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Nick Tyrone
Nick Tyrone
Ed Miliband’s Brexit ‘embrace’ isn’t fooling anyone

Ed Miliband gave an interview this week in which he decided it would be a good idea to bring up the topic of Brexit. The interviewer spotted an opportunity and asked Miliband if he had ‘embraced’ our departure from the EU. ‘You’ve got to embrace it because that argument is over,’ was the former Labour leader’s response. That one sentence was a perfect demonstration of the way Labour’s top figures keep getting Brexit wrong, and continue to fail to understand why the issue hurts them as it did in Hartlepool a month ago.

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Nick Cohen
Nick Cohen
Labour is in last chance saloon
Labour is in last chance saloon

If they have any sense – a proposition I will test later – officials from Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru will be beginning meetings to work out a pact for the 2023/24 election. If they do not agree to a joint programme, there’s a good chance that Conservatives will be in power until a sizeable portion of this article’s readership is dead. The next redrawing of constituency boundaries in 2023 is almost certain to favour the Conservatives, adding ten seats to the already unhittable target of 123 constituencies Labour needs to win to govern on its own. There’s a possibility that Scotland could be independent by the end of the decade, and that ought to terrify anyone who wants to stop the rest of the country becoming a one-party Tory state.

Nick Cohen
Labour is in last chance saloon
Labour is in last chance saloon

If they have any sense – a proposition I will test later – officials from Labour, the Liberal Democrats and Plaid Cymru will be beginning meetings to work out a pact for the 2023/24 election. If they do not agree to a joint programme, there’s a good chance that Conservatives will be in power until a sizeable portion of this article’s readership is dead. The next redrawing of constituency boundaries in 2023 is almost certain to favour the Conservatives, adding ten seats to the already unhittable target of 123 constituencies Labour needs to win to govern on its own. There’s a possibility that Scotland could be independent by the end of the decade, and that ought to terrify anyone who wants to stop the rest of the country becoming a one-party Tory state.

Latest from Coffee House

All the latest analysis of the day's news

Nick Tyrone
Nick Tyrone
Ed Miliband’s Brexit ‘embrace’ isn’t fooling anyone

Ed Miliband gave an interview this week in which he decided it would be a good idea to bring up the topic of Brexit. The interviewer spotted an opportunity and asked Miliband if he had ‘embraced’ our departure from the EU. ‘You’ve got to embrace it because that argument is over,’ was the former Labour leader’s response. That one sentence was a perfect demonstration of the way Labour’s top figures keep getting Brexit wrong, and continue to fail to understand why the issue hurts them as it did in Hartlepool a month ago.

More from Coffee House
Latest from Coffee House

All the latest analysis of the day's news

Nick Tyrone
Nick Tyrone
Ed Miliband’s Brexit ‘embrace’ isn’t fooling anyone

Ed Miliband gave an interview this week in which he decided it would be a good idea to bring up the topic of Brexit. The interviewer spotted an opportunity and asked Miliband if he had ‘embraced’ our departure from the EU. ‘You’ve got to embrace it because that argument is over,’ was the former Labour leader’s response. That one sentence was a perfect demonstration of the way Labour’s top figures keep getting Brexit wrong, and continue to fail to understand why the issue hurts them as it did in Hartlepool a month ago.

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Scotland

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Scotland needs English migrants

Post-pandemic economic recovery was on the agenda at Holyrood this week, with Scotland's finance minister Kate Forbes in full JFK-style 'ask not what your country can do for you' visionary mode. 'Wherever someone works, and in whatever capacity, if they think that they can serve our country as we face the prospect of rebuilding, this is their personal invitation. Our strength is in our united vision to work together — across party lines, sectors and regions — to rebuild,' declaimed Forbes. A cynic might wonder if 'serve our country' will turn out to mean serving the nationalist interest rather than the national one. It would be no surprise if trade organisations, business leaders and others discover that engagement quickly turns into an arm twisting to get them to add their names to a press release demanding more powers from Westminster.

Magazine

This week's magazine

Broken Trust

The crisis at the heart of the National Trust

Arieh Kovler
Naftali Bennett, the millionaire poised to be Israel’s next prime minister

Jerusalem In April 2019, Naftali Bennett received an unpleasant surprise. As the votes were counted in Israel’s general election, it became clear that his New Right party had not passed the 3.25 per cent electoral threshold needed to stay in Israel’s parliament, the Knesset. Bennett had lost his seat, his new party had failed and his political career looked like it was over. Two years, three more elections and a global pandemic later, Bennett is on the verge of ending Benjamin Netanyahu’s 12-year rule. Barring a spectacular reversal, he is about to become Israel’s prime minister. He has found himself in the right place at the right time, heading (though not necessarily leading) an eclectic coalition of parties from the left, right and centre.

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The Critics

The good, the bad and the ugly in books, exhibitions, cinema, TV, dance, music, podcasts and theatre.

Keith Lowe
The road to firebombing Tokyo was paved with good intentions
From the magazine

In the 1930s, a group of American airmen had a dream. Air power, they believed, would do away with the need for armies and navies. The aeroplanes of the future would be able to drop bombs so accurately that there would be no need to kill soldiers in their millions: a handful of strikes on a few key factories would be enough to cripple an enemy’s economy and force them to sue for peace. It did not take long for this dream to turn sour. When the second world war broke out, the Americans soon discovered that their precision bombing was not nearly so precise when they were being shot at. When they flew high, clouds often obscured their targets. When they flew low, they were so vulnerable that they had to hide under cover of night — which also meant they could not see their targets.

The road to firebombing Tokyo was paved with good intentions

Spectator Life

An intelligent mix of culture, food, style and property, plus where to go and what to see.

Stephen King on screen: 10 films to rival Lisey’s Story
Stephen Arnell
Stephen King on screen: 10 films to rival Lisey’s Story
From Spectator Life

To his many readers, Stephen King is the Dreamcatcher; to others, less keen on his prodigious output, Doctor Sleep may be a more fitting appellation. On Friday 4 June, Apple TV+ will debut King’s own 8-part adaptation of his 2006 best-seller Lisey’s Story. Reportedly one of King's favourite books, the novel harks back to both Misery and The Secret Window, concerning as it does the widow of a popular author plagued by an obsessive fan and the thin line between imagination and madness. Julianne Moore stars as Lisey, with Clive Owen as her late husband, the immensely successful novelist, Scott Landon. The announcement of a new Stephen King TV series or movie is by now a regular event and the sheer number of movies and TV shows based on King’s work can be intimidating.

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