Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, have called for increased regulation of AI to slow down the pace of development. They warn in apocalyptic terms of the dangers their own technology poses. After Jacob Coxon, a researcher, resigned from Anthropic, stating that he could no longer justify working on AI […]
A century ago you had to be rich to get any kind of choice over your clothes. And if you weren’t in the upper echelons of society you could forget going on a foreign holiday. Today, mass production ensures there is an abundance of clothes to choose from at all budgets, and cheap flights have […]
The UK only has 13 days worth of natural gas storage capacity, and it’s about to be cut in half. Britain needs gas storage now, and it will need it as North Sea extraction declines. Otherwise, we’re badly exposed to another energy crisis. Centrica has seemingly given us an easy out by offering to regenerate […]
We live in an age of rapid economic change. New technologies are having an impact on the world that was unthinkable a generation ago; and industries are more mobile than ever, meaning that supply chains get reshaped, new centres of growth emerge and we see the resulting shifts in the balance of economic power. Yet […]
It’s been reported that officials in the Trump administration have given their UK counterparts a dressing-down over the Online Safety Act and the social-media ban for under-16s. As someone who previously worked on digital trade for the UK government, this does not surprise me. Both the Trump and Biden administrations have seen British laws such […]
It’s not often that a Labour announcement reminds you of music. Reading Andy Burnham’s confirmation of his commitment to Net Zero in the Guardian last week, I couldn’t help but think of The Who’s 1971 epic rocker ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’. Within it are the lyrics: ‘And the world looks just the same, And history […]
It reads like a horror story. A tiny baby projectile vomiting for four feet. Sinister rashes moving across newborn skin. A shifty nurse hovering over the cot of an infant with blood around his mouth. The looming threat in these sentences: ‘Mother D could see her daughter looked better and so went back to bed. […]
When you drive through the potholes and your suspension gives out, or when you sit fuming at temporary traffic lights because of roadworks, it’s for a reason. It’s because the cost to you in delays and disruption doesn’t figure much in the council’s budgeting or the contractors’ work schedules. The familiar ‘I don’t give a […]
Britain’s political class loves to talk about ‘reforming welfare’, but everyone knows the limits of that ambition. Voter Welfare – the £333.7 billion the state is forecast to transfer from taxpayers to households in 2025–26 – is politically untouchable. A population brought up on free cake is unlikely to vote for the plate being removed, […]
So, this week financial markets started pricing four or even five Bank of England rate rises over the next year. On the evidence in front of me today, that is lunacy. In fact, I called it rubbish on GB News yesterday lunchtime. Against that backdrop, the Federal Reserve raised its key interest rate by 25 […]
You could almost hear the revolutionary vitriol dripping onto the Labour benches during Monday night’s Lords debate on political donations, following the announcement of Reform’s £72 million bonanza from two crypto billionaires with UK voting rights but recent residence abroad. ‘An undermining of democracy and rampant Americanisation’, one peeress spat out. A case of ‘the […]
Was life really better before industrialisation? Strip away the nostalgia and the past begins to look considerably less idyllic: famine, child mortality, casual violence, environmental destruction and entertainments of almost unimaginable cruelty. In The Grim Old Days, author Chelsea Follett challenges our romantic vision of the pre-industrial world. Here, she tells Marc Sidwell how the […]
Is Britain one geopolitical shock away from a financial crisis? Liam Halligan thinks the warning lights are flashing. The economist, journalist and new Director of the Centre for Policy Studies joins Marc Sidwell to argue that Britain’s growing debt burden, stubbornly weak growth and soaring interest bill have left the country dangerously exposed. So what […]
Britain owes £3 trillion. Daniel Hannan says its rivals have noticed. For centuries, Britain’s military strength rested not only on its armed forces but on its ability to mobilise capital, develop technology and outspend its adversaries. Now, Hannan argues, that advantage is slipping away. With government debt mounting and growth faltering, he warns that Britain’s […]
Will the man who paints himself as the antidote to Thatcherism lead us back to the worst of the 1970s? As Britain’s borrowing costs spiked and Andy Burnham faced MPs as Prime Minister, Marc Sidwell spoke to the economist Julian Jessop about Burnham’s plans – and whether they can really get Britain back to growth. […]
Modern life rests on inventions so ordinary that we barely notice them… until they start to fail. This week on The Capitalist, Marc Sidwell speaks to the writer and CapX columnist Jonn Elledge. His new book ‘31 Inventions That Built Our World’, surveys the technologies – from sewers to lifts – that make urban life […]
Are Nimbys a threat to national security? Britain’s inability to build houses and infrastructure is rightly at the heart of our domestic political debate. Dalibor Rohac thinks it needs to be seen as a geopolitical failing as well. This week on The Capitalist, Rohac, incoming director of research at Globsec, discusses his new book ‘Unshackled: […]
Watch or listen to CapX’s weekly podcast ‘The Capitalist’ wherever you get your podcasts.
