Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Steerpike

Will Emily Maitlis now apologise to Rupert Lowe?

The News Agents podcasters appear increasingly less focused on facts and more on taking a pop at people who hold different views to them. Ex-Reform man Rupert Lowe was a recent casualty. He was invited onto the podcast to speak to Maitlis – who wasted no time in tearing into him, going so far as

Ewing snubs SNP ahead of Holyrood election

With less than 11 months to go until the Holyrood election, things aren’t looking quite as rosy for the SNP as in previous elections. The party is 15 points down on where it was 2021, it lost the recent Hamilton by-election with Reform hot on its heels and now it has been dealt another blow.

What you need to know ahead of the assisted dying vote

14 min listen

It’s a historic day in Westminster, where MPs will vote on the assisted dying bill – the outcome of which could have huge repercussions for healthcare, politics and the courts. It’s such a significant day, in fact, that we’ll be recording another podcast just after the result is announced at around 2.30 p.m. Kim Leadbeater’s

Trump’s two-week delay will unsettle Iran

In a statement relayed by press secretary Karoline Leavitt, the White House declared that President Donald Trump would decide ‘within the next two weeks’ whether to join Israel’s air campaign against Iran’s nuclear facilities. In isolation, it might seem a routine delay – an effort to keep diplomatic channels open, to stage manage an American entry

We finally know what an ancient species of human looked like

It’s said that were you to meet a suited and well-coiffured male Neanderthal on the train, you’d easily mistake him for a fellow commuter. Face-to-face with Dragon man, however, you’d be forgiven for changing carriages. His head has been described as massive and his teeth enormous, and you could prop a book on his brow

Ian Williams

Has Ursula von der Leyen seen the light on China?

Coming from an American politician, the accusations would have been unsurprising. Beijing is unwilling to ‘live within the constraints of the rules-based international system’ and its trade policy is one of ‘distortion with intent’. It splashes subsidies with abandon, undercuts intellectual property protections, and as for China’s membership of the World Trade Organisation (WTO), that

Is Iran about to choke the West’s energy supply?

Nato has learned nothing from Russia’s energy blackmail – and Iran is about to prove it. With precision warheads and hypersonic payloads tearing Israeli and Iranian skies, you might think we’re witnessing the next frontier in modern warfare. But it’s an old game, played with old rules. And once again, Tehran reaches for its well-worn

Why Muslim-majority countries have turned against Iran

Swift condemnations have poured in from the Muslim world castigating Israel for bombing Iran. The UAE condemned Israel ‘in the strongest terms’, Jordan spoke up against Israeli attacks ‘threatening regional stability’, Saudi Arabia denounced ‘blatant Israeli aggressions’, Turkey espoused ‘an end to Israel’s banditry’, while various Muslim diplomatic groups, including the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), demanded ‘international action’ against the Jewish State. But cloaked

The triumph of Noel Edmonds

When Deal or No Deal hit our TV screens in 2005, it soon became a national obsession. I remember hotfooting it from the train station to my house, desperate to make sure I didn’t miss it. This was the most infatuated I’d been with a TV show since I was child. Noel Edmonds, the show’s presenter,

Isabel Hardman

Labour whip resigns over disability benefit cuts

This evening, the Labour MP Vicky Foxcroft has resigned as a government whip over the disability benefit cuts. In a letter to Keir Starmer, she writes that she is quitting the frontbench ‘with a heavy heart’, adding: Foxcroft’s resignation suggests that the rebellion over disability benefit cuts really is quite serious I have wrestled with

Steerpike

Poll: public want care home opt out for assisted dying

It’s a big day in parliament tomorrow. Both sides of the assisted dying debate are gearing up for a crunch Commons clash when Kim Leadbeater’s Bill returns for its Third Reading. One key flashpoint in its recently-completed Report Stage was when Rebecca Paul’s amendment to allow hospices to opt out of providing assisted dying was

Steerpike

Watch: SNP housing secretary slips up on social housing

SNP MSP Mairi McAllan appears to be rated rather highly by First Minister John Swinney, who created an entirely new job for her on her return to Holyrood from maternity leave – but the Scottish government’s new housing secretary hasn’t had the smoothest start to the job. A rather awkward interview with STV this week

Freddy Gray

Who is Trump listening to on Iran?

