Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Philip Patrick

Where have all the Japanese tourists gone?

Is the Japanese tourist, for so long in good numbers a welcome and reliable fixture at our most famous tourist spots, now in serious decline? The number of Japanese travelling abroad is still well down on pre-Covid times and with government data just released revealing that fewer and fewer Japanese even hold a passport, the

What’s wrong with using Xenon to climb Everest?

Reaching the top of the world and returning to London within a week without so much as stopping for a coffee in Kathmandu sounds like the stuff dreams are made of. But on 21 May 2025, four former members of the British special forces turned this dream into reality when they stood on the summit

Tommy Robinson and the truth about jail beards

When Tommy Robinson walked out of prison this week, he was unrecognisable. The far-right activist, who was jailed for contempt of court, was sporting a huge bushy beard as he emerged from HMP Woodhill. Robinson looked more like a man who had been marooned on a desert island, or lost in the mountains, than someone

Israel is going too far

I have kept my silence on the Middle East for ten years. I left Israel in 2015, after five years as British ambassador, as the first Jew in the role. Since then, I have turned down every request to be a talking head. Neither the world nor my successors needed another ex-ambassador pundit. But I

Why shouldn’t vegans be catered for in an apocalypse?

You know you’ve arrived when professors start thinking about how to look after you during a major emergency. As a vegan, I was thrilled to read in the Times this week that Professor Tim Lang, a professor of food policy, has told the government that us meat-dodgers must be catered for in any ‘food apocalypse’. Speaking at

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Should cannabis be decriminalised?

21 min listen

London Mayor Sir Sadiq Khan has called for possession of small amounts of cannabis to be decriminalised following a report by the London Drugs Commission. The report has made 42 recommendations, which include removing natural cannabis from the Misuse of Drugs Act. Former cabinet minister, now Labour peer, Charlie Falconer and Tory MP Dr Neil

Britain needs to reindustrialise

In recent years, governments looking for good news on growth have sounded increasingly desperate, like a doctor looking for signs of an improvement in a terminally ill patient.  In the first quarter of this year Britain’s economy grew by 0.7 per cent, slightly higher than expected – a fact seized upon by this already beleaguered government.

Can Scotland learn to love Farage?

There’s not much that’s green in Larkhall, Scotland. So staunchly Protestant unionist is the ex-mining town in South Lanarkshire that it has scrubbed itself of anything associated with Irish Catholicism. The local Subway franchise has grey panelling on its front, and local pharmacies have opted for blue signage. The 15,000-strong area has one football team:

Steerpike

Did No. 10 clear Lord Hermer’s ‘Nazi jibe’ speech?

Another day, another bit of bad press for the Labour party. Attorney General Lord Hermer sparked outrage when he compared political threats to leave the ECHR to the Nazis during a speech to the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RUSI) defence think tank on Thursday – and has since acknowledged, rather begrudgingly, that his ‘choice of

Why do police accept criminal drug use?

Another day, another sign of the British state’s acceptance of criminality. This time it’s the news that almost half of people caught in possession of Class A drugs avoid criminal sanction, with the police either issuing a ‘community resolution’, which does not create a criminal record, or avoid any action at all ‘in the public interest’. This

It’s the last chance for levelling up

‘The policymakers that live in London and stuff, they don’t really care about a small town like Rochdale. I just feel as though, for many years it’s been one of those forgotten things, we live under the shadow of Manchester.’  This quote, from a teaching assistant in his 30s with young children, is from a

Lord Hermer is preposterously wrong about international law

Lord Hermer KC has done it again. Delivering RUSI’s annual security lecture this week, the Attorney General set out to ‘depolarise’ the debate about international law, before promptly comparing those who are open to withdrawal from the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) with Carl Schmitt, the notorious German jurist who joined the Nazi party

The real reason why academics write in gobbledygook

Why can’t academics write properly? Why can’t they express themselves in language that normal people can understand? These are questions that have echoed through the ages, and ones that still resonate today – so much so that even academics are starting to ask them. In an address to the Hay Festival this week, Professor Kehinde

Mark Galeotti

Has Serbia really fallen foul of Moscow?

