Latest from Coffee House

Thursday

1 Oct 2026

The game you are not allowed to win

Some years ago I heard a moving story about Roy Jenkins. An unpromising start to any anecdote but stay with me. It involved a croquet match during the late period of his life – as Chancellor of the University of Oxford – when Jenkins had become one of the grander, not to say more pompous, figures in Britain's public life. According to someone playing with him, his Lordship had appalling luck. Although he wielded his mallet with all requisite skill, his ball would not go through the hoops. Eventually the grand old man stormed off the pitch in a great huff. Only after he had left did the other players discover that the ball Lord Jenkins had been working was from a different croquet set, and too big to fit through the hoops.

Wednesday

30 Sep 2026

The Spectator

Watch: The Nixon Revival

The Spectator held its first event in Manhattan on Wednesday September 30 — and you can watch the full discussion above. Known to many as “Tricky Dick,” Richard Nixon has often had his legacy reduced to the scandal that brought his presidency crashing down: a break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters, a criminal cover-up, then his resignation. But what if his story is far more complicated? Why has J.D. Vance described Nixon as a “new icon” for young conservatives? And why do some Gen Zers now see him as an “America First” populist pioneer?

Travis Aaroe

Trump relives high school with the tech nerds

Yesterday President Trump and a gaggle of tech barons appeared before the press pack on the White House lawn, fresh from a meeting to sign the “White House Accord” on AI. The atmosphere was jovial. Trump was weaving about, patting the arms of David Sacks and Mark Zuckerberg while the executives chuckled and joked to one another. Anthropic boss Dario Amodei was invited by a journalist to give his précis of the meeting. Amodei haltingly stepped forward, adjusted his glasses, and then began rather frantically chopping the air with his hands as he outlined the benefits and hazards of AI. After he finished he seemed to flee, retreating to the outer edges of the crowd. Trump looked on benignly. An introverted technologist who is somewhat camera shy?

Jonathan Sacerdoti

The heroes who saved the flydubai flight from disaster

This morning a flydubai flight from Dubai to Tel Aviv appears to have been hijacked by its own co-pilot. It ended with the plane on the ground in Tabuk, Saudi Arabia, and all 174 passengers alive, among them 27 children and many Israelis. Very little has been officially confirmed. But what we do know points to a potentially massive disaster that was averted, thanks to the bravery of Israeli passengers and members of the crew. Flight FZ1073, a Boeing 737, left Dubai just after 7 a.m. local time this morning, heading for Ben Gurion Airport. It’s one of the everyday routes that have linked Israel and the Gulf in recent years.

Jim Lawley

Ceuta is a tinderbox

It’s now nearly nine weeks since tens of thousands of migrants poured across the Moroccan frontier into Ceuta. Most quickly returned to Morocco. But estimates of how many are still in Spain’s tiny North African exclave, which has a population of just 83,000, have varied alarmingly. At one point Madrid said that “only” about 5,000 remained. Government sources now accept that around 20,000 were still in Ceuta after July 30; last week Ángel Víctor Torres, the minister in charge of the crisis, put the current figure at around 18,000.

Alexander Munguía

Bernie Moreno’s plan to remake South America

“The American Dream is the dream of the Americas," declared Bernie Moreno to the assembled at Trump Doral – a sprawling golf resort just outside of Miami. The Ohio Senator was there to collect the "Light of Congress" award, bestowed on him by Florida International University’s Adam Smith Center. "We have a window of opportunity right now to transform the Western Hemisphere into a Hemisphere of total prosperity and security," said Moreno, to an audience which included Dominican President Luis Abinader and FIFA's Gianni Infantino. The room rose for this native son of Colombia. Bernie Moreno was born in Bogotá in 1967 and was five when his family moved to Fort Lauderdale. He went on to build a car dealership empire in Ohio.

Daniel DePetris

Why does the EU want its own NATO treaty?

An armed drone conveniently located near a Ukrainian cargo aircraft at Leipzig airport in Germany. Russian drones breaching the airspace of Romania and the Baltics, forcing both to scramble combat aircraft. A Russian airstrike landing dangerously close to a checkpoint near Poland’s border with Ukraine. An assassination of a dissident in the Spanish city of Villajoyosa. Arson attacks from the United Kingdom and France to Estonia. The list of Russian-sponsored gray-zone attacks on the European continent is long and growing by the day, and nobody in Europe seems to have a good idea of how to stop them.

