Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Isabel Hardman

Change UK splits after disastrous European elections

Just a few months after becoming a political party, Change UK has announced it is splitting. Six of its MPs, including its leader Heidi Allen, have quit, with Anna Soubry now taking the crown. The party confirmed the split with a press release typical of its odd behaviour throughout its existence, focusing on Soubry’s election

Steerpike

Trump on Gove: ‘I don’t know Michael’

Over the weekend, Donald Trump endorsed Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign. Boris ‘would do a very good job’, Trump said. At today’s press conference, Jeremy Hunt was also backed by Trump. But one person who didn’t quite make it was Michael Gove. When asked about the Tory leadership contest, Trump had this to say: ‘So I

Steerpike

Donald Trump: Why I snubbed Jeremy Corbyn

Jeremy Corbyn has made much of snubbing Donald Trump by refusing to attend a state dinner in his honour, but was it really Trump who got the cold shoulder? At a press conference this afternoon, Trump has just claimed that Corbyn wanted to meet Trump, but that it was he who turned down the Labour

Ross Clark

Why have Brexiteers stopped making the case for Brexit?

For at least a year the Brexit debate has been conducted almost entirely on negative ground – arguing over how harmful it might be if we leave with no deal, or whether leaving the EU is already threatening the economy. There has been rather less discussion of the benefits of Brexit – what Britain will

It’s only a matter of time before Trump turns on Boris

The last time president Donald Trump flew to London, pandemonium ensued. A visit that was supposed to be ordinary turned out to be extraordinary. Thousands of Londoners protested the president’s arrival, launching a big baby Trump balloon into the air (which predictably captured the thin-skinned president’s attention). Trump took to the pages of the Sun and trashed Theresa May’s

Brendan O’Neill

The real reason some Brits don’t like Trump

Why do certain Brits hate Donald Trump so much? Duh, it’s obvious why we hate him, they’ll say. It’s because he’s a migrant-bashing, country-bombing, far-right-enabling nightmare of a president who threatens to plunge the world into a 1930s-style politics of hate. It’s the duty of every decent Brit to hate this dangerous orange oaf, they

Freddy Gray

Donald Trump should not stoop to Sadiq Khan’s level 

In July last year, when Trump last visited Britain, I wrote a post saying ‘Admit it, Donald Trump is right about Sadiq Khan.’ The two men had just had one of their already numerous Twitter spats and it seemed a point worth making.  Trump just landed in London again this morning. Sure enough, the Trump

Robert Peston

When it comes to Trump, Corbyn is another metropolitan elitist

In refusing to come out for a confirmatory referendum as the primary aim of Brexit policy, Jeremy Corbyn and his allies – Len McCluskey, Karie Murphy, Seumas Milne, and Andrew Murray – have signalled they would not want to turn their backs on Labour’s traditional working class voters, many of whom are Brexiters and do

Nick Cohen

What the People’s Vote campaign should do about Jeremy Corbyn

The remain campaign’s political dilemma looks insoluble. Perhaps I am being overly pessimistic – gloom is my default state –  but it is certainly formidable because it requires remainers to simultaneously support and oppose Jeremy Corbyn. I can make the people who spell it out sound silly. I shouldn’t because some of the brightest and

James Kirkup

In praise of Matt Hancock’s Brexit plan

Matt Hancock is the youngest of the candidates running to be Conservative leader but he’s starting to look like the grown-up in the room. At the weekend he published the outline of a Brexit plan that might just prove the basis for a way ahead that averts either economic or political disaster. The plan, as

Spectator competition winners: odes to Alexa and Siri

For the latest competition you were challenged to submit an ode to Alexa or Siri. A recent study by Unesco, entitled ‘I’d Blush if I Could’ (Siri’s alarmingly coquettish response to the phrase ‘You’re a slut/bitch’), claimed that submissive female-voiced virtual assistants perpetuate negative, outdated gender stereotypes, and this assignment did seem to bring out

Toby Young

American racial self-flagellation is on its way to British schools

For anyone who isn’t following the long march of racial self-flagellation through America’s institutions, last week’s revelations about the excesses of New York City’s education tsar will come as a shock. Schools chancellor Richard Carranza has introduced mandatory ‘anti-bias and equity training’ for the city’s 75,000 teachers at a cost of $23 million a year.

Hong Kong’s first political asylum seekers

Hong Kong’s freedoms, autonomy and rule of law face ever-increasing threats, but there is a twin set of legal dangers that pose the most serious risks for the city’s way of life: an old colonial law that needs reform, and a new law that should never be introduced. Last week, two Hong Kong activists, Ray

Why this year’s al-Quds Day march could be different

This weekend might provide an interesting spectacle. On Sunday the annual al-Quds Day march sets off in London from outside the Home Office. Of course al-Quds Day is the day inaugurated by the late bigot Ayatollah Khomeini, and his initiative allows peace-loving Khomeinists to stroll along the streets of London (among other capital cities) calling

Melanie McDonagh

Why the First Wives’ Club should cut Boris a bit of slack

Well, very obliging of Donald Trump to back Boris Johnson – ‘a very good guy…he’d be excellent…I like him very much’ – in his interesting interview in The Sun, I’m sure. That’ll go down terrifically well with the kind of woke constituency that’ll be on the streets from Monday to make clear that the president

Charles Moore

Jeremy Hunt’s odd leadership pitch

Jeremy Hunt’s approach is very odd. It is the first time I remember an aspirant for the top job saying: ‘Choose me: I’m frightened of a general election.’ He is obviously right that an election without Brexit accomplished would be very difficult for the Conservatives to win, but the way through that is not to

What Rory Stewart and Donald Trump have in common

What the hell has got into Rory Stewart? The man’s everywhere, outstretched phone in hand, like an Instagram influencer on the edge, asking people to come and talk to him about Brexit. He’s at the Lewisham market by the stinky fish! No wait – now he’s on a train to Wigan. Now he’s talking Dari