Is it getting harder for Serbian president Aleksandar Vučić to maintain his balancing act between Moscow and the West? Why else, after all, would Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) suddenly revive a year-old story about covert arms supplies to Ukraine? Back in June of last year, the Financial Times splashed the story that Serbia had

Steerpike

Hermer admits Nazi comments were ‘clumsy’

As if the Attorney General hadn’t proven his ability for conjuring up negative headlines enough, Lord Hermer took it upon himself on Thursday to compare political threats to leave the ECHR to the Nazis. Speaking to the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RUSI) defence think tank, Hermer earnestly told his audience: ‘The claim that international law

The growing militancy of the BMA

To understand what’s really going on with the latest British Medical Association strike threat – it is currently balloting 50,000 doctors over a putative six-month strike in support of a 29 per cent pay claim for ‘resident’ (formerly called junior) doctors – it’s instructive to look at what happened to Liverpool City Council in the

Lord Hermer’s ‘Nazi jibe’ at Reform won’t work

It is an axiom of political debate that once you compare your opponents to Hitler’s Nazis you have definitely lost the argument. That golden rule seems to have escaped the notice of the Attorney General Lord Hermer, who, in a speech to the Royal Institute for International Affairs (RUSI) defence think tank did just that. Hermer,

Ross Clark

Starmer’s welfare cuts are nothing like ‘Tory austerity’

Keir Starmer has already folded on the winter fuel payment, promising a partial reversal of the policy by reinstating it for pensioners in receipt of pension credit. How much longer before the proposed £4.8 billion cuts to welfare benefits go the same way? This morning, the Health Foundation think tank has issued a pronouncement that

Steerpike

Labour ministers averaging a union meeting a day

Whatever happened to that £22bn black hole, eh? As yet more pay rises are dolled out to workers across the country this month, Mr S has been scouring the government’s transparency data to take a closer look at just how many times ministers have met with union barons. The conclusion? Quite a lot. In fact, in just six

James Heale

Lord Hermer’s ‘Nazi jibe’ shows his naivety

Amid talk of a summer reshuffle, I recently asked a senior member of the Labour party if he thought the Attorney-General was likely for the chop. He paused and reflected. ‘No’, he eventually replied. ‘But he’s going the right way about it.’ Similar sentiments will no doubt be expressed in Downing Street today as they

The case for looking back in anger

Last week marked the anniversary of the Manchester Arena bombing – the deadliest terrorist attack on British soil since the 7/7 London bombings. Twenty-two people were murdered, most of them children and teenagers, at a pop concert targeted with deliberate cruelty. Among them was Saffie-Rose Roussos, just eight years old – the youngest known victim of terrorism

Philip Patrick

Why the Japanese don’t believe Fukushima is safe

Soil samples from Fukushima, the prefecture where Japan’s Dai-Ichi Nuclear reactor exploded in 2011 sending plumes of radioactive material into the sky, will be transported to the garden of Prime Minister Shigeru Ishiba to serve as flower beds. Far from horticultural, the real purpose is to reassure the Japanese people that Fukushima is now safe

America is coming for Britain’s social media censors

In 2021, after the barbaric Islamist murder of Sir David Amess MP, the response of Britain’s political class was as baffling as it was shameful: it decided to ramp up censorship of the internet. Somehow, MPs’ vital personal safety came to be equated with the nebulous concept of ‘safety’ online, along with the protection of

Scotland’s Ecocide Bill is pure moral posturing

Here we go again. The Scottish parliament risks embarking on yet another exercise in legislative virtue signalling: the Labour MSP Monica Lennon’s emotively titled Ecocide Bill. The Scottish government is reportedly looking favourably on this legislation, which would make destroying the environment a criminal offence punishable by up to 20 years in prison. Does this

Michael Simmons

Will the economy save the Tories?

This week Dominic Cummings said the Tories may have ‘crossed the event horizon’. He was trying to find a tech bro way of saying the game is up: they’re finished as an electoral force and it’s only Labour, Reform and the Lib Dems still in play. But might the Tories have one last chance? If

James Heale

Senior Tories plan candidate overhaul

There are many justifiable criticisms of how the Tories ran candidate selection for the last election. On the day that Rishi Sunak headed to the Palace, scores of nominees were still to be chosen, prompting a mad scramble to find 160 candidates in 12 days. Some seats faced accusations of ‘stitch-ups’, including Basildon and Billericay, where

Steerpike

Ex-Royal Marine charged over Liverpool crash

To Liverpool, where former Royal Marine Paul Doyle has been charged over the car crash that injured almost 80 people on Monday. Police announced they had taken a 53-year-old white British man into custody within hours of the attack and this afternoon, officers announced at a presser that Doyle had been charged with two counts

Ed Davey should challenge Nigel Farage to a debate

On Tuesday, Nigel Farage challenged Keir Starmer to a head-to-head debate. More specifically, the Reform leader wants to take on the Prime Minister in a northern working men’s club.  Obviously, that is not going to happen. The PM might have declared in his speech today that ‘the choice at the moment is between the choice

Robert Jenrick is right to confront tube fare evaders

Robert Jenrick tweeted a 60 second video this morning, showing him confronting suspected fare dodgers at Stratford London Underground station. He watches people reportedly forcing their way through the barriers while TfL staff seemingly do nothing to stop them. Jenrick then follows the suspected freeloaders down escalators, challenging them on why they haven’t paid. They’re not