Latest from Coffee House

Tuesday

18 Aug 2026

Firing a senior banker won’t save Putin’s faltering war economy

In a sign of the unease about Vladimir Putin’s ongoing war in Ukraine that exists behind closed doors in Moscow, one of Russia’s most senior bankers was fired yesterday after a series of critical comments he made earlier in the year about the fragility of Russia’s economy. Warning that Russia was “falling behind” globally both technologically and economically, Andrey Klepach stated the country would fail to win the economic “war of attrition” against Ukraine. “The Ukrainian economy, despite everything, is surviving,” he said. Klepach, chief economist at Russia’s second-largest, state-owned bank VEB, gave a speech in May, during which he linked the pressure on the country’s economy with Putin’s invasion of Ukraine.

Brendan O’Neill

The media didn’t kill Jason Arday

What sounds more like a mob to you? Reporters asking questions about a professor’s résumé and backstory? Or swarms of the perpetually offended damning those reporters as racists, fascists, scum, even murderers? It’s the latter, isn’t it? This is the bleak irony of the Jason Arday tragedy: his self-styled defenders decry the media mob while forging their own frothing mob. They accuse journalists of destroying a man’s life even as they hound those journalists, and libel them as “lynchers,” and demand that they face the kangaroo justice of a public shaming. Arday’s death was a 'modern-day lynching,’ say self-styled anti-racists The people with blood in their nostrils are not the newspapermen who only did their jobs and asked probing questions about a public figure.

Alexander Munguía

Does Brazil want another Bolsonaro?

Last month, two State Department officials were set to make what they called a routine visit to Brazil, ahead of October’s presidential election. Their stated objective was an assessment of election integrity, religious freedom and freedom of expression in Latin America’s largest democracy. Brazil was not convinced. It slammed the door in their faces and denied their visas. Washington insists its diplomats were simply sent to ask questions. Brasília cries foreign interference from a nation that has a history of meddling in Latin American politics. Tensions between the two largest democracies in the Americas have not run this high in decades.

Monday

17 Aug 2026

Eliot Wilson

Why is Trump unhappy about military drills with South Korea?

Donald Trump has instructed his Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth, to “substantially reduce” joint military exercises between the United States and South Korea. The two countries have had a bilateral defense agreement since 1953, and it was in defense of the government in Seoul that 36,500 American service personnel gave their lives during the Korean War. (It is worth noting that, despite the signing of an armistice at Panmunjom in July 1953, the conflict is technically ongoing.) Trump’s hazardous decision to downgrade military cooperation with and support for South Korea has come as a surprise.

Gavin Mortimer

Emmanuel Macron is an embarrassment to France

France’s under-15s can carry on using social media after a parliamentary ban was struck down by the Republic’s constitutional council on Friday. The ruling is a humiliating blow for Emmanuel Macron, who had championed the legislation from the beginning. It had won the backing of both parliament and the Senate last month but the Council had other ideas. In rejecting the Bill, France’s highest constitutional authority judged that it “places a disproportionate restriction on freedom of expression and communication.” Macron heard the news as he enjoyed the surf at his seaside retreat on the Riveria, a break that has already provoked the ire of many. Should the President be gallivanting on a jet-ski when so much of the country is ravaged by destructive wildfires?

Jim Lawley

The Ceuta crisis isn’t over

On July 30 and 31 around 80,000 migrants entered Ceuta from Morocco, according to the Spanish government’s latest estimate. Roughly 90 percent have since gone back. But, according to the government’s estimate, somewhere between 7,000 and 9,000 remain in the Spanish city whose normal population is 83,000. Ceuta’s authorities believe the figure may be as high as 11,000. At least 83 bodies connected with the crossing have been recovered on the Spanish side of the border. Morocco officially acknowledges another 14 deaths but humanitarian organizations have estimated that in total more than 140 people have died since the border was breached.

Cockburn

Nancy Mace paints it black

During her abortive run for governor of South Carolina, Nancy Mace’s signature policy was to remove a tax on boat loan interest – appropriate enough for someone who always seemed to be trimming her sails to catch the wind. After January 6 the newly minted Congresswoman declared that Donald Trump had no future in the GOP. But after his fortunes revived, she refashioned herself as a Trump loyalist and was a key figure in the effort to oust the then-House Speaker Kevin McCarthy. A rather monomaniacal focus on transgenders in women’s bathrooms and women’s sports followed, coinciding with the peak of public interest in that issue from 2021-23.

