Latest from Coffee House

Latest from Coffee House

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

Harry and Meghan deserve a second chance

A little while back I came across a copy of Ted Hughes’s Laureate poems which had an inscription to some friends. Inside was an unpublished squib by the late poet laureate which read: “The Royalist/ Is afraid/ The Queen’s a pin/ In a hand-grenade.” If I understand the poet’s meaning correctly then I count myself such a royalist. I dislike criticism of the royal family, especially of the monarch. When it happens it feels too much like people hammering at something fundamental – far more fundamental than the critic appreciates. If criticism is to be made it seems to me that it should be done privately, so as not to disturb the fragile equilibrium of the rather magical arrangement we have on these islands.

Does Poland have an image problem?

What if the hiring of a PR expert became a PR disaster? That’s precisely what has happened in Poland. On 29 July, when Prime Minister Donald Tusk appointed Barbara Mróz-Gorgoń, a professor of marketing, as the government’s new plenipotentiary for promoting the Polish brand, this was thought to be a shrewd hire that would bolster the country’s image on the world stage. Then someone read one of her reports. Poland has managed to develop from a bankrupt communist state into one of the most successful economies in Europe The Poles’ Self-Portrait, published last year by a think tank chaired by Mróz-Gorgoń, was supposed to give a thumbnail sketch of the Polish national character.

Poland

Darline against the machine

It’s poetic that the same day Darline Graham won her primary to seek a full term in the United States Senate, the Wall Street Journal admitted it had published an AI-written op-ed and, based on opinion page editor Paul Gigot’s remarks about it, would happily do so again. “AI is a fact of modern life. People will use it to assist in their work and their writing, including with research, checking grammar, editing and more.” On social media, journalists at the New York Times and elsewhere were quick to voice objections to Gigot’s leniency, but others, including one at the Washington Post, shot back at the critics: how was publishing an AI-written op-ed any different from publishing a ghost-written one? She’s gaffe-prone.

Mark Carney

Mark Carney is running out of excuses

So close, and yet so far. Only last week, Canada and the US were finally on the cusp of reaching a long awaited trade deal. Already Trump had announced the joyous news on Truth Social, already Canadian prime minister Mark Carney had celebrated securing the “best terms” for Canada and called for provinces to lift the ban on US alcohol. Then, somehow, defeat was snatched from the jaws of victory. Late last Friday, Carney told Canadian negotiators to walk away, saying Washington was offering “a bad deal.” Trump promptly reimposed the 50 percent tariffs on goods imported from Canada that had been put on hold pending the signing of the deal. On Tuesday, August 25, Carney announced dollar-for-dollar retaliation, in what some are calling “the dumbest trade war in history.

Carney’s defiance of Trump could destroy the Canadian economy

Canada and the US were once great friends, allies and trading partners. They had disagreements on various domestic and international matters, wars and military conflicts. They didn’t always see eye-to-eye on trade negotiations related to the auto sector, acid rain, softwood lumber and more. Nevertheless, the two countries always found a way to return to the same page. Yet this historic and economic relationship has now been torn apart. Canada and the US are engulfed in a full-fledged trade war, and there’s no end in sight.  Canada and the US are engulfed in a full-fledged trade war, and there’s no end in sight There have been tensions between the two countries since Donald Trump was elected President.

Why the world loved Dolly Parton

Dolly Parton was all-American. Born into the dirt-poor Tennessee hills of the Great Smokey Mountains, her upbringing reflected the indigent nature of country life in the South, even as the urban and suburban United States reaped the rewards of peacetime. Her father was, among other things, a tobacco farmer but struggled to support his wife and 12 children, all but one of whom survived infancy. It was a childhood steeped in hard work, mountain wisdom, and most important of all, the Bible. Dolly Parton’s fame and fortune were built on talent, toil, personality and moral character But unlike some country singers, Parton did not wallow in her hardscrabble childhood.

Is short-form video rotting our brains?

When I read that a new scientific study had shown impacts on the brains of those watching short form videos I was delighted. As someone who doesn’t have a television, doesn’t let my daughter use any screens and refuses to watch videos – I always ask friends, “is there a transcript you can send me?” – I felt vindicated. Perhaps now I could gloat I told you so, videos are bad to everyone I know. Participants were shown short videos they liked they “exhibited significant deactivation” in parts of their brains responsible for “cognitive control” – demonstrating a mechanism which might mean that short-video consumption makes people prefer instant gratification and lowers their self-control. Is this backed up by other studies?

Who should pay for Meghan and Harry’s security?

