Latest from Coffee House

Friday

7 Aug 2026

Amanda Knox should not do comedy

I am a great believer that there should be no unbroachable topic in comedy, as long as the person broaching it does so in a funny enough fashion. This, however, does not mean that this person should always be entitled to do so. Had Jimmy Savile launched into a new stand-up career eulogizing the joys of pedophilia and necrophilia, I am not sure that he would have been playing to enthusiastic audiences, no matter how good the jokes, and while Andrew Mountbatten-Windsor proved to be inadvertently hilarious while discussing everything from Pizza Express to sweating on the BBC show Newsnight, I am not sure he would be cheered to the rafters at an open-mic night at his local Jongleurs.

Thursday

6 Aug 2026

Olivia Potts

Grasshopper Pie is like a teenage fever dream

Grasshopper pie is an unlikely dish: bright green, mint-flavored, combined with obscure liqueurs and set with marshmallows, all sitting in an Oreo crust. It feels like the fever dream of a sweet-toothed teenager who’s been let loose on their parents’ drinks cabinet, and will regret it tomorrow. The pie is based on the cocktail of the same name, which combines equal parts crème de menthe, crème de cacao blanc and cream. It’s a heady mix of mint, white chocolate, dairy and alcohol. The cocktail hails from New Orleans and its origin is claimed by Tujague’s in the French Quarter, where it was supposedly invented by the owner, Philip Guchet, in 1918. It tastes exactly as you’d imagine and is, forgive me, far better suited to a pie filling than it is to a drinks party.

Alex Alfirraz Scheers

How nukes made the world safer

Three hours after daybreak, a blinding flash ripped through the morning sky. August 6, 1945, began as a tranquil and clear day in Hiroshima. By 8:15, the Enola Gay, an American B-29 bomber, reduced Japan’s seventh-largest city to cinders. Three days later, on August 9, Nagasaki would suffer the same fate. For the first and only time in human history, atomic bombs were used in anger. Eighty-one years on from the atomic bombings of Japan, the uncomfortable truth is that nuclear weapons are the reason that World War Three has been avoided. Because nuclear weapons were part of the equation, those crises eventually de-escalated Yet according to the latest survey on nuclear weapons by the Pew Research Center, 69 percent of the American public thinks that they make the world less safe.

Eliot Wilson

Marco Rubio’s defense spending call is nothing new

This week Ed Miliband made his first trip to Washington DC since becoming Andy Burnham’s Foreign Secretary. He is 56 now, an MP of more than 20 years’ standing in his fourth cabinet role, yet there is something both boyish and gauche about him: the eternal younger brother. How would he fare as Britain’s envoy to President Trump and the cult of MAGA? Miliband had been invited to Washington by Secretary of State Marco Rubio after the pair met at an Association of South East Asian Nations foreign ministers’ conference in the Philippines last month. It had been rumored that the Trump administration was disappointed at Burnham’s selection of Miliband as Foreign Secretary, insofar as it is possible to imagine President Trump displaying much interest in the matter at all.

Mary Dejevsky

Why does the UK need an inquiry into Jeffrey Epstein?

Forgive me, but I could not help shouting “Please, please, not another one”, when the BBC’s Newsnight announced, at the start of a breathless breaking news special, that the UK government had seemingly opened the door to a public inquiry into Jeffrey Epstein’s activities in Britain. “Survivors” – forgive me again, I just can’t use this word in this context without inverted commas – and campaigners on their behalf have been exultant ever since. In fact, the revelation wasn’t quite as categorical as has been made out.

Geoffrey Cain

Who funds the DSA?

On July 18, Hasan Piker – a Twitch streamer who has made millions denouncing capitalism – addressed the national convention of the Democratic party’s student wing in a gray tunic suit of the kind Mao Zedong wore. Days later, a stream resurfaced in which Piker, broadcasting from China, called Mao “one of the great leaders of this world.” His clarification, that there were “a lot of excesses, let’s be real,” is the tone of a man returning a fish that a restaurant served over-salted, not of one contemplating tens of millions dead. Nobody would need to care if the socialists were losing.