Patrick West

Jason Arday wasn’t the victim of a ‘racist witch hunt’

For decades, voices on the liberal and progressive left have invariably rolled out the terror-inducing accusation of “racism” in order to get their way and silence opponents. It’s thus unsurprising to see, in the wake of British academic Jason Arday’s death, that they're still resorting to this cynical tactic, and in this case, to absolve themselves of responsibility for having exploited this vulnerable man in the first place. To call it a ‘witch hunt’ is predictable and unfounded hyperbole In response to Arday’s death, Jo Grady, general secretary of Britain’s University and College Union, said the “level of harassment he suffered and the racism he was subjected to has been sickening.

Edward Howell

How Russia and China are helping North Korea dodge sanctions

If you were Kim Jong-un, you’d be pretty happy right now. North Korea’s third supreme leader is not only the hermit kingdom’s most successful leader – he is also the richest. With the sanctions-stricken country having amassed over $20 billion in foreign currency earnings as of last year, Kim is at his most emboldened since he took power in December 2011. As more North Korean artillery, missiles, and manpower head in Moscow’s direction to aid its war against Ukraine, Kim knows that for now, North Korea can count on its Cold War patrons of Russia and China for brotherly support. Pyongyang’s neighbors offer a crucial helpline in circumventing international sanctions and ensuring the Kim regime continues to reap rewards. North Korea is no stranger to evading sanctions.

Sunday

16 Aug 2026

Brendan O’Neill

Jason Arday’s death is dreadful – and enraging

Behold the human wreckage of the cult of diversity. The tragedy of Jason Arday is that he was both built up and destroyed by the ruthless machinery of DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion). The academy made him into the golden boy of its philistine project of “decolonization” and gave not one thought to what the consequences might be if his thin story unraveled, as it inevitably would. No one can deny it now: wokeness makes false gods and real tragedies. Journalists found a story and they told it. It was the academy and Arday’s colleagues who failed to do their jobs The death of Arday is not only dreadful – it is enraging. It feels like a catastrophe foretold.

Saturday

15 Aug 2026

Melanie McDonagh

The tragedy of Jason Arday

Simon Baron-Cohen, the distinguished Cambridge autism specialist, has been speaking movingly about his friend, Jason Arday, in a BBC radio interview. Baron-Cohen said the last contact he had with Arday was hours before he was found dead at an address in south London yesterday afternoon: “He really wasn't coping. He was being subjected to relentless scrutiny... ridicule, discrediting every detail of his life... He wasn't coping with the loss of his career, the loss of his reputation. He felt he couldn't go on.” Jason Arday was a victim, but not in the way that his political champions suggest Baron-Cohen went on to talk about him as “an incredibly kind and gentle and caring and generous man”.

Friday

14 Aug 2026

Freddy Gray

What really happened to Karoline Leavitt?

Freddy is joined by Jacob Heilbrunn, editor of the National Interest and a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, for a tour around the houses of Trumpworld. Karoline Leavitt has resigned as White House press secretary, officially to spend more time with her young family, and Washington is busy deciding whether to believe it. Freddy and Jacob discuss who might replace her and what the exit says about the mood inside the West Wing; why Trump's approval rating has sunk to a level last seen under Nixon in 1974; whether the wars in Ukraine and Iran are edging the world toward something larger; and why Jacob thinks a presidency that broke every rule about who can reach the White House may end up clearing the path for AOC. Learn how to earn yield on gold, paid in gold, at Monetary-Metals.

Nigel Biggar

Who decides if a word is racist?

I swear Rod Liddle was smiling down on me last week, as I found myself tussling with an editor. I’d written a sentence containing the word “Chinamen.” She wanted me to remove it, because, she said, “Chinaman” is widely acknowledged to be a racial slur. In my view, words have no single intrinsic meaning. Within limits, they can mean a variety of things, differing according to context – not least the tone of voice in which they’re delivered. Even “Yes” can mean “No,” when said by an Englishman trained in the subtle art of oblique speech.

Freddy Gray

AOC, the radical for normies

According to the prediction betting markets, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez is now favorite to be the Democratic nominee in 2028. Given that the Democrats are strongly expected to win back the presidency, that suggests the 36-year-old congresswoman from the Bronx has an extremely good chance of being America’s first female Commander-in-Chief. Indeed, she’s now also neck-and-neck with Marco Rubio in the "Presidential Election Winner" market, on 13 percent. Vice President J.D. Vance, it should be added, remains the clear leader on 23 percent. But AOC’s popularity is surging as the Democrats prepare for their big comeback moment as the midterm elections approach.

