Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Wednesday

Jawad Iqbal

Who is really leading Iran?

In declaring an extension to the ceasefire in the Iran war, President Trump signaled clearly enough that he would prefer to strike a peace deal with Tehran. J.D. Vance, the Vice President, has been kicking his heels, waiting to return to the Pakistani capital Islamabad for another go at achieving a breakthrough. The Iranians keep blowing hot and cold on whether they are ready to play their part. Trump suggested in a social media post earlier this week that he believes this is because Iran’s government is "seriously fractured." His ceasefire extension is aimed at allowing the regime time to deliver a new proposal. Trump may want to hammer everything out in Islamabad, but he is not dealing with an ordinary government operating under a straightforward power structure.

iran
Melanie McDonagh

It’s little surprise that an Israeli soldier was caught desecrating a crucifix

There’s something apposite, I suppose, about the desecration of a crucifix. In this case, it was an Israeli soldier in southern Lebanon who took a sledgehammer to one on private property and smashed the Jesus figure on the cross. The original crucifixion, as anyone who heard the gospels over Easter will recall, was marked by the humiliation of Jesus; this attack on the figure of one who took on suffering willingly was another humiliation, through the image. Mind you, if the charmer with the sledgehammer had reflected that the Christ-figure is, in Christian belief, not just God-made-man but God-made-Jew, he might have eased off a bit.

Alexander Kolyandr

Is Russia’s economy really on its last legs?

The head of Swedish military intelligence has dropped what he clearly regards as a bombshell. Thomas Nilsson told the Financial Times this week that Russia's economy is far weaker than it appears, that the Kremlin systematically manipulates its statistics to fool Ukraine's Western allies, and that the central bank is understating inflation, which he believes is closer to 15 percent than the official 5.86 percent. For good measure, he endorsed the German intelligence service BND's earlier estimate that Russia's budget deficit is understated by $30 billion. One need not be a Kremlin agent to find this less than convincing. That Russia's economy is struggling is not in dispute.

Jacob Heilbrunn

Virginia referendum loss adds to Trump’s woes

In 2020 Donald Trump became the first Republican presidential candidate to lose Virginia twice since William Howard Taft. Then in 2024 Trump lost once more, this time to Kamala Harris. Now he has in effect lost it a fourth time as Virginia voters approved on Tuesday a fiercely contested referendum redrawing congressional districts to favor Democratic congressional candidates in the 2026 midterm elections. "This is really a country election. The whole country is watching," Trump said. If so, it watched Trump suffer a major blow – one that will prompt renewed questions about his political acuity and judgment.

Virginia

Tuesday

Charlie Gammell

Why Iran doesn’t want peace

Perhaps we should be used to be this by now. Yet again, there have been a flurry of promises to rapidly achieve peace in Iran. Yet again, the American administration has threatened to destroy the nation’s infrastructure. J.D. Vance is again flying to Pakistan for more talks. And yet the conflict shows no sign of ending. We don’t know whether the Iranians will actually turn up. A foreign ministry spokesman said yesterday that Iran will not be joining the talks. The speaker of the parliament Mohammad Bagher Ghalibaf has also made clear that the regime won’t negotiate under threat of civilizational destruction. Why would they resist peace talks? There is both a diplomatic and domestic answer.

iran peace
Anna Paulina Luna

Congress needs an ethics overhaul: Anna Paulina Luna

Washington’s problems are not hidden. Many of them simply go unaddressed. On Capitol Hill, “open secrets” persist because Congress has chosen to look the other way. Ask almost any staffer on Capitol Hill, and they can tell you which offices to avoid, which members have a reputation and which situations are quietly tolerated because confronting them would be politically inconvenient. Rumors are not just whispered behind closed doors; they are broadcast to virtually anyone dialed in to the right frequency. Leadership hears them. Colleagues hear them. The press often hears them too. And still nothing happens. Awareness is not the problem. The blatant absence of accountability is.

anna paulina luna
china
Ian Williams

The Iran war is giving Xi the upper hand with Trump

China’s largest trade show is now under way in the southern city of Guangzhou. The Canton Fair is a colossal month-long affair with around 32,000 exhibitors and is often described as a shop window for Chinese manufacturers – a barometer of the China trade – where just about anything and everything can be bought. This year the mood is subdued. "The specter of the Iran war hung heavy like the banners inside the gigantic exhibition halls," as Bloomberg described it. Exhibitors reportedly complained of soaring costs and falling orders, most notably from the Middle East.