Tuesday

29 Sep 2026

Travis Aaroe

Why do we know so little about the RAF Fairford affair?

On Sunday, three suspicious trucks were spotted speeding toward the Royal Air Force airfield in Fairford, England. Shortly after, five masked men, later identified as British nationals, were detained under the Terrorism Act of 2006 and the Explosives Act of 1875. Had a bomb attack just been foiled? If so who planned it, and to what end? Then, on Monday, the five suspects were abruptly released on bail. President Trump seemed nonplussed by the move. “I would not have released them,” he told reporters, but was full of praise for the conduct of the British authorities. The safety of RAF Fairford is a matter for the American President – it is operated by the US Air Force, the only airfield in Europe that can accommodate its heavy bombers.

Alexander Larman

When will Meghan Markle bring ‘As Ever’ to Britain?

As controversy continues to rage about the “he said/he said” dynamic in Earl Spencer’s damning memoir – and whether Prince Harry knew (and, crucially approved) of the allegations in the book – there is, at least, the opportunity to draw light relief from something rather less consequential. It might seem strange to remember this, given the various other disasters in the world today, but Meghan Markle – now, of course, a resident in Britain once again – is continuing to run her As Ever brand. Even though she no longer has the backing of Netflix and her cursed With Love, Meghan television specials to promote it, it continues to be a going concern. Now, we have been treated to Meghan's dinner party hosting tips. They are neither profound nor revelatory.

Paul Stott

Why did Britain give a Hamas chief’s bodyguard a passport?

The failure of the British state is long-term and corrosive. It emerged this weekend that Mr. X, a former bodyguard of Hamas leader Ismail Haniyeh, was allowed to settle in the UK and given British citizenship – before going on to allegedly coordinate a Hamas terror plot in Germany. He also faces separate terror charges in this country. The case of Mr. X was quickly followed by the news yesterday that Britain's Home Secretary plans to launch a new resettlement scheme which prioritizes Afghan women and girls, and Palestinians of both sexes. By the time Mr. X arrived, a succession of Hamas exiles had already made England their home The chronology as it has emerged so far is well worth examining. From 2006, Mr.

Elisabeth Braw

Is the West ready for the undersea war?

Last spring, a Chinese icebreaker turned up in the tropical waters of Palau. That was after Chinese research vessels arrived uninvited in the waters off Taiwan, Vietnam and the Philippines. In Europe, Russian research vessels and navy ships turn up uninvited too. The ships reveal nothing about the nature of their visits, but create fears of impending cable sabotage. These days, Russia and China are also building lots more submarines, and they’re impressive. Western countries, too, are building submarines, and all the while they’re trying to defend their cables and pipelines. Last week, the UK’s 12-meter Excalibur drone submarine used a testing range off the coast of Scotland to fire a torpedo.

Gavin Mortimer

Will anti-Semitism allegations bring down Jordan Bardella?

Jordan Bardella has described as “delusional” accusations that he railed against Jews at the start of his political career. The 31-year-old president of the National Rally appeared on television on Monday evening and declared the allegations were part of a left-wing wing plot to “destabilize” his party. Bardella will try and ride out the storm in the belief that most of the electorate will believe him and not the left-wing media In an article published on Monday morning, Mediapart alleged that Bardella had made numerous anti-Semitic remarks when he first joined the National Rally (the National Front as it was at the time). Mediapart claims it has seen dozens of private message sent by Bardella on a social media platform between 2013 and 2015, and several disparaged the Jews.

Monday

28 Sep 2026

Alexander Kolyandr

Russia’s economy is slowly rotting

For several years already, every fall, Russia's finance ministry has performed the same ritual. It unveils a budget that looks sober, even responsible, with a shrinking deficit and falling inflation. Every year, it is ignored by reality. The budget for 2027, outlined at the end of last week, is no exception. The headline promise is a deficit of 2.2 percent of GDP next year, about 5.5 trillion roubles ($65 billion), down from roughly 3 percent expected this year. Revenues are to rise by 7.5 percent, which after inflation is barely 1 percent. Spending will grow by less than 6 percent, which after inflation is a cut of about 1 percent. For the first time since the invasion of Ukraine, the government even plans to start refilling the National Welfare Fund, the country's rainy-day savings.

Sam Leith

The real reason kids are giving up reading

Another day, another dispiriting survey about the crisis in childhood reading. Parents who earn more than $130,000 a year are the least likely of all social groups surveyed to read aloud every night to their children. So much for the sharp-elbowed upper-middle classes. Even when we factor in the possibility that the cash-rich and time-poor are outsourcing bedtime stories to nanny, it’s a less than encouraging finding. It tells us something about the dwindling importance of reading to the most successful among us.