Ross Clark

Nigel Farage has been strengthened

Nigel Farage has been reelected as the Member of Parliament for Clacton. He resigned last month to force a contest in his seaside constituency following a series of news stories about his financial affairs. The central claim is that before becoming an MP in 2024, Farge received £5 million from a crypto investor and failed to declare it to the parliamentary authorities once he was elected. The people who have been most embarrassed by this bizarre by-election are the liberal left The Reform UK leader decided it was better to go to the voters than wait for some anonymous parliamentary inquiry to determine whether he had breached the rules. None of the main political parties ran a candidate against him, attempting to portray his by-election as a vanity project.

Thursday

13 Aug 2026

Lara Brown

Class clowns: the triumph of inanity over British academia

Daniel Defoe observed that plague victims “never perceiv’d that they were infected” until they discovered the “tokens” on their skin. By that point, “nothing could follow but certain Death”. Something similar might be said of Britain’s universities. In recent days, the Jason Arday affair has captured the world’s attention because of its absurdity. But the humiliation of Cambridge is not an early sign of infection. It is just a particularly visible bubo. At one level, Arday’s fall reveals how, even in the most elite universities, DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) dogma has warped intellectual standards to the point of madness.

Tanika D’Souza

AOC and the dishonest business of egg freezing

"All of these men often times who are saying, ‘oh if you haven't had a kid by 30 like you're done,' it's just not supported," said Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, in a video uploaded to her Instagram Story on Sunday night. The 36-year-old congresswoman has announced to her audience of 9.6 million followers that she, like a growing number of American women, has decided to freeze her eggs. She continued, "Don't trust the people writing abortion laws, that don't even understand the first thing about a woman's body, to tell you about how many eggs you have at what age.

James Johnson

The truth about the Democratic base

Tuesday evening saw the second polling upset in as many weeks in the Midwest. In Wisconsin’s Democratic gubernatorial primary, David Crowley beat democratic socialist Francesca Hong by half a percentage point. It was a margin that bore almost no relationship to the polling which had Hong ahead by an average of 20 points. A week earlier, Michigan told the same story: though extreme left candidate Abdul El-Sayed won the Democratic Senate primary by 48.5 percent to Haley Stevens’s 47.5 percent, his one-point margin was significantly less than the ten-point margin the polling average had it at. Across the country, socialist candidates are finding – at the primaries stage – that they are not the slam-dunk choice of the Democratic party grassroots.

DETROIT, MICHIGAN - AUGUST 7: People attend a Michigan Democrats Unity Rally for Democrats who won their Primary election on August 7, 2026 in Detroit, Michigan. The rally brings together Michigan Democrat U.S. Senate Nominee Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan gubernatorial nominee and current Michigan Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, and others. (Photo by Bill Pugliano/Getty Images)

Blake Neff

There’s a logic to Donald Trump’s incendiary diplomacy

On his very first day as Colombia’s new President, Abelardo de la Espriella received a dramatic house-warming gift: a billion dollars, courtesy of Donald Trump. Three days later, a magnitude 7.4 earthquake struck the country – but correlation is not causation. The President’s ten-figure donative arrived as aid for the militarized crackdown de la Espriella has promised against Colombia’s fearsome drug cartels and jungle guerrillas. And de la Espriella quickly showed himself eager to align with President Trump by adding Colombia to the Shield of the Americas, Trump’s signature new venture in Latin America. With this old-fashioned exchange of gifts, de la Espriella became the newest member of the eclectic global club of Trump allies. This is not a stable alliance.

Wednesday

12 Aug 2026

Rose George

Let cyclists pee in public

Demi Vollering, Juliette Berthet and Célia Gery are phenomenal athletes. They are all in the FDJ United-SUEZ cycling team and all competed in the Tour de France Femmes. Vollering even won it. So you would think they would be inspirational for millions of people worldwide, and especially millions of young girls who now know that they too can be badass cyclists one day. UCI just throws out so many fines for urine infractions – to men and women Except that four days ago, Vollering, Berthet and Gery were fined CHF100 (about $120) by the UCI (International Cycling Union), the world governing body for cycle racing. What had they done? Dastardly pro cycling tactics?

Cockburn

Mike Lindell’s sleepless night

Mike Lindell is not ready to rest his weary head. The MyPillow magnate stepped aside from his bedding business to run as a Republican for the governorship of Minnesota – and earned President Trump’s “COMPLETE AND TOTAL ENDORSEMENT.” Sadly for him, primary voters in the Land of 10,000 Lakes didn’t heed his call to arms: with 95 percent of the vote counted, Lindell trails Minnesota House Speaker Lisa Demuth by over 45,000 votes. Lindell was infamously subject to defamation lawsuits from voting machine companies Dominion and Smartmatic for claiming they had rigged the 2020 presidential election against Trump. Naturally, he smells foul play in his own defeat. Earlier this morning, Lindell told a huddle of press that there were “problems with the computers.