starmer
Freddy Gray

Why Trump hasn’t stuck the knife into Starmer

As public messages of support go, it scored pretty low on the conviction-o-meter. “Prime Minister Keir Starmer of the United Kingdom acknowledged that he ‘exercised wrong judgment’ when he chose his Ambassador to Washington,” said President Donald Trump on Truth Social last night. “I agree, he was a really bad pick. Plenty of time to recover, however! President DJT.” Uh oh. None of the trademark capitalization, which suggests Donald’s heart isn’t really in it. Some aide must have just spoken to him about Keir Starmer’s Peter Mandelson crisis, or perhaps a news story came to his attention.

Charles Cornish-Dale

Iran is winning the meme war

The opening strikes on Iran forced the country’s military to operate without a centralized command structure. Despite this enormous setback, something like a unified approach has emerged, and nowhere is that more evident than on social media.  Iran’s embassies have become meme factories, centers of information warfare churning out images and videos designed to do just one thing: mock the US and Israel and, in particular, Donald Trump. Courtesy of Iran’s overseas missions, we’ve now seen Donald Trump as a minion from Despicable Me; a Lego man fleeing a Lego Jeffrey Epstein; and a Pirate of the Caribbean trying, and failing, to hijack the Strait of Hormuz.

Gareth Roberts

Why politicians make us wince

Mind your language! There has recently been another smattering of incidents featuring accusations of inappropriate choice of words, or even just the wrong tone. I think it’s worth taking a closer look at some of these for what they reveal about our hang-ups, the tender areas of our discourse. What makes us wince? What is considered appropriate, and what isn’t? On last week’s Edition podcast, former Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams spoke of there being something "demonic" about the current political culture of the US. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth’s "rhetoric about the violent obliteration of enemies" strikes him as "diabolical" – and of course Trump’s recent threat that "an entire civilization will end" (it didn’t).

Monday

Ross Clark

Tariff refunds are a nightmare for Trump’s economy

Donald Trump's second presidency began with a blaze of executive orders which horrified and impressed in equal measure. It also begged the question: if it really were so easy for a president to circumvent the legal obstacles and assert his will, how come none had behaved in this way before? A year on, we are learning the truth: no, a president can't just do what he likes, and there is a horrible price to pay if he tries. In the case of Trump's "Liberation Day" tariffs the notional bill is $166 billion. That is the sum that US Customs believes it will have to refund to importers who paid tariffs which were ruled unlawful by the Supreme Court in February. A computer portal to handle the refunds was set up this week, the administration of which adds more cost.

trump tariffs
Klaus Dodds

Trump’s costly armchair geography

In the 19th century, the geographer and explorer David Livingstone was scathing of what he described as "easy-chair geographers" – authors and mapmakers who produced maps and treatises about the non-European world without ever leaving their learned society or personal office. Donald Trump is a latter-day armchair geographer. Or judging by photographs repeatedly released by the White House, a president comfortable convening meetings in the Oval Office with large maps displayed by his desk. But whether it is a case of acquiring Greenland or blockading the Strait of Hormuz, maps can be poor substitutes for in-field knowledge and understanding.

armchair geographer
James Heale

Starmer squirms on Mandelson debacle

Keir Starmer is enduring perhaps his most uncomfortable afternoon in the House Commons since being elected Britain's Prime Minister. He promised in his opening remarks that he would set out the full timeline of Peter Mandelson’s appointment as US ambassador, which ended in Olly Robbins’s dismissal last Thursday. Carefully worded and legally precise, his statement contained another revelation: Chris Wormald, the ex-cabinet secretary, was not told Mandelson had failed the UK Security Vetting interview (UKSV), despite leading an official review. Starmer’s tone was one of scorned hurt and anger. He remarked repeatedly how various facts of the case were "staggering.

keir starmer
Matthew Fraser

What happened to Provence?