Daryna Bondarenko

Ukrainians are struggling to keep going

Each time I fly back to Odesa, my hometown, to see my family, I notice how things have changed since my last visit to Ukraine. Which is to say, how much worse they have become. Take the bombing raids, which used to happen only at night. Now they take place in the daytime as well and have grown much more violent and unpredictable. The Russians send over a cocktail of drones, ballistic missiles and guided aerial bombs. You never know where they’ll hit – residential buildings, shopping centers, pharmacies, trains, you name it (“Russian Roulette” is the new, blackly comic Ukrainian name for it). The war, all the time, is getting closer to you and your loved ones. It used to be happening in another part of your region. Then in another area of your city.

Maximillian Garely

The DSA sincerely dislikes America

Like most evenings recently, I was scrolling X to fill some idle time. Within seconds, I came across a rather rage-inducing post by New York State assembly member and congressional candidate Claire Valdez. Invoking Mexico’s struggle against “empire,” she promised to carry that struggle into Congress. Her framing, focused around the thinly veiled disdain for “empire,” raises an obvious question. What role does America assume in this story? Is the American political community one that she, alongside her DSA (Democratic Socialists of America) comrades, wants to improve, or is it an adversary to be dismantled from within?

Saturday

26 Sep 2026

Scott Diel

Is Estonia really preparing for war with Russia?

“Prepare for war,” was the message from Estonian EU foreign policy chief Kaja Kallas to the European Defence Agency last year. And Estonia has: its 2026 defense expenditure is 5.4 percent of GDP, the second highest in Europe. Citizens are advised by the government to keep an emergency supply of 21 liters of drinking water per person permanently on hand. A survival checklist has also been published, including ready-to-eat, high-energy foods, prescription medications, a bank card, cell phone with charger and a stock of ready cash. The country’s authorities don’t mince their words.

Friday

25 Sep 2026

Freddy Gray

The truth about Xi and Trump’s summit – with Dr. Edward Howell

29 min listen

Freddy speaks with Dr. Edward Howell, an Oxford University lecturer in international relations, about the high-stakes summit between Donald Trump and Xi Jinping, examining Beijing’s strategic desire for global parity, its covert role in enabling an anti-Western alignment alongside Russia, Iran and North Korea, and the escalating geopolitical tensions surrounding Taiwan, trade and economic coercion. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Brendan O’Neill

Spare us Macklemore’s smug braying about Free Palestine

Does Macklemore really want to “Save Gaza” or save his own lame career from the dungheap of history? Yesterday, the self-styled canceled rapper – he’s bloody noisy for someone who’s been silenced – announced that he’s going on tour. It’s called the “Free Palestine” tour. Of course it is. There’s no speedier shortcut to the moral high ground for a has-been half-celeb than on the Gaza bandwagon. Macklemore became the Palestine movement’s holiest martyr when he was dumped from Ed Sheeran’s US tour after yelping “Free Palestine” at 90,000 Sheeran fans in New Jersey. Ivy League leftists idolize him. He’s the patron saint of the keffiyeh cult. “He’s been crucified by the Epstein classes!”, cried every lunatic on the internet.

Ian Williams

What’s the point of the Xi visit?

Moments before President Xi Jinping climbed down the steps of his aircraft to be greeted by Donald Trump, US marines were filmed on their hands and knees smoothing out the red carpet, Chinese officials looking down from the top of the steps. It was an uncomfortable image, ridiculed on social media for the symbolism of kowtowing to the emperor. But it set the tone for a summit which so far has been heavy on pomp and ceremony, rich in platitudes, but with very little in the way of substance. A strong diplomatic case can be made for political fawning – where the power dynamics are lopsided against you, and if there’s a chance of a reasonable payback.

Owen Matthews

The UN is no longer a forum for international peace

Should Russia’s aggressive war on Ukraine, with its accompanying litany of horrific human rights abuses, disqualify it from a seat on the United Nations’ Security Council (UNSC)? That’s what Poland’s feisty foreign minister Radek Sikorski called for yesterday in New York. The UNSC was meant to be a "guardian of peace, not to give immunity to aggressors" like Russia, Sikorski told Polish television. More, he called the legal basis for Russia’s permanent seat at the Security Council table – with its accompanying veto over all resolutions – "questionable" because Moscow took over the USSR’s old seat without a vote. In moral terms, Sikorski has a point – and it’s one that the Ukrainians have been pushing for a while.