Freddy Gray

Is America ready for the new realities of war? With Steve Hsu

25 min listen

Freddy speaks to physicist and Spectator contributor Steve Hsu about the uncomfortable realities of modern warfare. Why are cheap missiles and drones so difficult and expensive to intercept? Freddy asks Steve about just how depleted America’s missile stocks are, and if the West can rebuild its defense industry quickly enough. They also discuss China’s dominance of critical supply chains, the vulnerability of energy infrastructure and shipping, the strategic threat posed to Taiwan, Japan and South Korea, and why missile defense may be losing its long-standing race against missile technology. Learn how to earn yield on gold, paid in gold, at Monetary-Metals.com/Americano https://www.youtube.com/watch?

America's hidden missile vulnerability | with Steve Hsu

Freddy Gray

Francesca Hong’s defeat won’t stop the DSA

So, at time of writing, it looks as if voters don’t want to cancel Thanksgiving – on balance, at least. Come November, however, few Democrats will be expressing gratitude for their party’s vote-tabulation systems. Francesca Hong, it seems, will not be America’s first avowedly socialist state governor. She appears to have just lost an extremely tight primary to David Crowley, a Milwaukee County executive, in the gubernatorial primary in Wisconsin. Her failure does not mean that Democratic voters are returning to the establishment’s preferred path The long-view – and already ubiquitous – reaction to this news is to mark it down as a major blow for the Democratic Socialists of America and their bid to take over the Democratic establishment.

Tuesday

11 Aug 2026

Andrew Gilligan

Meet Farah Ahmed, Jason Arday’s colleague

After the Jason Arday disaster, here is new evidence that things have gone deeply wrong at Cambridge University. We can reveal that a former supporter of Hizb ut-Tahrir, now banned as a terror group, has been appointed assistant research professor of education at Cambridge, in the same faculty as Arday. Farah Ahmed has explicitly attacked “western education” as a “threat” to Muslims, condemned democracy and integration, and criticized British schools for teaching pupils that child marriage is wrong. During her time at Cambridge, she has written that the Islamic concept of education is sharply opposed to “gaining literacy and numeracy and other disciplinary skills demonstrated through qualifications.

Ryan Modarres

Is Iran softening on the veil?

The Islamic Republic of Iran has made many concessions in its long decline. Until now, it stood firm on one rule: women must remain covered. The veil, it has insisted since the 1979 Revolution, was a divine instruction. But apparently divine instructions can lapse. This summer, a young woman appeared at a pro-government rally in a pink top and acid-washed jeans, her hair loose on her shoulders. She addressed the camera while standing among a crowd of women veiled from head to toe. Rather remarkably, the footage went on state television. Five years ago, that footage would have been evidence for a prosecution. Now, it is propaganda. The veil used to divide the pious from the impious.

Jacob Heilbrunn

Is Donald Trump becoming the new Jimmy Carter?

One day President Trump wants to dial down hostilities with Iran. “We’re low-keying” the conflict, he said Sunday. A day later, though, he was keyed up. After Tehran demanded reparations from Washington as part of its attempt to resurrect June's Memorandum of Understanding, Trump said on Truth Social that it was the Iranians who should: Compensate America for all of the people that they have killed and gravely wounded with their roadside bombs and many conflicts, for which they are famous, as led initially by General Soleimani, including the families of those killed on the USS Cole, and thousands of others killed in combat. Now it is Trump who has become a hostage of Tehran The problem is simple. For all his bluster about staring down the mad mullahs, Trump is on the run.

Simon Diggins

What is the point of the new ‘Muslim NATO?’

Pakistan’s defense minister, Khawaja Asif, rather excitedly proclaimed a new defense agreement – the Mecca Joint Defense Agreement – between Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and Turkey as the beginnings of a “Muslim NATO” last week. He proceeded to call on Muslim countries to set aside their differences and join them. The key clause – that an attack on any one of the three countries would be considered an attack on them all – is virtually the same as NATO’s much-vaunted Article 5, widely regarded as the underpinning of that alliance.

Cockburn

Tucker, Hunter and the new center

“We’re from the same place… I went to school with your high-school girlfriend,” Tucker Carlson reminds Hunter Biden at the beginning of their interview. Much like Donald Trump, Hunter and Tucker style themselves as establishment insiders gone rogue. Hunter wrote Carlson’s son a letter of recommendation that was later found on the infamous laptop, Tucker recalls. “You and I both know the Epstein class very well,” says Hunter, ruefully adding that he was afforded “incredible privileges” because of his father. At one point Tucker motions to a picture on the wall of his great-grandfather with Teddy Roosevelt. Their chat, released on YouTube yesterday, comes across as a sort of family affair.

