I’ll declare an interest. I sit on Reform UK’s Board and I’ve known Nigel Farage for a quarter of a century. So when Kemi Badenoch tells the country that Reform are ‘another left-wing party’, that we and Labour are arguing for ‘the same things, nationalisation, the two-child benefit cap’, that Farage is Jeremy Corbyn wrapped […]
The Commonwealth is an anachronism in the 21st century – an imperial hangover that shows no signs of abatement but is instead getting worse. As King Charles addressed his subjects in Antigua and Barbuda ahead of this week’s Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM), our Prime Minister was throwing out statements about possible apologies and […]
Emma Reynolds, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, is one of the more sensible Labour MPs. She resigned as a front bencher when Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader and is firmly in the moderate wing of the Labour Party. Which is why her comment yesterday that ‘I don’t think employers are working people’ is all […]
Britain needs new talent and ideas in its politics. The old factions of Westminster have proven themselves incapable or unwilling to take the radical action required to fix the country. They push our best abroad, ignore new ideas (or claim they are ‘not serious’ or ‘sensible’), abandon their principles and kick difficult decisions down the […]
I was diagnosed with Parkinson’s 12 years ago. I then started and ran a successful business, helping 339 mothers and 37 fathers back into work, and won Entrepreneur of the Year at the UK Business Awards. After five or six years, my health began affecting the business. Today I receive Personal Independence Payment (PIP). My […]
John Healey’s debut Budget was a coward’s charter. Despite there being a record 98 measures in the Chancellor’s announcement, all the major decisions have been kicked into the long grass. Despite having resigned as Defence Secretary over funding concerns under Keir Starmer, Healey delayed detailing how the Government would fund raising defence spending to 3.5% […]
Wednesday’s Budget was a depressing fiscal exercise in entrenching stagnation, protection of vested interests, and the discouragement of enterprise (on one count, it left 25% of our small businesses substantially worse off). But if you thought that was all, take a look at some modest proposals for labour law quietly slipped out at much the […]
Good news everyone. The Government has conceded the war on free trade. The Chancellor has seen the light and announced a package of tariff removals and extensions with the explicit aim of reducing household costs. That’s the good news. The bad news is that the package announced is pitiful. It should be celebrated that you […]
The next assault upon economic logic to arrive in the bookshops is coming from Isabella Weber. The Guardian is already drooling over ‘Anti-Fascist Economics: In Defence of Affordability, Dignity and Democracy’ which means, obviously, that all proper-thinking residents of north London will be doing so as soon as they can. Weber is an economics professor […]
This was meant to be a do-no-harm Budget. If that was really the aim, it has failed miserably. It’s a Budget that raises taxes by £7 billion and attacks entrepreneurs, savers and the rental market in particular. The first point to note is that the increases in income tax on savings and property income are […]
Yesterday, the Chancellor had the chance to confront a runaway benefits bill and a tax burden strangling growth. He bottled both, and instead billed the banks and workers. John Healey stood up yesterday afternoon and told the Commons that fiscal discipline was his first commitment. He then announced that Britain will borrow more in every […]
Liam Halligan is joined by Daniel Herring, Head of Fiscal Policy at the Centre for Policy Studies, to pick apart John Healey’s first Budget. Their verdict? A handful of nothing. The Chancellor has avoided the worst tax rises, but done little to address Britain’s mounting fiscal problems. With debt interest soaring, growth forecasts downgraded and […]
Is Britain heading for another Brexit battle? A decade after the referendum, the question of Britain’s relationship with Europe is back on the political agenda. And Lord Frost, the man who led the UK’s Brexit negotiations, believes the campaign to keep Britain out of the EU must begin again. In this episode of The Capitalist, […]
Has Britain become a nation ashamed of its own history? And what happens when a country loses faith in its past? Historian Robert Tombs joins Marc Sidwell on The Capitalist to challenge the increasingly negative account of British history being taught in schools, universities and museums. In his new book, Our Islands’ Story, co-authored with […]
Andrew Griffith says Britain has already gone over the fiscal cliff. The question now is whether it can pull itself back. In a conversation with Centre for Policy Studies director Liam Halligan, the Shadow Chancellor delivers a clear diagnosis of Britain’s economy: a state consuming 45% of national income, punitive energy costs, rising taxes, excessive […]
Can the Tories’ tough-love welfare plans get more people back into work? Helen Whately, Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary, joins Marc Sidwell to set out the Conservatives’ plans for reforming Britain’s welfare system – including tougher rules for young people and the long-term unemployed. Whately explains the party’s new ‘Get to Work’ plan, which would […]
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 […]
Watch or listen to CapX’s weekly podcast ‘The Capitalist’ wherever you get your podcasts.