Thursday

24 Sep 2026

Terry Barnes

Australia’s OpenAI hack is a wake-up call

Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is someone who doesn’t appear on Donald Trump’s radar. Since Trump’s return to the US presidency last year, Albanese has adopted a “don’t wake the bear” policy, hoping the erratic American President will leave him, and Australia, alone. But the bear needs a prod, now it has emerged that the Australian government's healthcare scheme Medicare was hacked by an autonomous agent from one of the world’s largest AI companies, OpenAI. OpenAI says “our models took actions we did not intend.” The firm told the Australian government that the hack was unintentional, and there is no reason to doubt its assertion. But Albanese is furious, and it is hard to blame him.

Freddy Gray

Is Abdul El-Sayed the next Obama?

Twenty years ago, as America fought in the Middle East, a junior Democratic senator from the Midwest, a forty-something man with a Muslim name, decided he was going to run for president. Against the odds, Barack Hussein Obama of Illinois, who’d dabbled in Marxist academia and whose father was born in Kenya, went on to become the first non-white commander-in-chief. Two decades on, as America fights another war in the Middle East, an even more unconventional Midwestern Democrat is rapidly advancing. Dr Abdulrahman Mohamed El-Sayed, whose father was born in Egypt, is currently the favorite to win his senate race in Michigan in November – even as Republican campaigners spend millions of dollars branding him a terrorist sympathizer.

Wednesday

23 Sep 2026

Owen Matthews

Why Putin is unlikely to attend the Miami G20

Secretary of State Marco Rubio has today announced that the US has invited Vladimir Putin to an upcoming G20 summit in Miami, giving the Russian leader “an opportunity to engage not just with Trump, but with other world leaders.” In one sense, the invitation is an olive branch to Moscow from Washington, so far the only Western nation willing to engage in peace talks with Putin. On the other, it’s a poisoned chalice that the Kremlin has already signaled that Putin will probably not accept. For one, the summit will be held on Trump’s home turf – quite literally, as the venue is the Trump-owned Doral golf resort near Miami. When they met on a US Air Force base in Anchorage, Alaska, last year the two leaders were on more-or-less neutral ground.

Jack Hadfield

The rise of anti-migration direct action in Britain

On Monday and Tuesday, a so-called “mega dinghy” made its way across the English Channel from the coast of Normandy. Originating from the town of Vierville-sur-Mer, near Omaha Beach, the inflatable represented what many Brits would see as a direct reversal of Operation Overlord, which began on D-Day. The prospect of around 60 illegal migrants landing on England's shores, many of whom will likely come from countries with much higher rates of violent crime, was not exactly welcomed in the area. Hundreds of people poured out onto the streets of Gosport, where the Royal National Lifeboat Institution was expected to bring its passengers ashore after scooping them up in English waters.

John Fund

Mamdani’s followers are seizing Berlin

Last Sunday, Germany saw a tale of two election victories. The right-wing Alternative for Deutschland narrowly edged out the left-ish Social Democrats to come first in the backwater state of Mecklenburg-West Pomerania north of Berlin. Massive media coverage focused on the AfD’s success, its allegedly extreme views on immigration and the danger it poses to Germany’s democracy. The next day, the huge media contingent that had camped out in Schwerin, the state capital, returned to the capital of Berlin. It’s where most domestic reporters are based and from where international reporters fly home. Most chose to ignore the results of the Berlin state election held on the same day in which Die Linke (The Left), the legal successor to the East German Communist party, also came first.

Noa Hoffman

Burnham wins over Trump – but can it last?

Britain’s new Prime Minister Andy Burnham yesterday cleared his first major diplomatic hurdle as his meeting with Donald Trump in Manhattan passed without serious incident. During a 30-minute encounter on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly, the President bestowed on Burnham two of his highest compliments, calling him a “natural businessman” and a “great prime minister.” Trump dialed up the niceties further by describing UK-US relations as “more up now than they were with your last prime minister.” Indicating that Burnham had impressed him personally behind closed doors, the President explained that “based on my relationship with your prime minister Andy, I think that we’re doing very well.