Catherine Ellis

The Colombia earthquake is a major test for its new president

When Abelardo de la Espriella was sworn in as Colombia’s president on August 7, he had a long list of problems he wanted to tackle. An earthquake was not one of them. Yet just three days after his inauguration in Cali, the country was hit by a magnitude 7.4 quake. Videos of the devastation show some buildings in Cali damaged or completely collapsed, residents trapped under broken concrete and tangled metal and locals and rescue teams scrambling to find survivors. Across parts of Colombia, the picture was similar. The earthquake struck near San José del Palmar, in Chocó, one of Colombia’s poorest and most remote departments. Damage was also reported in and around the coffee-growing region, including cities such as Pereira and Manizales.

Monday

10 Aug 2026

Peter Wood

Jason Arday and the Dukes and Dauphins of DEI

The Music Man, The Sting, Catch Me If You Can: movies and theater have a rich tradition of stories about imposters who manage to fool a lot of people. The literary branch includes the Duke and the Dauphin in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Herman Melville’s riverboat epic, The Confidence-Man. Indeed, tricksters are found almost everywhere stories are told. Native Americans have their tales of Coyote. Ananse, the spider, a key figure in West African and African-American folklore. We admire the cleverness of such cozeners, at least in fiction. Their victims often get what they deserve. The DEI agenda, as long as it prevails, will ensure a long line of Jason Arday fabulists And this may be the case with Jason Arday too.

Jason Arday at Cambridge (Credit: YouTube)

Melanie McDonagh

Has the hounding of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor gone too far?

God, the avenging Furies had nothing on the Jeffrey Epstein industry when it comes to the pursuit of its quarry. The latest installment in the ongoing excoriation of Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor is the revelation in the Mail on Sunday that the former Prince may, when he dies, receive a royal funeral. That is to say, it has learned that the King’s brother “remains on a secret government list of royals who will receive high-profile funerals, even though he became a private citizen following revelations of his friendship with pedophile Jeffrey Epstein.” Alas, there are no further details. The paper however surmises that it may involve a funeral service at St. George’s chapel, Windsor, and burial at Frogmore cemetery along with other members of his family. What do we actually want?

Margaret Mitchell

Americans deserve burrito abundance

It’s a tough time to be in the business of burrito-making. The price of beef is on the rise. A farm supplying Taco Bell’s shredded lettuce was linked to the spread of cyclospora – a parasite whose laxative effects have been, for at least two people in Michigan, fatal. The latest salmonella outbreak, traced to jalapeños from Mexico, has driven Chipotle and Qdoba to announce recalls. And now, a $20 burrito has become a symbol of GOP infighting. It’s tainted, through and through. The argument began when Andrew Kolvet, a spokesman for Turning Point USA, wrote on X: “One of our TPUSA college students gave me his take on affordability: ‘A burrito shouldn’t cost $20.

The $20 burrito has become an unlikely point of contention in Republican politics

Fraser Nelson

‘I asked for a substitute for the f-word. He suggested the c-word’: the joy of editing Rod

It was in Westminster Magistrates’ Court, where I was sitting waiting for the judge’s verdict, that I decided I needed a better way of handling Rod Liddle’s column. As editor of this magazine, I had inherited one of its greatest writers; a force of nature loved by his readers for his bravery and candor. But it sometimes led to difficulties: in this case, criminal prosecution. The judge had a choice: prosecute our owners, the editor, or the magazine. The magazine was fined. “Rod was right,” I was told by Aidan Barclay, who as proprietor had nearly ended up in the dock himself. “But truth is no defense. Not any more. You need to spot these things before they blow up.

Sunday

9 Aug 2026

John Power

Fact check: the many claims of Jason Arday

Jason Arday has resigned from his post at the University of Cambridge, but as the story rumbles on and new revelations about him emerge by the hour, The Spectator thought it would be useful to create a comprehensive reference guide of all the outlandish claims made by our modern-day Walter Mitty. Arday claimed that he went to both South America and West Africa to install water points Athletic prowess Arday claimed that he once ran 600 miles between Edinburgh and London in six days for charity, an accomplishment which would put him in the upper tier of world ultra marathon runners. He also claimed that he ran run 30 marathons in 35 days. On the 21st marathon he suffered from an epileptic fit and fractured his leg after falling down.