It isn’t long now until the joyous day that Harry and Meghan once more make Britain their home, but several aspects of their return are still clouded in mystery. We have no idea, for instance, where they are going to be living – although the Cotswolds have been mooted. Once they arrive there, there is also the rather vexed question as to whether their no doubt hugely expensive security is going to be privately funded or the taxpayer’s burden. Two former home secretaries have gone public to argue that there should be at least some level of taxpayer-funded protection for the Sussexes. This may not be a wildly popular perspective but can at least be justified on humanitarian grounds.

Cambridge’s Farah Ahmed: study engineering ‘to produce weaponry for jihad’

Cambridge University’s education faculty – former home of Jason Arday – has appointed as assistant research professor a woman who wrote that Muslims should study engineering and computers “to produce advanced weaponry for Jihad in order that the deen [Islam] may dominate over all other deens.” This is the fourth in our series of articles about Farah Ahmed, a former activist in the racist, extremist and separatist group Hizb ut Tahrir, now banned as a terror organization, who has been given a senior role by Cambridge training the future leaders of the teaching profession.

I want to be a good father – like Machiavelli

Dante’s Beach, Ravenna When Machiavelli was tortured, then banished from Florence in 1513 to his modest farm in the Tuscan countryside, in the afternoons he used to “sink into vulgarity,” as he put it, and play cards and backgammon with the local men in the tavern next to his small house.

Can General Bessent win the war? 

At a much-anticipated press conference Monday, Secretary of the Treasury Scott Bessent minced no words. The United States, he said, is now imposing unprecedented sanctions not only on Iran but on every country, corporation, bank, and shipping company that does business with that regime.   Thanks to these US policies, Bessent said, all Iran’s facilitators must now choose between economic ties with the US and those with the Islamic Republic of Iran. Do business with Iran and you will be severed from the US market and the entire dollar-based trading system, the centerpoint of the world economy.  That policy can be summed up in two words: “economic asphyxiation.

Is the ADHD myth unraveling?

Last week, a documentary called The Great ADHD Myth aired on British television, which took a long overdue look at attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The program has since faced a significant backlash online and a tidal wave of complaints to Ofcom (Britain’s version of the FCC). Perhaps this says more about ADHD than it does about the documentary. Because as the program revealed, many scientists now see the condition as more of a “social construct” or “identity marker” than a real illness. At the center of this row, and one of the star witnesses of the documentary, is Dr Sami Timimi, a Fellow of Britain’s Royal College of Psychiatrists and a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist.

Do Meghan and Harry know what the monarchy means to Britain?

Dear Harry and Meghan, welcome back to Britain. I hope that things go well for you. But let’s be honest: a lot of us are a bit worried about your return. Please allow me to explain why I think this is. We feel that you do not really understand what the monarchy means to us. This might sound strange – you, Harry, were born into it and know it from the inside, so why should you take lectures from a commoner? But maybe an insider can sometimes be blind to what is clear to outsiders. The monarchy is how a certain aspect of the British national psyche is expressed. It’s an old-fashioned part of our national psyche, but it is not dead. It is difficult to talk about, because our culture is very used to ironizing and disparaging it, and is embarrassed about affirming it directly.

Trump’s tariff wars are a godsend to the Democrats

Donald Trump was revved up for his Freedom 250 Grand Prix auto race, which took place in downtown Washington yesterday. But even as the American President enjoyed the festivities, the mood elsewhere was distinctly less buoyant. With Democrats pounding away at voter concerns about affordability, Republican legislators are fretting that Trump might crash the party’s political fortunes with his costly tariff policies. If the President wanted to promote an economic program that was designed to bolster the political prospects of the Democrats in the impending November midterm elections, he could hardly do better than his institution of new duties of 50 percent against Canadian goods.

The myth of the Third World

America is rediscovering the work of Spectator writer Shiva Naipaul. His 1980 book about the Jonestown massacre, Journey to Nowhere: A New World Tragedy, was reissued by Outsider Editions last month. There has also been much talk recently about so-called “Third-Worldism,” a quasi-ideology that some on the right blame for the West’s ills. The Third World is a concept about which Naipaul had much to say. Below is an essay he published in The Spectator in 1985. We do not see people as they are anymore. Instead, we see – or learn to believe that we see – those ghostly entities we call “relationships.” There’s me, there’s you – and, somewhere in the middle, there’s our relationship.

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Just how bad are the polls for the Republicans ?

