I was going to open this column by listing the soppy reasons I was a Remainer: the EU represented a model of tolerance, compassion and partnership that would contribute to a more peaceful world; Brexit was revolutionary, therefore unconservative; abandoning our closest trade partnership would harm the economy. These are all perfectly good arguments which […]
I was in a field in Kent as the local election results came in. As an unapologetic adherent of the metropolitan elite, it’s not my natural environment. But over the weekend it became increasingly clear that I’m not the only Londoner who’s out of touch with the rest of the country. The capital is now […]
You’ve seen a film like ‘Hoppers’ before. A plucky young girl who loves animals campaigns against a corrupt and venal politician who wants to concrete over a local beauty spot. Children are natural small-c conservatives, so it is no wonder that the culture created for them is often derivative and formulaic. But ‘Hoppers’, a new […]
Strikes are only as effective as the harm they cause. When the miners downed tools in the 1970s, they plunged the country into darkness. When train drivers walk out, they impose immense annoyance, inconvenience and costs. When doctors go on strike, people die. That is the logic with which the British Medical Association (BMA) is […]
The piece below is Alys Denby’s chapter from ‘Conservative Revolution: The Centre for Policy Studies at 50’, published on June 4. It can be purchased here. You can use the code CPSBOOK to get a discounted copy. ‘The climate of opinion… is shaped by the battle of ideas and by experience. If socialists, irrespective of […]
On this day in 1975, Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservative Party. Back then, Britain was an embarrassment, beset by inflation, traumatised by mass unemployment, held to ransom by trade unions, with both political parties incapable of governing. Every Prime Minister’s legacy is contested, but no one can dispute that the country changed fundamentally […]
Tom Hollander revealed this week that he once accidentally received a payslip for a seven figure box office bonus intended for Spider-Man star Tom Holland. It raises the question, if a Hollywood super-agent can make such a huge administrative error, what hope is there for the UK government rolling out the biggest expansion of childcare […]
Lee Anderson said this week that he was unable to vote against the Rwanda bill because, ‘The Labour lot was all giggling and laughing and taking the mick’. It’s hardly the first time the former miner, who notoriously claimed to be able to feed himself for 30p a day, has attracted condescension. But his remarks […]
Parliament is back and so are the Tory factions fighting over the Rwanda scheme. In the first CapX Podcast of 2024, Alys Denby is joined by Research Director at the Centre for Policy Studies Karl Williams to discuss how debates over immigration policy will play out over the next year, and what impact they will […]
This promises to be a year of progress and appreciation for a proud record of achievement. Not for the government, of course, which is facing a general election from around 20 points behind in the polls and with perishingly little to show for the last 14 years. But for CapX and the Centre for Policy […]
CapX Editor Alys Denby runs through the people and policies that made 2023 another peculiar year in politics, with Poppy Coburn, Assistant US Opinion Editor at the Telegraph, William Atkinson, Assistant Editor at Conservative Home and Joseph Dinnage, Deputy Editor of CapX.
Boris Johnson and women. There has never been a shortage of revelations about the ex-Prime Minister’s relations with the fairer sex, but this week brought another: he didn’t have enough of them. Speaking at the Covid Inquiry, Johnson admitted that ‘the gender balance of my team should have been better,’ and ‘during the pandemic too […]
Britain has among the most expensive childcare costs in the Western world. It’s a sentence that you often see written down. But it can be hard to understand what that means until you’re actually a parent yourself. So let me put it more simply. For a while before she started school, my daughter’s childcare accounted […]
Is Britain a sh*thole? Or does it just have sh*t MPs? It’s a question James Cleverly wrestled with after being accused of referring to Stockton North in less than parliamentary terms. The Home Secretary clarified that his disparaging remarks had in fact been directed at the local MP, perhaps reasoning that insulting a Labour colleague […]
The resurrection of David Cameron was hailed by many in Westminster as a political miracle, not least because it knocked Suella Braverman off the front pages. But the country, it seems, is sceptical. In a brutal focus group for Times Radio, voters dismissed the reshuffle as ‘clutching at straws’ and described the former Prime Minister […]
Well, the King was magnificent. In his first State Opening of Parliament as monarch, he gracefully announced new oil drilling in the North Sea and a cigarette ban without giving the slightest hint that he’d spent his life campaigning for the environment or that smoking was his wife’s favourite habit. Any fears that the opinionated […]
This week, I was invited to speak at the Cambridge Union in support of the motion ‘This House believes Britain needs a new Thatcher’, below is an abridged transcript of my remarks. Every Conservative – from the grizzled Rotarian to the rubicund undergraduate – yearns for a return of Margaret Thatcher. Not just out of […]
Normally, people who want to waste time protesting about Lords reform and proportional representation just vote Lib Dem. But one man took things further this week, storming the stage at Labour conference to shower Keir Starmer with glitter while ranting something about a citizens’ assembly. This ‘idiot’ did the Labour leader a huge favour – […]
The world has just witnessed the worst attack on Jewish people since the Holocaust. Yet amid the international condemnation of Hamas terrorists, there has also been equivocation – and even celebration in some quarters. No other conflict stirs emotions like that between Israel and palestine – so why is it that the world’s only Jewish […]
I was ill at Conservative Party Conference. Exhausted, croaking, beset by questions about my fitness for office – I felt like a lame joke on the government. The Prime Minister is clearly mindful of the malaise hanging over his troops, and he took to the stage in Manchester, gleaming and fresh from his Peloton, to declare […]