Wednesday

5 Aug 2026

Owen Matthews

A grim turning point has been reached in Russia’s war on Ukraine

An important turning point has been reached in Russia’s war on Ukraine. But unfortunately for Kyiv, it’s not the “tide is turning” in Ukraine’s favor narrative that Volodymyr Zelensky has been pushing ever since his long-range drone attacks began smashing oil refineries and logistics warehouses deep inside Russia and sinking dozens of ships in the Sea of Azov. Rather, last night not one of the 27 ballistic missiles fired by Russia at and around Kyiv was shot down. At least 17 people were killed and a series of huge warehouses and major Ukrainian retail outlets were devastated. No grain vessels have docked for almost two weeks as Ukraine's summer harvest season enters full swing By the terrible arithmetic of war, the casualty numbers were not in themselves game-changing.

Jim Lawley

Pedro Sánchez is stubbornly clinging on to power

With Spain still reeling from the extraordinary scenes in Ceuta, the country's Socialist Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez has decamped to La Mareta, the government’s palatial retreat on Lanzarote. Before beginning his holiday, he made a brief visit to the exclave, where, according to Madrid, some 72,000 migrants crossed from Morocco and the local authorities say 88 bodies were recovered. Nearly a week later, Ceuta’s government says 3,000 to 5,000 migrants remain; Madrid puts the figure at 2,500. Around 400 are still living on El Trampolín beach, sheltering under blankets and makeshift structures. Food and water are now being distributed, but provision has been patchy: some say they went up to five days without food. Sanitation remains rudimentary.

Michael Simmons

Has Abdul El-Sayed just saved Trump?

The left-wing insurgent Abdul El-Sayed is slightly ahead of the establishment-backed congresswoman, Haley Stevens, with more than 90 percent of the votes counted in the Michigan primaries. Freddy speaks to Alex Castellanos who has written a piece for The Spectator explaining why the DSA's success could be a triumph for Trump, how they reflect a similar political outcome to Trump's populist split in the Republican party and what today's result could mean for the primaries ahead. Learn how to earn yield on gold, paid in gold, at Monetary-Metals.com/Americano https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Adam James Pollock

Welcome to Tivat, the ‘Monaco of the Balkans’

“Quiet luxury” is all the rage these days, the social media algorithms tell me. On Instagram and TikTok, Americans inform their followers that clothing with no visible branding is a true status signifier, before extolling the virtues of Barbour jackets and Loro Piana shoes. Aspirational people shouldn’t drive flashy new cars, they argue; instead, they should drive a 30-year-old Range Rover – as if the inevitable engine rebuild wouldn’t cost more than most people would spend on a car. When decorating, millennial gray is wrong, garish and uninteresting; everything must be sage green with brass accents. There is nothing more quiet and luxurious than the B&Q color-matching desk.

Maximillian Garely

Mamdani is learning how to rig the system

New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani campaigned on freezing rents for rent-stabilized tenants. Since taking office earlier this year, he has done just that. How? By appointing two-thirds of the supposedly independent Rent Guidelines Board. Last month, the board voted to freeze rents on one and two year leases, affecting a million properties. It’s the biggest NYC rent freeze in living memory. Right-wing populists have long been accused of attacking independent institutions and undermining their credibility. Their left-wing counterparts appear to have developed a subtler, more insidious approach. Instead of attacking institutions, they capture them. In doing so, they predetermine outcomes and present the result as an independent judgment.

David Shipley

The British justice system is collapsing

Just over a week ago, Britain's new prime minister Andy Burnham came under attack over the impending early releases from prison. His critics included the widow of Andrew Harper, a policeman killed on duty in 2019 by being dragged behind a car for a mile. Andrew’s widow, Lissie, described the possible early release of two of his killers as “deplorable.” Burnham insisted that “keeping the public safe will be my top priority” and said of the early release policy that he would “look at in detail before we go further forward.” Clearly Burnham wanted to do anything to avoid being the PM who released rapists early.

Ben Clerkin

Has Abdul El-Sayed just saved Trump?

Just a few hours before Abdul El-Sayed narrowly won the Democratic Senate primary in Michigan, he told me that he was going to “beat the shit” out of his Republican opponent, Mike Rogers, in the November general election. His tactic, he explained in a Detroit farmers’ market yesterday, would be to “staple his [Rogers’s] sins to his forehead.” What those sins were, El-Sayed wouldn’t say. He has in the past criticized Rogers as a "corporate shill" who prioritized pharmaceutical and corporate interests over Michiganders while in Congress. November looks likely to be a fight between capitalism and communism In truth, although he did scrape to victory last night, it was El-Sayed who almost had the shit beaten out of him by Haley Stevens, a mainstream Democrat.