Freddy is joined by James Johnson, co-founder of JLPartners, on why the midterms are looking increasingly grim for the Republicans. Trump's approval is trending down, the war is dragging on it, and James expects differential turnout to hand the Democrats the House, possibly with more than 230 seats. Freddy and James discuss why a Senate map that should have been safe for Republicans is now a toss-up, which six states will decide it, why prediction markets are not the answer, and why Michigan and its DSA-aligned candidate may be the one seat that saves Trump's majority. Learn how to earn yield on gold, paid in gold, at Monetary-Metals.com/Americano Produced by Henry Lloyd. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

The Floydification of Jason Arday’s death

The Russian word pravda is often translated as “truth”, but it can also mean “justice”. The proto-Slavic prav had that latter meaning, pravo refers to a legal right, and the first law code in Kievan Rus’ was called the Russkaya Pravda. Over time the word has come to mean “truth”, but with strong connotations of “moral or spiritual truth”, or a just way to order human relations. Sometimes it is translated into English as “social justice”, whereas istina is the term for objective truth. In other Slavic languages, such as Serbo-Croatian, pravda has retained its meaning of “justice” or “fairness”.

paranoia

The ‘paranoid style’ is back in American politics

Scarcely had the last warmth drained from Charlie Kirk’s body than the theories began to take shape. It wasn’t a leftist killing, as common sense and all the recent evidence would tell us: it was something else entirely. In the 11 months since, an entire Charlie Kirk-truth industry has sprung up; a whole ecosystem of podcasters, armchair theorists, exaggerators, suspicious and conspiratorial fantasists, all trading in tendentious, half-baked, outlandish fairy tales about how and why the most important young conservative in America was murdered in cold blood. With freedom and the march of progress, anger and resentment don’t diminish.

Will the heatwaves make this year’s French wines better?

It has been a punishing summer in France. Heatwaves, drought and forest fires have driven away tourists and made life hell for firefighters. The nation’s winemakers have also had an anxious time of it, but there is now cautious optimism that the exceptional weather may work in their favor. Since late May, France has been swept by a succession of heatwaves as well as a series of destructive wildfires. The worst of these was in the Gironde, west of Bordeaux, which lost 42,000 hectares to flames. Swathes of Provence have also been ravaged by fires in recent weeks. As a result of the fires and the heat, France’s Ministry of Agriculture decided to postpone its annual grape harvest forecast from early August to early September. The announcement was welcomed by the industry.

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Have aircraft carriers had their day?

Freddy is joined by Andrew Cockburn, Washington editor of Harper's magazine, to discuss the state of the US Navy as the USS George Washington arrives in the Arabian Sea to replace the USS Abraham Lincoln, whose crew have sent home photographs of blocked lavatories, rotting rations and sailors who have lost a stone or more. Freddy and Andrew examine why the Iranian strike on the Navy's supply base in Bahrain has left the fleet resupplying from Diego Garcia, why Trump has ordered $50 billion of new launch systems ripped out and steam catapults put back, and whether Trump is now trapped in a war he can never admit he has not won. Learn how to earn yield on gold, paid in gold, at Monetary-Metals.com/Americano Produced by Henry Lloyd. https://www.youtube.com/watch?

The mystery of Melania

Are Donald Trump and his wife secretly estranged – or is Melania just a bit strange? That somewhat grubby question cuts to the heart of one of the more mysterious subplots of the Great Trump Saga, the longest-running American tabloid show. One Trumpworld source told me that "Melania spends too much time online" Yesterday, the First Lady magically reappeared for a public event at the White House. "I heard you missed me," she began, before giving a speech about some goodly fostering initiative. "Here I am." It was a joke her husband might have composed. Melania hadn’t been spotted in public since the World Cup final a month ago, and the "Where’s Melania?

Ghent University shouldn’t have suspended Nathan Cofnas

It is ironic that the “be kind” brigade beating their breasts and wailing about the "lynching" and "assassination" of Jason Arday think the appropriate response is to whip up hatred against Nathan Cofnas, the scholar who exposed Arday's academic misconduct. At the vigil for Arday at Trafalgar Square in London, several speakers singled out Cofnas for blame, including Diane Abbott MP, who described him as a “racist.” Nathan contacted me shortly afterwards worried that he risked being murdered if he set foot in London.

iran sanctions

How will harsh sanctions on Iran play out?

If you control the world’s largest economy, as the US does, and if your enemy depends on exports to the West, as Iran does, it should hardly be a surprise when the big economy decides to use its commercial and financial leverage.   That is exactly what the US is doing – and this week it announced it would ratchet up the pressure substantially. Some sanctions were already in place, most notably restrictions on Iran’s oil exports, enforced by the US Navy. What’s new is that those sanctions will be supplemented by a full range of additional sanctions on commercial and bank transactions routed through third countries.

America won’t miss Harry and Meghan

The prospect of Prince Harry and Meghan Markle leaving the United States has been dangled by reports in the British media. Many of us Americans are buoyant. The Daily Telegraph and the Sun reported that their children will begin British schooling in September. The family will occupy a private house outside London, keep their California and Portuguese homes and remain non-working royals. The King learned of the plan only on Sunday. He welcomes private time with his grandchildren, yet the late Queen’s boundary still stands: no half-in, half-out arrangement. How things have changed in the six years since the Sussexes left Britain. Harry’s arrival in America in 2020 was met with considerable curiosity and some excitement, which he has since squandered.

