia’ (all at the behest of a non-trans person) really takes the biscuit. An author would struggle to pitch such an incredible scenario at a

Robert Peston

Will Theresa May vote for a no-deal Brexit?

We have a Tory Government and governing party irredeemably split on the biggest question of our age, namely how and whether to leave the European Union. And we have a Labour opposition in a disorderly civil war between backbench MPs and lords on the one hand, and a leadership team under Jeremy Corbyn over a

Steerpike

Fiona Onasanya loses her appeal against conviction

Today was the last chance for the former Labour MP Fiona Onasanya MP to protest her innocence, as she appealed her conviction for perverting the course of justice. The Peterborough MP was sentenced to three months in jail this January for lying to police to avoid a speeding ticket, but has since been released from jail.

Steerpike

A brief history of Chris Grayling’s failings

Chris Grayling is back in the news – and once again it is for all the wrong reasons. The transport secretary is facing calls to quit over his handling of the Brexit ferry debacle, which led to the Government having to shell out £33m of taxpayers’ money to Eurotunnel. Grayling said ‘however regrettable the Eurotunnel

Steerpike

New York Times goes easy on ‘Failing Grayling’

Chris Grayling has managed to take the government’s ‘Global Britain’ agenda up a gear this week with an appearance in the New York Times. The under fire Transport Secretary is the subject of a blistering editorial in the American paper (which has developed a penchant for negative UK stories these days) titled ‘How Does He

James Kirkup

Jonathan Dimbleby’s Any Questions? was the BBC at its best

The recent history of the BBC is a tale of two Dimblebies. David, the elder, enjoyed the higher profile on television, but at a terrible price: his latter years at Question Time saw him acting as ringmaster for a programme that had become a ‘show’, a three-ring circus of shallow anger and offence. Now Jonathan,

Italy shows that left-wing populism doesn’t work

To judge from what is going on in Italy, the only major European country where populists are in power, right-wing populism works but left-wing populism does not. The senior partner in Italy’s populist coalition government – the alt-left Five Star Movement – is haemorrhaging support, while the popularity of the junior partner – the radical-right