Viewers of ‘Clarkson’s Farm’ – now back for another season – will be familiar with Jeremy Clarkson’s long-running battle with the bureaucrats of West Oxfordshire District Council. When his Diddly Squat farm shop boomed, the council dragged their feet over planning permission for a car park extension, bizarrely decreed he could only sell goods from […]
Looking For Growth has launched the Emergency Energy Bill – a ready-made piece of legislation that the Government should pass tomorrow. But it won’t. Labour won’t take the radical action necessary to get bills down unless we force them to. This Government, just like many of its predecessors over the last thirty years, has prioritised […]
In 2018, with ‘The Coddling of the American Mind’, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt launched a sustained attack on what they called the culture of ‘safetyism’ in American parenting and on university campuses. Their target was the belief that children and young adults are fragile beings who must be protected from uncomfortable ideas and the […]
The Government has just fallen victim to a campaign of misinformation – this is not a good sign about how we are going to be governed. I have, myself, played in those dark arts of political number making and this is a classic example to my mind. A classic example of someone starting out – […]
When John Healey resigned as Defence Secretary last week, there was widespread praise for his principled stand. The financial settlement contained in the final draft of the Defence Investment Plan, believed to offer the Ministry of Defence an additional £10 billion or so over the next four years, was not even close to the resources […]
Can you imagine anything worse than a foreign company whose software saved lives, cut NHS waiting lists, put more police on the beat and reduced crime? It’s appalling, isn’t it? No British government or public sector body should have any dealings with such a company. Obviously. Much better to let patients die, cut police jobs […]
Every year, I eagerly await a report that confirms what I see before my eyes. KPMG’s ‘Illicit Trade in Tobacco Report’ is a beast of research, conducting in-person ‘pack-surveys’ (where packets of tobacco, whether to be rolled or already neatly packed into paper, are surveyed to find whether they are legally bought or smuggled, counterfeit […]
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has launched the largest ever public offering of stock today, selling $75 billion worth of shares. SpaceX emphasised its remarkable achievements in its IPO filing: ‘We are the primary launch provider for the US government. In 2025, we launched 11 of 12 National Security Space Launch (‘NSSL’) medium and heavy lift missions […]
Britain’s national debt is on course for £3 trillion this year. Servicing it costs £30 billion a year at 1% interest and £150 billion at 5%, near where long-dated gilts have recently been trading. That’s a number so big it almost becomes meaningless. So, let’s try another way: it’s about the yearly gross pay of […]
The World Cup starts today and for the first time in over 30 years it is being held in North America. Not only is this exciting news for football fans, it should also be of interest to free trade enthusiasts, as the last time it was held there the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) […]
September 2023: what a time that was to be alive. Aerosmith began their final ever tour, Kim Jong-Un arrived in Russia for an audience with Vladimir Putin and Rupert Murdoch stepped down from the boards of Fox and News Corp. It was a good month for news. Yet that month another turning point in world […]
The UK government is giving tech companies three months to activate on-device content scanning and age verification across all smartphones and tablets sold in Britain – or face fines and potentially criminal liability. Framed as a child safety measure, the proposal has drawn fierce criticism from privacy advocates, civil liberties groups, and free speech lawyers […]
With Donald Trump back in the White House, tariffs have become front-page news, and advocates for free trade find themselves on the back foot. Is this a passing phase, or a permanent shift? Soumaya Keynes and Chad Bown argue that with great powers now using trade as a weapon, there can be no simple return […]
From the progressive left to the nationalist right – in Washington or Westminster – a new consensus is forming. It argues that government should play a larger role in the economy, and that using industrial policy to achieve the economic outcomes we want is just common sense As president of the American Institute for Economic […]
Britain is paying more to borrow than any other major Western economy. So why is Labour preoccupied with internal power struggles? In a special live address, Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride delivers his account of Britain’s fiscal predicament and the Conservative Party’s plan to fix it. Our borrowing costs are the highest in the G7, higher […]
Keir Starmer is fighting for his political life. The bond markets are watching — and they have a long memory. Kallum Pickering, chief economist at Peel Hunt and columnist for The Telegraph, joins CapX editor Marc Sidwell for a lucid diagnosis of what is really going wrong with the British economy, why the markets are […]
When a business raises capital, it buys equipment, expands its operations, and hires people. That’s how investment becomes jobs. But the United Kingdom has ranked in the bottom quartile of advanced economies for private capital investment every year since 1995. The gap with our peers runs to roughly £100 billion annually. A new report from […]
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Viewers of ‘Clarkson’s Farm’ – now back for another season – will be familiar with Jeremy Clarkson’s long-running battle with the bureaucrats of West Oxfordshire District Council. When his Diddly Squat farm shop boomed, the council dragged their feet over planning permission for a car park extension, bizarrely decreed he could only sell goods from […]
Looking For Growth has launched the Emergency Energy Bill – a ready-made piece of legislation that the Government should pass tomorrow. But it won’t. Labour won’t take the radical action necessary to get bills down unless we force them to. This Government, just like many of its predecessors over the last thirty years, has prioritised […]
When John Healey resigned as Defence Secretary last week, there was widespread praise for his principled stand. The financial settlement contained in the final draft of the Defence Investment Plan, believed to offer the Ministry of Defence an additional £10 billion or so over the next four years, was not even close to the resources […]
Elon Musk’s SpaceX has launched the largest ever public offering of stock today, selling $75 billion worth of shares. SpaceX emphasised its remarkable achievements in its IPO filing: ‘We are the primary launch provider for the US government. In 2025, we launched 11 of 12 National Security Space Launch (‘NSSL’) medium and heavy lift missions […]
Britain’s national debt is on course for £3 trillion this year. Servicing it costs £30 billion a year at 1% interest and £150 billion at 5%, near where long-dated gilts have recently been trading. That’s a number so big it almost becomes meaningless. So, let’s try another way: it’s about the yearly gross pay of […]
The World Cup starts today and for the first time in over 30 years it is being held in North America. Not only is this exciting news for football fans, it should also be of interest to free trade enthusiasts, as the last time it was held there the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) […]
September 2023: what a time that was to be alive. Aerosmith began their final ever tour, Kim Jong-Un arrived in Russia for an audience with Vladimir Putin and Rupert Murdoch stepped down from the boards of Fox and News Corp. It was a good month for news. Yet that month another turning point in world […]
June 4 marked the 37th anniversary of the Tiananmen Square massacre. It has been a long time since the China of reform and opening-up gave way to one of the strangest regimes of our age: a country with the political freedoms of the Soviet Union but economic power approaching that of the United States, capable […]
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 […]
Can you imagine anything worse than a foreign company whose software saved lives, cut NHS waiting lists, put more police on the beat and reduced crime? It’s appalling, isn’t it? No British government or public sector body should have any dealings with such a company. Obviously. Much better to let patients die, cut police jobs […]
Admired for his reformist approach to the NHS, Wes Streeting is generally seen as the most market-friendly figure on the British Left. Yet his call for social media companies to be treated like tobacco businesses reminds us that even the best of a bad bunch can still be pretty awful. After resigning as Health Secretary, […]
I walked the dog recently along the Thames Path, around the source (or one of the sources, so as not to cause a fight) of the River Thames. This time of year, much of it is all dried up, and you can walk along the bed of what in the winter is full-flowing river. Wondering […]
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 […]