Middle England is finally waking up to the migrant crisis

I don’t know how familiar readers are with the term “accelerationism.” It is generally used to describe a tendency on the left, though is increasingly heard on the right too. The basic idea of accelerationism is that there are certain flaws in the societal structure which if pushed could bring things to their inevitable conclusion more quickly. It is why there are so many people on the left of politics who say that sustainable government spending should be discouraged. It is not just because they are economically illiterate. What they really hope is that a speeded-up financial disaster will expose the “underlying contradictions of capitalism,” and we’ll all realize that Karl Marx was right and promptly vote for Zack Polanski or similar at the next election.

middle england migrants

The insanity of the Lindsay Clancy sympathizers

In 2023, Lindsay Clancy, a former labor-and-delivery nurse from Duxbury, Massachusetts, strangled her three children to death with exercise resistance bands in the basement of the family home. She then cut her wrists and neck and jumped from a second-story window, an act that left her paralyzed from the waist down. Her murder trial opened in Plymouth Superior Court in July and is expected to run for six to eight weeks.  Both sides agree Clancy killed five-year-old Cora, three-year-old Dawson and eight-month-old Callan. What is contested is whether she should be held responsible.

lindsay clancy

Goodbye, Harry and Meghan

A shade over three decades ago, Gary Barlow and Take That sang “Whatever I said, I didn’t mean it, I want you back for good.” “Back for Good” has traditionally been taken to be a song about someone wanting their loved one back after a breakup. However, the Duke and Duchess of Sussex clearly listened to it on whatever easy listening channel they tune into in Montecito and decided that this is not simply Gary Barlow’s lovelorn lament but the earnest desire of the British people to have them return to us. Therefore, Meghan and Harry have announced that they will be returning to Britain. Not for a visit of a few days, as has happened in recent weeks, or even for a more protracted period.

What happened to Will Self?

It is usually taken as a given, for better or worse, that the Grand Old Men of English letters tend to move, if not necessarily to the right, to an accommodation with conservatism and the status quo as they grow older. It is, after all, harder to rail against the establishment when you have been weighed down with CBEs, honorary doctorates and the adulation that comes from being a much-loved writer. However, nobody seems to have told this to the novelist, polemicist and one-time enfant terrible Will Self, and the results have been, depending on your perspective, either disappointing or bleakly amusing. Self has published an extraordinary 7,000-odd word open letter to Andy Burnham on his X account, as part of what he calls his “Sitreps.

will self

Kim Jong-un has everything to gain from a meeting with Trump

Will Trump and Kim Jong-un meet again? This is the million-dollar question after President Trump lauded his “very good relationship” with Kim and ordered a scaling back of US-South Korean military exercises earlier this week. Hours later, Trump elusively mentioned that the North Korean despot had responded “positively” to his overtures. Another rendezvous between the two leaders cannot be dismissed, especially with Kim Jong-un in a stronger position now than during the first Trump administration. But unlike during the Trump 1.0 years, which saw three meetings between Kim and the President, things are different now. Back then, neither leader had met the other before; kindling a bromance was a novelty. Now, however, it will be a case of déjà vu.

Natalie Harp, aide to President Donald Trump, steps off Marine One (Getty)

What Natalie Harp does for Trump

A beautiful and superfluous woman is the mark of a king. Why, then, did the Georgia Senator Jon Ossoff want the American people googling Natalie Harp? Did he think that the American people would suddenly turn on Donald Trump over suspicions as to his marital fidelity?  Trump doesn’t trust men and enjoys the platonic company of women Last month, as is now well known, Trump was smuggled from Air Force One in a catering trolley in order to confound a possible Iranian assassination plot. Other White House staff, including Marco Rubio, remained on the official jet. But Harp, reportedly after some internal dramas, traveled with the President on a second plane.  This is useful information for Democrats looking, as ever, to do down the President.

Inside Arizona’s battle for school choice

Arizona families won big this week. The teachers union and Save Our Schools fell short (again) in their latest attempt to roll back the universal Empowerment Scholarship Account program that helps more than 100,000 students there. The groups needed 255,949 valid signatures to place their Protect Education Act on the November ballot. They submitted 421,451, but after legal challenges and county reviews, so many proved invalid that the initiative appears to have fallen well short of the minimum number. School-choice opponents will continue to organize and spend Nearly 70,000 signatures were disqualified. The Arizona Free Enterprise Club noted that the initiative is projected to be more than 10,000 signatures short.