Freddy Gray speaks to Kelley Vlahos DC-based writer, editor and senior advisor at the Quincy Institute about the developing situation between Israel, Iran and America. The President has warned that despite winning the electorate over on an ‘America First’ mandate, the US armed force may intervene on Iran. Freddy and Kelley discuss who Trump is

Steerpike

JK Rowling blasts the National as ‘anti-women’

Scotland’s self-identifying ‘newspaper’ is at it again – and this time it has provoked the wrath of renowned writer JK Rowling. The National has chosen to dunk, yet again, on women’s rights organisation Sex Matters, dubbing it an ‘anti-trans campaign group’ which is ‘threatening’ legal action after it raised concerns about how the Scottish government

James Heale

The understudied importance of political slogans

‘Make America Great Again’. ‘Take Back Control’. ‘Yes We Can’. There are many political slogans – but only a handful are truly memorable. Done properly, they can win votes, define narratives and shape the great issues of our times. Yet, oddly, there are few, if any, publications which centre on election slogans – despite a

The inside story of how Labour is dealing with Iran

16 min listen

This week, our new political editor Tim Shipman takes the helm and, in his cover piece, gives us the inside track on how Labour is dealing with Iran, Donald Trump and the prospect of escalating war in the Middle East. He writes that this could be the moment when all of Keir Starmer’s chickens come

Steerpike

NSPCC refuses to apologise to Braverman over grooming gangs letter

Baroness Casey’s landmark review into Britain’s grooming gangs contained some truly horrific revelations. The damning audit found that disproportionate numbers of Asian men were responsible for child sexual exploitation gangs. Shockingly, it revealed that the authorities failed to crack down on these men for fear of being racist. It has prompted outrage from those who

Michael Simmons

Why the Bank of England may welcome job losses

Interest rates have been held at 4.25 per cent. The Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee (MPC) voted by six to three to hold rates after cutting them in May. The move mirrors that of the US Federal Reserve, which yesterday held rates for the fourth time in a row. Their decision came despite badgering

Ross Clark

Three simple ways to stamp out benefits fraud

According to official figures from the Department for Work and Pensions, benefits fraud costs the taxpayer £9.5 billion a year. But does anyone really believe it isn’t higher, given the massive rise in people apparently so incapacitated by poor mental health that they are incapable of working? It transpires that Liz Kendall’s efforts to save

Striking Fordow will not solve the Iran problem

The world is watching Donald Trump to see if he will give his military the green light to use one of America’s most deadly weapons, the Massive Ordnance Penetrator (Mop), to destroy Iran’s underground nuclear facilities at Fordow. As a man with a seemingly inexhaustible need for attention, this is a gratifying position for him

Your pension fund is right to flee Labour’s Britain

One of Chancellor Rachel Reeves’s few big ideas for boosting growth was to persuade pension funds to invest more of their assets in Britain. But hold on. Today, we learned that Scottish Widows, one of the biggest funds, is dramatically reducing its exposure to this country – and it is quite right to do so.

Will Trump pull the trigger and strike Iran?

This morning’s sirens shattered the early calm across much of Israel. Quiet anticipation had already been building, as signs pointed to a long anticipated American entry into the conflict, but no one yet knows when, or if, it will truly come. It had been a relatively quiet night; after a brief stint in the bomb

Why the fatwa against Gabriel Attal is so dangerous

An imam at the Grand Mosque of Massy, just outside Paris, has threatened to issue a fatwa against former Prime Minister Gabriel Attal, head of Macron’s party Renaissance, for his proposal to ban the hijab for girls under 15. In a video that has gone viral in France, the imam declared that Attal is ‘pushing

What is Britain doing to help free Aung San Suu Kyi?

In a prison cell in the middle of Myanmar (Burma), isolated from other prisoners, sits an elderly woman who marks her 80th birthday today. She is serving a 27-year sentence. Yet she is no ordinary 80-year-old. Today, she should be approaching the end of her second term as de facto head of her country’s government,

Farage: Scrap the fracking ban and bomb Iran

Would a Reform government lift the ban on fracking? ‘Abso-bloody-lutely,’ is Nigel Farage’s answer. Fracking and nuclear will form the core of Reform’s push for British energy self-sufficiency – a drive that will see the Net Zero target junked if the party wins power. The Reform leader made his remarks at ‘Net Zero: The New

The Islamic Republic has been weakening for months

In October 2023, the mullahs of the Islamic Republic could look within Iran’s borders, and beyond, and be content with the worlds they had created. After all, they had weathered the storm of the Women, Life, Freedom protests by terrorising their own people, and could rest assured in the strength of their proxy networks, feared

Stephen Daisley

How the SNP wrecked Scottish education

A small but not insignificant morsel of data on the state of education after 18 years of the SNP running Scotland. New figures show the gap between the poorest and wealthiest school leavers has widened to a five-year high. In the least deprived areas, just 3 per cent of school leavers fail to go to

Rayner’s PMQs performance will trouble Starmer

As you might have noticed from the crowds weeping in the streets and the appearance of sackcloth, ashes and rent, er, garments: Sir Keir Starmer wasn’t at Prime Minister’s Questions this afternoon. Instead we got Big Ange – who absolutely, definitely, doesn’t want the job for herself. She’d come dressed in a fetching double-breasted blazer and