I’ll declare an interest. I sit on Reform UK’s Board and I’ve known Nigel Farage for a quarter of a century. So when Kemi Badenoch tells the country that Reform are ‘another left-wing party’, that we and Labour are arguing for ‘the same things, nationalisation, the two-child benefit cap’, that Farage is Jeremy Corbyn wrapped […]
The Commonwealth is an anachronism in the 21st century – an imperial hangover that shows no signs of abatement but is instead getting worse. As King Charles addressed his subjects in Antigua and Barbuda ahead of this week’s Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting (CHOGM), our Prime Minister was throwing out statements about possible apologies and […]
Emma Reynolds, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, is one of the more sensible Labour MPs. She resigned as a front bencher when Jeremy Corbyn was elected leader and is firmly in the moderate wing of the Labour Party. Which is why her comment yesterday that ‘I don’t think employers are working people’ is all […]
Britain needs new talent and ideas in its politics. The old factions of Westminster have proven themselves incapable or unwilling to take the radical action required to fix the country. They push our best abroad, ignore new ideas (or claim they are ‘not serious’ or ‘sensible’), abandon their principles and kick difficult decisions down the […]
John Healey’s debut Budget was a coward’s charter. Despite there being a record 98 measures in the Chancellor’s announcement, all the major decisions have been kicked into the long grass. Despite having resigned as Defence Secretary over funding concerns under Keir Starmer, Healey delayed detailing how the Government would fund raising defence spending to 3.5% […]
Wednesday’s Budget was a depressing fiscal exercise in entrenching stagnation, protection of vested interests, and the discouragement of enterprise (on one count, it left 25% of our small businesses substantially worse off). But if you thought that was all, take a look at some modest proposals for labour law quietly slipped out at much the […]
The next assault upon economic logic to arrive in the bookshops is coming from Isabella Weber. The Guardian is already drooling over ‘Anti-Fascist Economics: In Defence of Affordability, Dignity and Democracy’ which means, obviously, that all proper-thinking residents of north London will be doing so as soon as they can. Weber is an economics professor […]
In 2010, Paul Krugman wrote a New York Times column titled ‘Learning From Europe’. For decades, Europe was the model that American left-leaning economists wanted America to follow: a big welfare state, generous welfare programmes and large-scale redistribution. But it seems something has changed. Krugman has now written about France being on a ‘fiscally unsustainable […]
There are many phrases of Adam Smith that are well worth echoing today, and one of the most significant is this: ‘The end of all production is consumption.’ It is not to create jobs. The people who talk of new industries creating many new jobs are putting the cart before the horse. The aim of […]
Most people experience data regulation pretty much every day through those insufferable cookie pop-ups. This tick box process of getting user consent ultimately benefited nobody while practically annoying everyone. Hundreds of millions of human hours have been spent clicking through those things on websites across the internet. The previous Conservative government promised to get rid […]
Britain is looking for the effects of artificial intelligence in all the obvious places: redundancies, vacancies and unemployment numbers. So far, there is little evidence of dramatic change in overall headcount. The Office for National Statistics reports that most British businesses using AI have not changed the size of their workforce, even as AI adoption […]
In the graphic novel ‘Ministry of Space’, an alternate history is imagined whereby Great Britain nabs the Nazi rocket scientists before the US or USSR. Churchill becomes, in addition to his other (real) accolades and achievements, the father of the British space programme that sees us win the space race. There is a particularly poignant […]
In the mid-90s, you could save up a deposit for a house in a year; now it takes about a decade. That’s a really meaningful change. That’s a whole stage of your life where 30 years ago you might reasonably have expected to become a homeowner and now that is highly unlikely In a room […]
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 […]
This is a highlight from the event programme of the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) – CapX’s parent organisation – at this year’s Conservative Party Conference. You can watch all the panels and interviews on the CPS YouTube channel. The £23 billion [in welfare savings] is just the start. The number will be higher by […]
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 […]
‘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 […]
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 […]