Sam Altman, CEO of OpenAI, and Dario Amodei, CEO of Anthropic, have called for increased regulation of AI to slow down the pace of development. They warn in apocalyptic terms of the dangers their own technology poses. After Jacob Coxon, a researcher, resigned from Anthropic, stating that he could no longer justify working on AI […]
A century ago you had to be rich to get any kind of choice over your clothes. And if you weren’t in the upper echelons of society you could forget going on a foreign holiday. Today, mass production ensures there is an abundance of clothes to choose from at all budgets, and cheap flights have […]
The UK only has 13 days worth of natural gas storage capacity, and it’s about to be cut in half. Britain needs gas storage now, and it will need it as North Sea extraction declines. Otherwise, we’re badly exposed to another energy crisis. Centrica has seemingly given us an easy out by offering to regenerate […]
We live in an age of rapid economic change. New technologies are having an impact on the world that was unthinkable a generation ago; and industries are more mobile than ever, meaning that supply chains get reshaped, new centres of growth emerge and we see the resulting shifts in the balance of economic power. Yet […]
It’s been reported that officials in the Trump administration have given their UK counterparts a dressing-down over the Online Safety Act and the social-media ban for under-16s. As someone who previously worked on digital trade for the UK government, this does not surprise me. Both the Trump and Biden administrations have seen British laws such […]
It’s not often that a Labour announcement reminds you of music. Reading Andy Burnham’s confirmation of his commitment to Net Zero in the Guardian last week, I couldn’t help but think of The Who’s 1971 epic rocker ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’. Within it are the lyrics: ‘And the world looks just the same, And history […]
You could almost hear the revolutionary vitriol dripping onto the Labour benches during Monday night’s Lords debate on political donations, following the announcement of Reform’s £72 million bonanza from two crypto billionaires with UK voting rights but recent residence abroad. ‘An undermining of democracy and rampant Americanisation’, one peeress spat out. A case of ‘the […]
If there was one event that ended Fukuyama’s ‘end of history’, it was 9/11. The growth and predominance of globalisation were followed by anti-Western intellectual movements. Many, especially on the Left, are still obsessed with rationalising the insanity of the attackers – most notoriously streamer Hasan Piker, who claimed in 2019 that ‘America deserved 9/11’. […]
If you think this summer has been sticky, count yourself lucky you were not in the Cabinet in August and September 1931, in the midst of possibly the worst economic crisis the country has ever faced. It is worth looking at what happened then, because high energy and Government borrowing costs mean a crisis of […]
The Victorian economist William Stanley Jevons was clearly a worrier. When, in 1863, the Tyneside arms-maker Sir William Armstrong calculated that Britain’s coal would run out in 212 years, Jevons checked the sums. Armstrong had assumed the country’s appetite for coal grew by the same tonnage every year. But it actually grew by the same […]
If you spend enough time in politics you learn to spot a familiar mistake dressed up as a novel dilemma. In the 1980s, Xerox forbade the American programmer Richard Stallman from so much as fixing a glitch in his own printer, on the grounds that the code inside it was proprietary. It was this small, […]
This week, Nimby Watch is in Axminster, because where else would you go to talk about the technologies of the future? Alright then, where are we off to this time? In this edition of Nimby Watch, we’re focusing in on Axminster, where – Oh, I love that we’re finally doing something different! I’m a huge […]
In the year we celebrate the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith, we must also celebrate the idea that the wealth of nations and the free, fair exchange of goods and services are intricately connected. This idea is what made Britain one of the wealthiest countries in the world and – with one in three pounds […]
It’s only on the basis of truth that power should be won – or indeed can be worth winning. Margaret Thatcher, 1996 It is a hundred years since Margaret Thatcher was born in Grantham. Fifty years since she took over the Conservative Party. Almost 35 years since she was forced from office. Today’s voters are […]
If you’re under the age of 53, no human being has ever left low Earth orbit in your lifetime. Just nine spaceflights, all under the Apollo Program, took human beings beyond Earth orbit at all. And they all took place in a four-year burst between December 1968 and December 1972. Tonight, NASA attempts to change […]
There is much discussion right now about the dysfunctionality of UK politics. This goes beyond complaints about the policy incoherence or ineffectuality of any particular government, whether that be the current one or its Tory and Coalition predecessors. Rather, there is a growing feeling that the political system itself, the whole process of politics, no […]
Ten years ago, the EU referendum created two new political tribes: Leavers and Remainers. As Sara Hobolt and I show in our new book ‘Tribal Politics: How Brexit divided Britain’, both tribes are very much still with us. Even today, about 60% of people in Britain identify as a Remainer or a Leaver, and people’s […]
‘Isn’t it time we stopped talking about her?’ Fifty years since Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservative Party, her face, and even some of her iconic outfits, were all over this year’s party conference. Not everyone was happy about that. Hot takes and tweets grumbled about it being time to move on, to pack […]
