Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Feminism’s obsession with equality sells women short

There was much fanfare last week when Holly Willoughby’s apparent ‘huge £200k pay rise’ meant she’d finally be earning the same as her This Morning co-host, Phillip Schofield. The closing of this pay gap was hailed by some as a victory for womankind, but it seemed a travesty to me. After all, why had there been such a mighty imbalance

Fraser Nelson

Was Kezia Dugdale forced out by the Corbynistas?

Kezia Dugdale was overseeing a revival in her party’s fortunes. She had established herself as a passionate and articulate champion of its values and even the Tories had to admit how impressive she had become in the many debates of Scottish public life. So why quit as party leader now? In her resignation letter, she

Ed West

The Tories need houses, not memes, to win over the young

The Tory party has a new youth wing called Activate to try to win over the kids with ‘memes’ – I believe they’re called – similar to the way that Momentum has built a sort of cult around Jeremy Corbyn. This is in response to the dismal recent Conservative youth vote, which bodes ill for the

Quantitative easing has made houses hopelessly unaffordable

Financial crises tend to see asset prices collapsing, making housing more affordable. But it’s been different this time because the authorities in the UK, and elsewhere, countered the crisis with low interest rates and quantitative easing. By slashing the cost of borrowing and flooding the system with liquidity, these policies set out to – and

Melanie McDonagh

The Tower Hamlets foster child story sums up a rotten borough

Which, do you reckon, is more repellent – the decision by Tower Hamlets, a borough rotten to the marrow, to place a Christian child with two successive Muslim foster parents of uncompromising Islamic views, or its reaction to the Times’ coverage of the story yesterday, with a council spokesman saying that its fostering service “provides a

Debunking the ‘Brexodus’ myth

A new word has entered the lexicon – Brexodus – to reflect the claim that Europeans are leaving in droves as they shun post-Brexit Britain. But it is a funny sort of Brexodus which leaves the number of European nationals in Britain at an all-time high. While the quarterly immigration figures did show a significant

Mayweather vs McGregor: The naysayers were right

Do we separate the art from the artist? When Billy Jean comes on, do we tap our foot any less vigorously because of what singer Michael Jackson purportedly got up to behind closed doors? The ‘Jesus Juice’ and the out of court settlements on child molestation charges and the many photos of naked children discovered

Rod Liddle

We’re losing this cat-and-mouse terror game

I wonder how Mohammad Khan is getting on in his legal action against Virgin Atlantic. Mo — a Muslim, the clue’s in the name — was waiting to board a flight when he started ‘harmlessly’ talking about 9/11. There is no reason to believe he has any connections with extremists, but he was kicked off

Jonathan Miller

Is it possible that Macron might just triumph?

The rentrée politique in France next month promises to be the most exciting in decades as the dynamic superstar president Emmanuel Macron, aged 39¾, embarks on his mission to rescue France from its recent ignominy and restore it to glory. No matter that the polls are showing the shine may already be off this particular

What has happened to Trump’s ‘America first’ policy?

So much for Donald J. Trump, ‘America first’ isolationist. Gone is the man who, as a civilian, repeatedly endorsed a speedy withdrawal from America’s longest-running war (2012 tweet: ‘Afghanistan is a complete waste!’), who railed against George W. Bush’s intervention in Iraq and advocated leaving Syria to the whims of the Russkies and others. On

How to reform the care home system

The care home residents had been left on the landing in wheelchairs. That was the sight that greeted me as I walked up the stairs of the nursing home I was visiting in Wembley, north London. From above, sawdust fell as builders blithely went about their business, fixing the roof. Apart from the drilling there

James Kirkup

Boris Johnson has returned to the political wilderness

Some of his friends will tell you that beneath all the bluster and fluster, beneath the posture and the persona, Boris Johnson is actually quite like the rest of us. He has doubts and fears, good days and bad days, times when he’s up and times when he’s down. ‘Boris’ in a sense, is a

Brexit is irrelevant to the gravest problems facing Britain

One entirely foreseeable consequence of Brexit is that although it is irrelevant to the gravest problems facing the nation, the government talks about nothing else. There is a black hole in the defence budget: instead of reshaping policy to address this, starting by mothballing the Royal Navy’s absurd new aircraftless-carrier, ministers merely scrabble to keep

Stephen Daisley

Brexit means taking back responsibility

Say what you like about the Tories but cutting immigration by 100,000 in a single day is impressive. To think Jeremy Corbyn says this government isn’t delivering. Until now, official figures put the number of students overstaying their visa in the UK at 100,000. An update from the Office for National Statistics confirms critics’ suspicions