Tuesday

4 Aug 2026

Cockburn

Trump’s White House helipad do-over

Get to the chopper... but not yet. More construction is underway at the White House, as President Trump has directed contractors to redo their work on the new helipad, a project that started at the beginning of July. Photos taken show crews taking apart their hard work. According to the Washington Post, Trump is "frustrated with its appearance”, and is questioning its placement on the sloped lawn of the White House. Two anonymous sources say he’s debating whether “the slope of the White House lawn needs to be changed.” You cannot question an artist's process. Construction began on the helipad even before it was announced publicly, with the goal of completing the project before President Xi Jinping visits in late September.

Gus Carter

How did Hollywood fall so far?

Gus Carter is joined by Peachy Keenan to talk about the end of Hollywood as we know it. They discuss how the traditional Hollywood business model is faltering, overtaken by the rise of streaming giants. They also highlight how these platforms, initially seen as the new frontier for film, are now grappling with their own economic challenges. Gus and Peachy also talk about how these challenging times are offering opportunity to new upstarts and directors looking to make their mark on the film industry. Learn how to earn yield on gold, paid in gold, at Monetary-Metals.com/Americano Produced by Henry Lloyd. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Gareth Roberts

Why progressives were desperate to believe Jason Arday

The Jason Arday affair has been a great revealer. On the one hand, it is a glorious romp that has brought much-needed mirth to Britain. On the other, the exposure of Professor Arday isn’t really about the guileless Arday himself, but the establishment that elevated him. It has served up a moment of unavoidable clarity in which the nonsense of progressivism stands exposed like the imperial scrotum. Arday himself can hardly be blamed for this scandal. Like Puff the magic dragon, he is notable only for the effect he had on others It is a perfect storm. We have a fantasist in an environment where, for political and social status reasons, everyone takes his claims at face value, or pretends that they do because to express doubt would be to invite unwanted attention.

Vuk Vukovic

Trump’s posts aren’t alpha

For up to $100,000 a month, investment banks, hedge funds and algorithmic trading firms can now buy access to President Trump's Truth Social posts milliseconds before they are made public. The premise is that Trump’s posts move markets so much that getting access to these posts mere milliseconds earlier is enough to gain an edge in the market – the elusive alpha that hedge funds are so obsessed with. Critics are labeling it a blatant violation of insider information laws. Without going into the legality of the offering, I want to challenge Trump's claim about the actual value of early access to his posts. We found no evidence of any systematic trading strategy that could deliver a profit Given Trump’s continuous impact on markets, I decided to run an experiment.

Alex Castellanos

The Democrats’ Big Tent excuse

Somewhere in a Republican advertising agency, a young man is enjoying a cigar, ordering pizza and assembling the following TV ad. It begins with a Democratic congressman from a competitive district looking reasonable in a manly lumberjack shirt. “The Democratic party is a Big Tent,” he says. The screen goes dark. The announcer says, “A Big Tent? Big enough for what?

Owen Matthews

Two wars are becoming one

Alarmed western observers are warning that the wars in Ukraine and Iran could merge into a single region-wide conflict. Ukrainian drones struck an Iranian oil platform, a Russian missile boat, and sanctioned cargo ships in the Caspian Sea late last month. But in truth, Kyiv has regarded Iran as a combatant in the Ukraine war since the summer of 2022, when the first Shahed drones arrived in Russian-occupied Crimea and Kherson. These drones were accompanied by instructors from Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps who trained Russian operators in their use. Moreover, this was not even Ukraine’s first strike on an Iranian target in the Caspian.

Monday

3 Aug 2026

Freddy Gray

My debt to Rod Liddle

Rod Liddle got me into journalism. We always had The Spectator lying around the house when I was young. I soon learned to turn to him first, as most good readers of the magazine do. My father and I would often read his columns aloud to each other and laugh ourselves into fits. That was Rod’s sublime talent: he made people LOL, long before the internet did. My first job was at the Catholic Herald, and my then-boss Damian Thompson advised me to improve my writing by copying out the articles of my favorite columnist. I chose Rod, obviously, though of course I could never dream of imitating his style or imaginative wit. I particularly enjoyed his fascination with "the nematode worm which stabs itself to death with its own penis.

