On September 29, 1976, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis Healey, announced his intention to apply to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a $3.9 billion loan, the largest ever requested. Britain, The Economist announced, was ‘bust’. This was a national humiliation, the crux of a decade of economic turmoil. Britain before 1979 was not […]
Why haven’t we grown in the last decade? We are experiencing the longest spell of workers experiencing no average wage growth in real terms for well over a century – ‘the longest in history since consistent wage records exist, dating back to Victorian times,’ as a paper in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy shows. […]
With the introduction of student fees in 1998, one might have expected that universities would gain independence from the state and its agencies. They would live off the fees paid by those who wanted them, free to act in accordance with whatever academic values they chose to embody. But the opposite happened: all the movement […]
Earlier this month, the Government announced it would pause its wide-ranging plans for Local Government Reorganisation (LGR), which would have redrawn local council and parish boundaries and overhauled a system that has been in place for centuries. As focus shifts to Andy Burnham’s less wordy – but no less ambitious – plans for devolution, England’s […]
This week, Nimby Watch is in Vauxhall, where people are up in arms about a proposed new high-rise… Alright then, Vauxhall. According to my notes, we’re in a nondescript, marshy village near London, named for Faulke’s (or Fox’s) Hall, though not really known by that until the Pleasure Gardens opened in 1740. I mean, you’re […]
For most of the post-war period, each generation in Britain could reasonably expect to be materially better off than the last. Since the financial crisis, that has changed. Productivity growth has been exceptionally weak and improvements in living standards have stagnated. This was the starting point for ‘Boosting Britain: A blueprint for radical financial and […]
A generation ago, when Asia’s leading tiger economies were places like South Korea or Singapore, India was the region’s teenage disappointment. Everyone agreed it had huge potential but it seemed stuck in life’s slow lane. The ‘Hindu rate of growth’ was a byword for handwringing and frustration, rather than the awe and admiration we take […]
Nobody ever built a wind farm with wind. An energy transition is always a project that uses its current energy source to build its replacement while keeping everyone fed and warm. Every turbine, panel, pylon and battery is made, moved, installed and replaced with the help of cheap oil. The question under the plan for […]
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 […]
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 […]
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.
On September 29, 1976, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis Healey, announced his intention to apply to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a $3.9 billion loan, the largest ever requested. Britain, The Economist announced, was ‘bust’. This was a national humiliation, the crux of a decade of economic turmoil. Britain before 1979 was not […]
Why haven’t we grown in the last decade? We are experiencing the longest spell of workers experiencing no average wage growth in real terms for well over a century – ‘the longest in history since consistent wage records exist, dating back to Victorian times,’ as a paper in the Oxford Review of Economic Policy shows. […]
With the introduction of student fees in 1998, one might have expected that universities would gain independence from the state and its agencies. They would live off the fees paid by those who wanted them, free to act in accordance with whatever academic values they chose to embody. But the opposite happened: all the movement […]
Earlier this month, the Government announced it would pause its wide-ranging plans for Local Government Reorganisation (LGR), which would have redrawn local council and parish boundaries and overhauled a system that has been in place for centuries. As focus shifts to Andy Burnham’s less wordy – but no less ambitious – plans for devolution, England’s […]
This week, Nimby Watch is in Vauxhall, where people are up in arms about a proposed new high-rise… Alright then, Vauxhall. According to my notes, we’re in a nondescript, marshy village near London, named for Faulke’s (or Fox’s) Hall, though not really known by that until the Pleasure Gardens opened in 1740. I mean, you’re […]
For most of the post-war period, each generation in Britain could reasonably expect to be materially better off than the last. Since the financial crisis, that has changed. Productivity growth has been exceptionally weak and improvements in living standards have stagnated. This was the starting point for ‘Boosting Britain: A blueprint for radical financial and […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
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 […]