The best time to visit Provence, I always advise when asked, is in the spring before the scorching heat and summer crowds. I have been spending time in the south of France since the early 1990s. Provence was fashionable in those days. Peter Mayle’s massively successful book, A Year in Provence, inspired thousands to pull up stakes and move to southern France to emulate his idyllic life in the Luberon hills. Some settled farther west in the Dordogne, famously called "Dordogneshire" for its concentration of British expats. Mayle became a one-man publishing industry, following up with sequels including Toujours Provence and Encore Provence. Thirty years ago, I stayed with friends who owned a renovated farmhouse with a spectacular view of the Dentelles de Montmirail.

Saturday

Tim Shipman

How Peter Mandelson became Britain’s ambassador to the US – despite failing vetting

I have just been contacted by a source who knows much more about what happened with Peter Mandelson’s vetting. It supports the case that I made in my summary of the case last night and Sam Coates made in his thread yesterday that the crucial decision was Keir Starmer’s political decision to appoint him. In essence, Oliver Robbins – the top civil servant who overruled Mandelson’s failed security vetting – was rubber-stamping a decision which had already been made. Things are much less clear cut than Downing Street has been claiming for the last three days I have heard too from an ally of Mandelson who believes Robbins’s dismissal was "egregious" for exactly the reasons which follow.

peter mandelson
Mark Galeotti

Russia’s nationalists are falling out of love with Putin

Moscow's Manezh exhibition hall is playing host to a celebration of the life and politics of Vladimir Zhirinovsky, the outspoken, unfiltered and unrepentantly toxic founder of the nationalist Liberal Democratic Party of Russia (LDPR), who died in 2022. What is meant to memorialize Zhirinovsky's career, though, also highlights the degree to which the Kremlin is losing control of the nationalist right. The neatly-choreographed simulation of party politics that has worked for so long is getting harder to sustain The LDPR – which was neither liberal nor democratic – was established in 1992 and from the first was a populist force that was more a vehicle for the bombastic Zhirinovsky than the expression of a coherent ideology.

Friday

Tim Shipman

Britain’s ‘drone gap’ makes it vulnerable

When John Healey was asked, onstage at the London Defence Conference, whether the armed forces were “ready” for war, the Defence Secretary replied: “Yes.” One of those present says: “That was greeted with near incredulity in the room.” Another attendee compared Healey’s plight to someone “playing French cricket,” with critics from all sides hurling balls at his ankles while he tried to bat them away. “You can’t score any runs in French cricket.” George Robertson, Healey’s most respected Labour predecessor and a former secretary general of NATO, was not present; he was in Scotland celebrating his 80th birthday. But he returned to give a withering interview to the FT and a speech.

britain drone
Freddy Gray

Will Keir Starmer be a casualty of the Epstein fallout?

In America, important men don’t seem to suffer too much over their links to the late Jeffrey Epstein.Bill Clinton, Bill Gates, Donald Trump, Howard Lutnick and Paolo Zampolli, among others, might regret their past friendships with the world’s most famous sex criminal. Certainly, they resent having to face pesky questions about it.But the story just rumbles on, darkly, a source of endless intrigue and gossip and conspiracy theories – sustained as it is by the occasional publicity jolt, such as last week when First Lady Melania Trump, apparently without the knowledge of her husband, decided to give a big public statement denying that she, er, something something Jeffrey Epstein.

Starmer Mandelson
John Keiger

How France is bending the knee to Iran

What is Emmanuel Macron playing at? In the space of just a few days, three apparently unconnected incidents have the French president’s fingerprints all over them. They indicate that, while Macron is a spent force at home, he is willing to deploy his powers to help France navigate the Iran war crisis and try to salvage his reputation – even if it means making his allies, including the United States, look utterly foolish. While Macron is a spent force at home, he is willing to deploy his powers to help France navigate the Iran war crisis On April 2, a French container ship, the Kribi, became the first western vessel to cross the Strait of Hormuz and exit into the Gulf of Oman since the war against Iran began.

Jacob Heilbrunn

Trump badly needs a victory

Has the dustup between Washington and Tehran come to an end? "They’ve agreed to give us back the nuclear dust that’s way underground because of the attack we made with the B-2 bombers," Donald Trump proclaimed on Thursday evening. "So we have a lot of agreement with Iran, and I think something’s going to happen, very positive, very important." Trump indicated that he himself might fly to Pakistan this weekend to participate in negotiations with Iran. Trump’s response to the spate of bad news he’s encountered has consisted of a mixture of bravado and defiance If Iran were to hand over its enriched uranium stockpile, it would represent a startling development indeed. No previous American president, whether George W. Bush or Barack Obama, came close to accomplishing that goal.