Rod Liddle

As mad as it gets

Rod Liddle, associate editor of The Spectator, has died aged 66. This is the first column he wrote for the magazine on March 9, 2002. It's always a life-affirming moment – for me, at least. The aeroplane has groaned and wheezed its way up, up, above the city and – improbably, to my mind – established a sort of equilibrium with the ethereal new world around it. The engines begin to sound more at ease. Perhaps I won't die this time, after all. And then, the seatbelt signs flick off, and from somewhere far down the aisle, towards first class, there comes the chinkety-chink-chink of the trolley. So, I am not going to die – and, better still, I'm going to be given a nice drink.

The Spectator

Rod Liddle, 1960-2026

Rod Liddle, The Spectator’s associate editor, has died at the age of 66. Rod, who was also a columnist for the Sunday Times of London and Sun, died at the James Cook University hospital in Middlesbrough yesterday evening, following a short illness. His children, Wilder, Tyler and Emmy said in a statement: “We’re all very saddened and shocked at the sudden passing of our wonderful father. He raised us much as you might imagine, to be inquisitive, brave and always humorous. Even in hospital in the last few weeks, he consistently held the room and never let the awful situation show. He has left a legacy that we are all incredibly proud of, he will always be our guide on how to live an extraordinary life.

Philip Patrick

America can’t let the Japanese yen fail

In an extremely rare bilateral move, the US and Japan have intervened to shore up the Japanese yen, which has been steadily losing value and sliding towards a 40-year low. The news was confirmed by the Japanese Finance Ministry this morning. President Trump preceded the announcement by explaining that the US was “always there to help Japan.” In truth, there wouldn’t have been much point in denying it – a Reuters photo showed a memo on US Secretary of the Treasury Scott Beasant's desk with the simple instruction “To Do – Buy Japanese Yen (JPY) 5-10 billion.” The dollar fell to 157 yen after the announcement, well down from the 164 (considered by Morgan Stanley the highest tolerable point for the Japanese government) of the previous week. This is an extraordinary move.

Gus Carter

Is China winning the AI race now?

Gus Carter is joined by Geoffrey Cain to speak about the ongoing developments in Chinese AI, and how it stacks up to its American rivals. Gus and Geoffrey talk about the emergence of Kimi K3, and how Chinese models will become inherently more competitive to global audiences, not just those the United States. They also discuss the OpenAI model that went rogue, and how other US models refused to undertake research to prevent the same from happening again. Learn how to earn yield on gold, paid in gold, at Monetary-Metals.com/Americano Produced by Henry Lloyd https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Gavin Mortimer

The Ceuta chaos could make Marine Le Pen president

European Union interior ministers will hold an emergency video conference on Tuesday to discuss last week’s events in Spain's North African enclave of Ceuta. More than 60,000 Moroccans surged across the border, and although the majority have returned the invasion has traumatized many member states. Italy and Denmark initiated the meeting and soon had the support of twenty other EU countries. In a letter to the European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen, the 22 leaders declared: “We have a duty to effectively deter and relentlessly combat illegal migration, by coordinating our action, strengthening our external borders and addressing all policies that can serve as pull factors.

Sunday

2 Aug 2026

Anastasia Brown

Gen Z is going back to physical media

One of my friends has never made her own playlist. “I just get on Spotify and use what the algorithm has made for me,” she says. “If I’m in a good mood, I ask for a ‘happy playlist’.” Then again, I also have friends who are going out of their way to make life less easy. Three of them recently purchased flip phones with no internet connection. Others have bought digital cameras to lug along to every event. CDs are popping up in the center consoles of some of their cars. Even ‘purchasing’ a movie or TV show on a streaming platform doesn’t guarantee your ownership Is this just an extreme extension of the Y2K aesthetic that has overtaken Instagram feeds?

Saturday

1 Aug 2026

David Goodhart

Ceuta should be a wake-up call for Europe

The scenes at Ceuta are eerily reminiscent of aspects of the infamous anti-immigration French novel, The Camp of the Saints by Jean Raspail – in which Western countries are overrun by mass immigration from India. They also illustrate Europe’s recent asylum crisis in a nutshell. A “luxury belief” ruling by liberal Spanish judges making it harder to deport people, a surge of people from a poor or middle-income country that the authorities in the receiving country are unwilling to resist with force, while the authorities in the sending country are either indifferent or happy to cause their neighbor political discomfort. It has echoes of the Syrian surge in 2015 and the explosion of small boat Channel crossings after 2018.

