Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Dominic Green

Pete Shelley of Buzzcocks: Our final interview

RIP Pete Shelley. I would suggest three minutes silence, but Buzzcocks would have said it all in 2 minutes and 59 seconds. When I spoke to Shelley a few days ago for my podcast ‘The Green Room’, he was in good spirits, looking forward to another busy year, and especially looking forward to performing the

Did Vote Leave’s overspending win the referendum for Brexit?

An Oxford professor’s claim that it was “very likely” that  overspending by Vote Leave swung the referendum for Brexit has taken off like wildfire. Professor Philip Howard’s analysis made the front page of yesterday’s Independent under the headline: ‘Illegal Facebook spending ‘won 2016 vote for Leave”. So do the numbers behind the headline add up? Prof

Isabel Hardman

Could Labour drop its plan for a no confidence vote?

The working assumption in Westminster at the moment is that Theresa May will lose Tuesday’s meaningful vote on her Brexit deal, and then the Labour Party will table a motion of no confidence in the government. The Tory whips certainly seem as concerned about that no confidence vote as they are about the Brexit vote,

Melanie McDonagh

The problem with a ‘People’s Vote’

Surprise! The Economist has come out in favour of a new referendum on Brexit, joining Sadiq Khan, Tony Blair and possibly the entire cast of Strictly in calling for a People’s Vote. It observes sagely: “no one can claim to intuit what the people want. The only way to know is to ask them”. And of

Brendan O’Neill

Kevin Hart is the offence archaeologists’ latest victim

Another day, another scalp. Another public figure put in the stocks for ‘speechcrimes’. Another individual forced out of a job because he has the wrong opinions and because he made ‘inappropriate’ jokes. This time it’s the American comedian Kevin Hart, who has announced that he is stepping down as the host of next year’s Oscars

Camilla Swift

Gove is right to keep the lynx out of Northumberland

Over the few years, a battle has been quietly simmering between farming communities and a conservation organisation who want to reintroduce the Eurasian lynx to the UK. The cats have been extinct in the UK for well over a thousand years, and while farmers worry that the big cats will threaten their sheep, Lynx UK

Isabel Hardman

Why politicians should fear Project Fear

‘Project Fear’ didn’t work out in the 2016 Brexit referendum, with voters turning against the ‘experts’ maligned by Michael Gove and other Leave campaigners. So it’s strange to see the Conservatives reigniting it again in the run-up to Tuesday’s vote on Theresa May’s Brexit deal, warning of six months of disruption at Dover and other

Why the Norway model wouldn’t work for Britain

In the corridors of Westminster and the salons of some remainers, there is a lot of excited chatter about the “Norway option”. This would involve being a member of the EEA and single market, but not of the EU. Depending on who is pushing, Norway is presented as either a temporary or permanent alternative to

Camille Paglia: ‘Hillary wants Trump to win again’

Camille Paglia is one of the most interesting and explosive thinkers of our time. She transgresses academic boundaries and blows up media forms. She’s brilliant on politics, art, literature, philosophy, and the culture wars. She’s also very keen on the email Q and A format for interviews. So, after reading her new collection of essays,

If Brexit is abandoned, will it ever be worth voting again?

Earlier this year I was approached at a party by a prominent and slightly oiled ‘Remainer’. Amid other pleasantries she asked me, interrogatively: ‘You voted “Leave”, Douglas. Can you give me one good reason why we should still leave the EU?’. Having watched the last two-and-a-half years from the sidelines, depressed by almost the entire

Robert Peston

What does a leaked recording reveal about Boris’s Brexit stance?

I’ve been sent a recording of a presentation made on Tuesday by the great champion of Brexit, Boris Johnson, over breakfast in Amsterdam. He was talking to “chief risk officers” of financial firms at an event called RiskMinds International, that was sponsored by, among others, the huge accounting firm PWC and the management consultancy McKinsey.

The lessons politicians don’t want to learn from Glasgow’s knife crime strategy

London’s knife-crime epidemic is back in the news. Tomorrow the Damilola Taylor Trust is holding a lecture at which the founders of Glasgow’s Violence Reduction Unit will explain what lessons London might learn from their experience. Their distinctive ‘public health’ approach is widely held to have been successful and it is frequently contrasted with a

Gavin Mortimer

Emmanuel Macron’s next fight could be his toughest yet

In normal circumstances, Emmanuel Macron would welcome a trip to Marrakech in December as an opportunity to escape cold Paris and enjoy some North African hospitality. But his date in the Moroccan city next week could not have come at a worse time. France is burning and Macron’s presence on Monday at the United Nations intergovernmental

Mike Pompeo’s unwelcome warning to Brussels’ bureaucrats

The US secretary of state Mike Pompeo strutted into Brussels yesterday like a man on a mission. His task was almost impossible from the start: to convince America’s friends and allies in Europe that the United States under Donald Trump is still the leader of the liberal world order European politicians care so deeply about. It’s

May’s bid to satisfy everyone on Brexit has pleased no one

In Parliament yesterday, Theresa May repeated Philip Hammond’s fallacious argument that because the Brexit referendum result was 52:48, the form of Brexit should be a compromise between leaving the EU and remaining in it. This argument completely distorts the notion of democracy. Firstly, no such argument was ever deployed when it was a question of

Lloyd Evans

PMQs: A lesson in calling the Prime Minister a liar

Huge ructions at PMQs. Ian Blackford, of the SNP, said Mrs May had been ‘misleading the house inadvertently or otherwise’ over her EU agreement. Instant panic. Roars of outrage at the suggestion that the prime minister had lied. Mr Speaker snapped to his feet. The house paused while he delivered his ruling which centred on

Steerpike

Top ten horrors from the Brexit ‘legal advice’

Despite numerous attempts by the government to keep it hidden, the Attorney General’s legal advice has finally been published. The move came after opposition MPs – to whom Mr S is very grateful – found ministers in contempt of Parliament for with-holding the information. Remember our 40 horrors of the deal? Well, Geoffrey Cox’s hotly-anticipated

Nick Cohen

The betrayal of the Brexit bunch

It is now standard on the right to say that the establishment is sabotaging Brexit. I could pick one of half a dozen writers for this magazine, who wallow in the language of victimhood as luxuriantly as any of the alleged snowflakes they so unselfconsciously denounce. The inevitable failure to transfer the impossible demands of

Charles Moore

Should we listen to David Attenborough’s climate change warning?

‘Civilisation faces collapse, Attenborough warns UN.’ That was the Times headline on Tuesday about the great broadcaster’s speech at the latest climate change conference in Poland. In theory, Sir David is always worth hearing. Nevertheless, his solemn warning was made less effective by the decision to print it at the bottom of page 17. I

Ross Clark

Are we heading for a recession? If so, don’t just blame Brexit

So will those Remainers seemingly hoping for a Brexit-related recession get what they want after all? This morning Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI) for the service sector certainly points in that direction. The index, which is really just a questionnaire to businesses but which can give advance warning of swings in economic growth, fell to 50.4

Full text: The Government’s Brexit legal advice

The Government has published its Brexit legal advice, a day after it was found in contempt of Parliament for refusing to do so. Here’s the full text: Legal Effect of the Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland Introduction This note sets out my advice on the question I have been asked as follows: What is the legal

Katy Balls

What did May mean to say with her Commons speech?

After Theresa May’s government made history on Tuesday with three successive Commons defeats – including the first contempt of Parliament defeat since the 1970s – ministers were given no respite with a Brexit debate that ran on until 1am. The Prime Minister’s address to start that session was overshadowed somewhat by the various Commons clashes along