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

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.

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

James Forsyth

Boris’s Covid balancing act is getting harder

I’m pro-cake and pro-eating it’, Boris Johnson used to quip. But now he is in a hideously difficult position as he tries to balance the needs of public health and the economy. He is damned if he does and damned if he doesn’t, I say in the magazine this week. Starmer’s decision to call for

Tom Goodenough

The real north-south Covid divide is in London

From Friday night, southerners are set to be cooped up in their homes because of high Covid rates in the north. I’m talking, of course, about the decision to impose tier two restrictions on London. The capital’s nine million people will be banned from socialising indoors with people they don’t live with and commuters urged

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

Isabel Hardman

Can parliament reform its toxic culture?

It is hardly surprising that the new parliamentary complaints system has had what might politely be termed teething problems when it comes to helping staffers and others who turned to it. This week the Times reports that complainants had been given incorrect advice, had not received the mental health support they needed, and were even

The arguments that will win or lose indyref2

Our latest poll in Scotland makes grim reading for unionists and offers much to celebrate for supporters of Scottish independence. Support for independence is now at a record high of 58 per cent. The SNP appear on course for a majority at next year’s Scottish parliamentary elections. And around two-thirds of Scots tell us that such

Katy Balls

Has Keir Starmer managed to unite the Tory party?

This week’s Prime Minister’s Questions stood out from previous sessions. Boris Johnson appeared the most comfortable he has in recent weeks – boosted by the loud support of the Tory MPs allowed in the socially distanced Commons chamber. In a way this was strange – Conservative MPs have become grumpier with each week when it

Lloyd Evans

PMQs: Keir Starmer is too clever by half

Sir Keir’s approach to PMQs is so brilliant it might be rather foolish. He shows up each Wednesday as if he were attending a particularly complicated fraud trial, full of unique and intriguing features, which will one day furnish material for a lecture at Inner Temple. It’s super-technical. It makes your brain itch. And anyone

Alex Massie

The fatal trio that could finish the Union

When he assumed the Office of Prime Minister, Boris Johnson also took upon himself the responsibility of being, he said, ‘Minister for the Union’. Whatever you may feel about the manner in which he has performed as First Lord of the Treasury, his record in his other post has been miserable. So much so, indeed,

Working-class boys and the myth of white privilege

Does white privilege exist? For many white working-class pupils, in particular boys, it doesn’t. For years, it has been clear that these youngsters are struggling. Now for poor white kids, things are arguably worse than ever. Among poor white children, only 24 per cent of boys and 32 per cent of girls achieve five good GCSEs.

Kate Andrews

How new Covid restrictions are stalling the economy

The theory behind a V-shaped recovery relied on the assumption that the economy would open up almost as quickly as it shut down. This did not happen. The UK moved at a much slower pace than its European counterparts exiting stringent lockdown measures. And already restrictions are being implemented again. August’s GDP figures were surprisingly dismal,