Peter Wood

What the Odyssey means to America

In 1899 Jack London, beginning his career as a writer, sold a story to Atlantic Monthly for $120. Drawing on his experiences during the Klondike gold rush and on the Yukon River, it was a tale of an Aleutian native wandering the Arctic for years on end in search of his wife, who had been stolen by a powerful Nordic sea captain. London titled his saga, “An Odyssey of the North.

Friday

31 Jul 2026

Brendan O’Neill

We should call the Ceuta border breach an invasion

Spain was invaded yesterday. There is no other way to put it. Close to 50,000 foreigners, mostly men, swarmed into Spanish territory and laughed and jeered as they went. Every generation before ours would have called that an invasion, and we should too. The era of euphemism is over. The left’s house of lies has fallen. We can all now see with our own eyes that our nations are being overwhelmed by cocky, often hostile men from afar. It isn’t only Spain’s sovereign integrity that lies in tatters following the storming of Ceuta – so does the tyranny of euphemism we’ve all been forced to labor under these past few years The footage from Ceuta is extraordinary – throngs of foreigners, mostly men from Morocco, gatecrashed an enclave of the Spanish kingdom.

Gus Carter

Dr. Fauci’s damning silence

Dr. Fauci won’t see you now. The man who served as America’s top medical adviser during Covid had to be subpoenaed to appear before the Senate this week. Wanted to hear his expert opinion? Too bad. Almost every question received the same response. "On the advice of counsel, I respectfully decline to answer based upon my rights under the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution." Anthony Fauci’s silence is the perfect coda to the madness of the Covid era. We were told, again and again, to "trust the science." But the science establishment didn’t trust us. Information was withheld, facts were twisted and opinions suppressed. Fauci was given a sweeping presidential pardon by Joe Biden. Yet even now, years later and immune from consequences, Dr. Fauci doesn’t want to talk.

Michael Evans

Will Hamas really disarm?

No one imagined that Hamas would voluntarily hand over its weapons and turn to politics and peace in the Gaza Strip. Even when President Trump announced his Board of Peace and 20-point plan toward a settlement to end the war with Israel, the sticking point, every analyst insisted, would be the disarmament of an organization designated a terrorist group by the United States, Britain, the European Union, Australia and many other nations. It’s unlikely that Hamas will cooperate unless Israeli troops withdraw as per the agreement Now, after months of negotiations – involving Trump’s two Middle East envoys, Egypt, Qatar and Turkey – and without any fanfare, the seemingly impossible has been achieved.

Maud Maron

Mamdani’s reparations talk is risible

When asked on The Root whether he'd support cash reparations for black New Yorkers, Mayor Mamdani said he wouldn't rule it out: "Here in New York City, we were very complicit." The mayor promised an answer once the city's Commission on Racial Equity reports back in 2027. Slightly inflammatory and highly performative, his answer hit his sweet spot perfectly. He is teasing his supporters with a radical, racialized policy that has no price tag and no implementation plan, just outrage. Zohran Mamdani is a better content creator than mayor. He knows exactly which topics will generate clicks, articles and outrage. That's a valuable skill for an influencer or a campaigner – earned media is the best priced media, but less so for a mayor who actually has to govern a major American city.

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump is a study of indecision on Iran

The US Senate narrowly defeated a measure yesterday intended to crimp, if not terminate, President Trump’s ability to conduct hostilities against Iran. The 50-49 vote on a war powers resolution testified to the mounting hostility toward the military campaign among American voters, two-thirds of whom regard the conflict as a futile endeavor. The result is that Trump’s own popularity rating has plummeted to 32 percent, edging out Joe Biden’s 33 percent shortly before he declared that he was exiting the presidential race in July 2024. Presumably, this is one personal record that Trump will not be inclined to tout at his MAGA rallies. What is to be done? Two diametrically opposed camps have emerged on the right to advise Trump on Iran.

Thursday

30 Jul 2026

Jane Stannus

Legal organ harvesting is just a PR campaign away

Summertime, and the living isn’t as easy as it used to be. The dying, though, is getting easier, especially if you’re in France, Canada or New York. New York’s MAID law will come into effect August 5: supposedly only for those whose deaths are expected within six months, supposedly through self-administered doses only. But the details don't matter. The important part is this: in New York, the state can now authorize the taking of innocent human life. In early July, the French Senate rejected euthanasia for the fourth time in a row. But the government invoked Article 45 of the French constitution and forced the legislation through, "creating a right" to assisted suicide (as if the state were the divine origin of rights, and could create them at the snap of a finger).