Cockburn

Former British archbishop: ‘There’s something demonic in US political culture’

Rowan Williams, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, has said "there is something demonic" in the "political culture" of the United States.  He made the remark on The Spectator’s Edition podcast when discussing Donald Trump’s row with the Pope over the President's decision to go to war in Iran. Following J.D. Vance’s comments earlier this week that the Pope should "stick to morality," Williams said that he feels "slightly sorry" for the recent Catholic convert – "with just a hint of schadenfreude." The former archbishop observed that Vance appears to be "floundering" in his arguments. "People who look to the Catholic church for a strong lead on issues of morality tend to mean one kind of morality only," Williams said.

Thursday

Charles Lipson

Who’s actually winning the wars in the Middle East?

If you read the New York Times or watch the foreign policy establishment’s “best and brightest,” you will be told, with imperious certainty, that America is losing the war in Iran and was stupid to begin it. The conspiratorial wing on both the right and left add that it is all the Jews’ fault, although they usually remember to mutter they mean “Israel” instead of all Jews, a gossamer cloak over what they really mean. If, on the other hand, you watch Fox News or read blogs by conservatives or military analysts, you will be told with equal certainty that America and its ally, Israel, are actually winning – and winning decisively.  So, who is right? The answer, of course, is Carl von Clausewitz. What that old Prussian says goes to the heart of the issue.

middle east
allies
James Heale

Trump is making life increasingly hard for his allies

Here is a fun one: what do Giorgia Meloni, Pope Leo XIV, Ed Miliband and the Cato Institute all have in common? The answer is that they have each been attacked in the past 24 hours on Donald Trump’s overactive Truth Social feed. The President’s erratic actions both online and off now seem to be exhausting the patience of even erstwhile allies. In the aftermath of the Iran crisis, Keir Starmer and his ministers appear to have had enough of pussyfooting and pandering to the whims of the Commander-In-Chief. Downing Street sees little benefit in indulging what one Labour MP calls ‘Trump’s imperial overreach’ This afternoon, Rachel Reeves publicly called the war a "mistake.

Wednesday

Jane Stannus

Does Mark Carney believe in democracy?

Mark Carney is swaggering about Canada with his new majority government, acting as if he’d just received a landslide mandate from the electorate. The truth is he acquired his precious majority not by climbing up on his soapbox and convincing voters, but by whispering sweet nothings to five MPs from other parties, upon which they mysteriously lost their political principles and crossed the floor. Does Carney believe in democracy? It’s hard to be sure. Yes, his party did just win three special elections. But only one of those counted (the other two were held by Liberals already and in safe Liberal ridings, so made no difference to the number of seats the party held). Without the floor-crossings, Carney would be stuck with the minority he won last April.

mark Carney
Trump Orban
John Fund

The lesson of Orbán: Trump must tackle corruption

The landslide defeat of Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán carries lessons across the ocean for Donald Trump and both MAGA and non-MAGA Republicans. Trump pulled out all the stops for his ally, sending Vice President J.D. Vance to Hungary for a three-day endorsement tour and promising the day before the vote to “use the full Economic Might of the United States to strengthen Hungary’s Economy” if Orbán won. Well, he didn’t, and the Democrats are in full gloat mode after Orbán’s Fidesz party fell from 135 seats in parliament down to just 55. Senate Democratic Leader Chuck Schumer quickly made a comparison to the US, writing on X: “Pay attention, Donald Trump. Wannabe dictators wear out their welcome. November 2026 can’t come soon enough.

Alexander Kolyandr

With Orbán’s loss, Russia has lost its European foothold

Péter Magyar’s landslide victory over Viktor Orbán is not just political earthquake for Hungary. It is Moscow’s worst result in the European Union since the war began. Orbán served Russia in a way no overt ally could. He was never Putin’s puppet – he was something far more useful: a democratically elected, Brussels-based veto-wielder who could slow sanctions, obstruct aid to Ukraine, and dress it all up as principled neutrality. A leaked call recorded him telling Putin that Hungary was like a mouse to Russia’s lion. Leaked tapes of his foreign minister, Péter Szijjártó, conversing with Sergey Lavrov revealed the same cringing loyalty.