Edward Howell

Xi has no interest in stabilizing relations with Trump

When Xi Jinping arrives in Washington today for a much-anticipated summit with President Donald Trump, the Chinese leader will want to show the world that this is more than just an act of reciprocity for hosting the US president four months ago. At a time of ongoing global disputes ranging from trade to the Iran war to the ever-elusive North Korea problem, Beijing will want to give the impression of stabilized relations with the global hegemon. Beneath the surface, however, China shows few signs of altering its worldview. This not only remains fundamentally in opposition to what it calls the “anti-China” West but crucially involves its support for western adversaries, including North Korea. The last time Trump and Xi shared a tête-à-tête was in May.

Sean Thomas

Did AI write the French book of the year?

Many decades ago (or so it seems, it was actually January 2023, but things move fast in AI-world) I wrote a Spectator piece claiming that The End of Writing was coming, thanks to AI. In return for this favor, I got large amounts of angry and derisory scorn, mainly from writerly types, who banged on about the uniqueness of human creation, but also from techy people, who pointed out that as a mere hack I could not possibly know anything about AI, and anyway AI was just a glorified next-word-predictor. The French, being French, have responded with wise philosophy, or cowardly evasion, depending on your taste Now, I'm not the sort of cheap, mean-minded person who says “I told you so,” so I'll just say “I told you so.

Tuesday

22 Sep 2026

Jim Lawley

Could there be a second Ceuta invasion?

Messages circulating in Morocco are calling for another mass crossing into Ceuta, Spain’s North African exclave, on Wednesday. Spain has activated preventive measures and Morocco has reinforced the frontier with security personnel, water cannon, military vehicles and extra road controls. Perhaps nothing will happen. A similar online call for Sunday came to nothing. And Spanish foreign minister José Manuel Albares says the latest messages have not acquired the momentum on social media that preceded the extraordinary events of July 30 and 31. Forewarned may prove to be forearmed.

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump’s UN speech was a blasé affair

Donald Trump remains on a renaming tear. During his Tuesday morning address to the United Nations, he declared that his administration will now “officially” call artificial intelligence “super intelligence” and government documents – “and hopefully the worlds” – will substitute “SI” for “AI.” SI has long stood for Sports Illustrated, but Trump went on to muse “let’s see if I have any power. Maybe I do and maybe I don’t. We’re gonna find out pretty soon.” Indeed we are. The truth is that Trump was appearing at a somewhat ticklish moment for him. The latest polls have his popularity somewhere between 29 to 32 percent. Gas and diesel prices are soaring. Hamburger hovers at around $8 a pound.

Druin Burch

The Hobbit is not a great book

It was 1937, an age away, when JRR Tolkien's book The Hobbit was first released. There are people alive who remember that year, but not many. The Hobbit was published by George Allen & Unwin after Stanley Unwin commissioned a review of the typescript (standard fee, one shilling) from his ten-year-old son, Rayner. When he reviewed The Hobbit, CS Lewis said it was a children’s book “only in the sense that the first of many readings can be undertaken in the nursery.” “Bilbo Baggins was a hobbit,” it read, complete with a ten-year-old’s errors, “who lived in his hobbit-hole and never went for adventures, at last Gandalf the wizard and his dwarves perswaded him to go. He had a very exiting time fighting goblins...

Cockburn

Trump pulls the plug on mainstream TV

The unveiling of President Trump's new helipad on the South Lawn of the White House yesterday was a curious affair. Trump cut a ribbon with the CEO of Lockheed Martin, who donated the helipad, and then attempted to address the media who were present. Viewers on TV could see what was happening – but they could only hear a low, ethereal whooshing noise. The main TV networks’ boom mics were nowhere to be seen – as ABC, CBS, NBC and Fox News suspended their pool coverage of Trump, in solidarity with CNN and MS NOW, whose credentials were arbitrarily revoked by Trump on Friday afternoon. “He pretty much yelled into a static void for nine minutes and then left,” one of Trump's favorite reporters wrote on Instagram.

Monday

21 Sep 2026

Alexander Larman

Is Earl Spencer telling the truth about Charles III?

When Earl Spencer was interviewed by Larry King in 1997, he had nothing but words of praise for the-then Prince Charles, in the aftermath of Diana’s death and funeral. When Larry King asked if the Prince of Wales had had anything to say about Spencer’s fiery eulogy, his guest replied, “Not about the speech, no, but he was perfectly polite all day,” and went on to stress that, “Nothing nasty has ever been said about it by him to me.” Spencer attempted to claim that he was drawing a distinction between Charles as king and Charles as unpleasant brother-in-law.