This is going to be unpopular, but here goes. I believe Keir Starmer. I don’t think he would be so foolish, or so careless, as to lie to Parliament. He is an ultra-cautious man, a creature of procedure. When he says that he did not discover until this month that Peter Mandelson had been denied […]
Labour MPs have chosen to make themselves accomplices, to take on their leader’s guilt by association. Until yesterday evening, they might plausibly have piled the blame onto Keir Starmer, booted him out and had another go. With his propensity for flip-flopping, his self-contradictions and his terrible judgment, he might have served as a sin-eater or […]
Rachel Reeves cannot remain as Chancellor of the Exchequer. What makes her unfit for office is not that she has raised tax, swollen the welfare budget or set the country on the path to economic ruin. It is that she has done all this in open contempt for the letter and the spirit of the […]
Direct exchanges of fire between Israel and Iran. Long-range Russian missiles hitting Ukraine. Drones over our airbases. Official warnings of a cyberattack on Britain that might ‘turn out the lights for millions’. China preparing to take Taiwan. Are we spiralling into a new global conflagration? Can anything prevent it? All our options are fraught with […]
Something big and benign happened last month, and I bet you missed it. Indonesia formally applied to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP). It deposited its official letter of application just as Britain was completing its own accession process. The way is now clear to a much closer commercial relationship between the two […]
Have you noticed how much more of a nuisance it is to deal with your bank these days? Personal accounts are subject to needless extra checks. Business accounts have become so cumbersome that some investors are shifting their operations overseas. But here’s the thing. The multiplication of these pettifogging rules has come about since Brexit. […]
Caroline Lucas has been the single most influential MP of the past decade. Her central idea – that we need to go cold turkey on our ‘addiction to economic growth’ – has been spectacularly successful. Whether you measure output, productivity or overall GDP, Britain is well on the way to becoming a degrowth economy (I […]
José María Aznar, the shrewdest and most effective of modern Spanish statesmen, once privately told Fidel Castro that his regime had survived the collapse of Communism in 1989 for only one reason: the US blockade. American sanctions, Aznar suggested, had allowed the comandante to blame his people’s squalor, not on socialism, but on the yanqui siege. […]
It was a funny yet telling moment. Two of the EU’s presidents, the Commission’s Ursula von der Leyen and the Council’s Charles Michel, turned up last week for a summit with the President of Turkey, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Spotting that there was only one armchair next to the Turkish leader’s, Michel didn’t hesitate: he accelerated […]
What, I wonder, will future generations make of us? We have spent the past three months raging against our ancestors, calling them racists and bigots, smashing their statues. But imagine turning a similar lens on ourselves. What might tomorrow’s historians have to say about the year 2020? I have a nasty feeling that they will […]
Over the Christmas week, CapX is republishing its favourite pieces from the past year. This was first published on June 16. Do you remember the tragic story of Jacintha Saldanha? You don’t? It was huge at the time. Jacintha was a nurse at the hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to her first […]
Do you remember the tragic story of Jacintha Saldanha? You don’t? It was huge at the time. Jacintha was a nurse at the hospital where the Duchess of Cambridge gave birth to her first child. She got a hoax call from two Australian radio presenters pretending to be the Queen and the Prince of Wales, […]
Shall I tell you the most extraordinary thing about the clique who have commandeered the Labour Party? It’s not their fantastical spending plans, or their flirtations with the IRA, or their sheer, bumbling ineptitude. It’s something far scarier. Deep down, Jeremy Corbyn and John McDonnell and their Momentum supporters regret the outcome of the Cold […]
A bizarre idea has crept into our political discourse during the past six months. It presents Margaret Thatcher as the archetypal Conservative, and equates “abandoning Thatcherism” with “abandoning Toryism”. In fact, Margaret Thatcher was an almost accidental party leader, and her doctrines owed more to the Manchester Liberals than to any recognised form of Toryism. […]
Birds flying high, you know how I feel. Sun in the sky, you know how I feel. Leaves driftin’ on by, you know how I feel. With the serving of Article 50, Brexit becomes a legal fact. When it comes to the media, though, I’m in a distinct minority. Our public discourse on Brexit is […]
When terrorists struck at the United States in 2001, they targeted the stock exchange, symbol of that country’s merchant success. Today, in the United Kingdom, they targeted Parliament. “Parliament,” Enoch Powell used to say, “is a word of magic and power in this country”. Our national story is, in a sense, the story of a […]
Theresa May is about to make the most important speech of her premiership. In setting out her approach to Brexit, she should aim to do four things. First, reassure the world that, outside the EU, Britain will be competitive, engaged and open for business. Second, provide certainty to British companies and overseas investors. Third, offer […]
Over the Christmas week, CapX is republishing its favourite pieces from the past year. You can find the full list here. “I have not a shadow of a doubt that William Shakespeare would have voted to remain,” writes Chris Bryant, in a piece of sustained click-bait. The Euro-fanatical Labour MP was aiming to needle, and he […]
On New Year’s Day, I wrote a piece for CapX entitled “Sixteen Reasons to be cheerful about 2016”. Some of those reasons were general (poverty would fall, average IQ would rise) and some were tied to specific forecasts (driverless cars would move from the labs to the roads, Britain would vote to leave the EU). […]
How did you feel when you heard that a mother of two young children had been murdered by a gunman? I have no idea, as I write these words, whether you, the reader, are male or female, black or white, Left- or Right-leaning. But I reckon I’m on pretty safe ground in guessing your reaction […]