Tuesday

Terry Barnes

The sadness at the heart of Harry and Meghan’s Australia trip

Before dawn today, a Qantas jet touched down in Melbourne from the United States. Aboard, flying commercial first class but hardly incognito, were world-famous philanthropists and former working royals, Prince Harry and his wife Meghan, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex. The couple are in Australia for a week of "engagements" in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra. Even Australian monarchists who, according to opinion polls, still outnumber confirmed republicans, are unimpressed by the Sussexes’ pseudo-royal progress Unfortunately, there was none of the famously fine weather that preternaturally followed the late Queen Elizabeth in her travels. In Melbourne today the weather gods ensured the city was cold, squally and miserable.

Philip Patrick

The great soccer World Cup swindle

Tickets for this summer’s soccer World Cup are the most expensive in the tournament’s history. Or the history of any sporting event for that matter, with the possible exception of one-off extravaganzas like the Mayweather-Pacquiao showdown in 2015. The face value of tickets at this American tournament are a staggering five times higher that of the previous World Cup in Qatar. The most expensive seats for the final match have reached wallet-busting levels, affordable only to plutocrats and corporate boondogglers. And that’s just face value. What about the quaintly named secondary market? I occasionally peruse Fifa’s resale site, where the custodians of the game double dip from the buyer and seller to act as an official tout.

The soccer World Cup trophy sits in front of President Donald Trump
Doug Stokes

The Hormuz blockade won’t hurt China

As I argued last month, the Iran war was really about America's great power competition with China. Not by design, perhaps, but these kinds of conflicts are not easily confined by those who start them. Any disruption to the world’s principal energy chokepoint becomes, whether Washington planned for it or not, a test of the Sino-American balance of power. China is the country around which the whole episode turns, and the one best positioned to come through it Trump’s announcement on Sunday of a naval blockade targeting all vessels entering or leaving Iranian ports, after peace talks collapsed in Islamabad, sharpens that test considerably.

Swalwell
Laura Powell

Swalwell’s fall was electoral math not morality

Eric Swalwell’s fall from viable gubernatorial contender to political casualty was swift and surgical. He was among the frontrunners to replace Governor Gavin Newsom until allegations of sexual misconduct from years ago were published in the San Francisco Chronicle. The response from major Democratic operatives was immediate, with labor unions and party figures quickly withdrawing endorsements. Swalwell formally announced the suspension of his campaign two days later, followed by his resignation from Congress the following day. Some of the allegations are serious. In addition to claims of inappropriate and predatory sexual relationships with staffers, Swalwell has been accused of sexual assault. In a video statement, he denied any criminal wrongdoing.

republicans Steve Hilton
James Johnson

Will Republicans blow the California governor’s race?

Eric Swalwell has dropped out of the race for California governor after a series of sexual misconduct allegations. Republicans may be celebrating the demise of the prominent Democrat, but they should hold off on the champagne for now. Swalwell’s exit only increases the chance of two Democrats moving through to the run-off, depriving the GOP of a place on the ticket.However some Republicans still believe that the two GOP candidates in the race – Steve Hilton and Chad Bianco – can make it through California's jungle primary and face each other in November. While it sounds exciting and makes a good social media meme, such wishful thinking could cause Republicans to blow a historic opportunity to defeat a deeply unpopular and chaotic Democratic party in California.

Monday

pakistan
Francis Pike

The truth about Pakistan’s role in the US-Iran conflict

Pakistan was always an unlikely mediator for peace negotiations between the United States, Iran and sotto voce, China. It would not be an exaggeration to describe Pakistan as a failed state. Having outperformed India economically in the aftermath of partition, Pakistan went into steep decline after the arrival on the political scene of a corrupt chancer, socialist and demagogue, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. Today, bankrupt Pakistan is kept afloat by loans from the IMF, China, and the Gulf States. Trump can be in no doubt that, with regards to political power in Pakistan, it is Munir who wears the pants Bhutto’s political dynasty continued under the aegis of his daughter Benazir and later his grandson.