Over the Christmas week, CapX is republishing its favourite pieces from the past year. You can find the full list here. For a bunch of supposed professional sceptics and cynics, British journalists tend to have a surprisingly strong romantic streak. No other trade (it is a trade, and not a profession) enjoys analysing its […]
Over the Christmas week, CapX is republishing its favourite pieces from the past year. You can find the full list here. I’m finishing my next book and something is bothering me. The book will be published in September and it’s about the City. It is an attempt to place the exciting human story of […]
Over the Christmas week, CapX is republishing its favourite pieces from the past year. You can find the full list here. In the days around the release of David Bowie’s final album, several leading writers on music republished earlier interviews with the great man. We know now why there were no fresh interviews to accompany […]
That both sides in the EU referendum are trading insults and dodgy assertions, sprinkled with the odd downright lie, is hardly surprising. This is politics in the raw. At stake on June 23rd is the country, a place in history and potentially the keys to Number 10. Someone is going to win and someone is […]
Leading a political party is difficult work. Do not for one second fall for the erroneous idea that it is easy, or be fooled by criticism from commentators like me or backbench MPs into thinking that we could do it better. It is far easier to be on the sidelines saying “I can’t believe he […]
For a bunch of supposed professional sceptics and cynics, British journalists tend to have a surprisingly strong romantic streak. No other trade (it is a trade, and not a profession) enjoys analysing its own history, and romanticising its past, quite as much as British hacks do. There may well be memoirs in existence about the […]
I’ve got that old feeling again. No, not that one, the other one, that feeling of being bludgeoned by a baseball bat of a political campaign. Let’s face it, the referendum battle is not going quite as those who lean to leave hoped it would, which is partly their own fault, and partly down to […]
This is the weekly newsletter from Iain Martin, editor of CapX. To receive it by email every Friday, along with a short daily email of our top five stories, please subscribe here. There have been so many moments of stupidity in the UK EU referendum that it has been quite difficult for the assorted campaigns […]
Of course I don’t hate the EU referendum, or not entirely. Finally, after decades of ineffectual complaining, the British are being forced to decide. If it is a Remain, let there never be another word of whinging about the EU, “bonkers Brussels bureaucrats” or regulations on bananas. Equally, if it is Leave, then all those […]
This has not been the finest week for the Brexiteers. On Thursday, the premiere of Brexit the Movie was held in London, and while the intentions of the film-maker are perfectly laudable, among the audience of respectable people were more than a smattering of headbangers. When the former Prime Minister Ted Heath came up on […]
The Prime Minister is extremely concerned about the risks posed by the possibility of Brexit. Boy, if he ever finds out who called this referendum he is going to give them a piece of his mind. Oh, hold on, it was the Prime Minister who called the referendum and said during his renegotiation that preceded […]
First, here is the overwhelmingly good news, if you are someone who wants the United Kingdom not to be broken up. The Union looks safer now than it has been for some time because the momentum of the SNP has been halted and even reversed a little in the Scottish Parliament elections which took place […]
The Tories have a new heroine, and she is Scottish. What on earth is going on? Ruth Davidson’s triumph in knocking Labour into third place in the Holyrood election and in helping to ensure that the SNP lost its overall majority is an extraordinary achievement. Be in no doubt – even if TV still seems to […]
On the BBC’s Question Time, after the polls closed in the devolved and local elections taking place across the UK, there was a revealing little exchange when the gentleman from Ryanair tried to explain to a supporter of Jeremy Corbyn in the audience that her man is completely unelectable. She would not hear it and […]
During President Obama’s recent farewell trip to the UK, much was made of his comment that Britain would find itself in “the back of the queue” for a free trade deal with the US if it dares to leave the EU. The arrogance of that statement caused even moderate Brexit-leaning commentators (okay, me) to abandon […]
A band of wandering minstrels have in the last year been going around the country lecturing Labour party members and the country at large on the supposed brilliance of Jeremy Corbyn and the insurgent “movement” he leads. The cast list has included some of Britain’s least funny political comedians and the singer Charlotte Church. She […]
One of the quirks of the EU referendum campaign is the way in which SNP grandees pop up to condemn scare tactics and the “Project Fear” approach of their colleagues in the Remain campaign and then in the next breath say that Brexit would lead to a second referendum on Scottish independence. This way they […]
And so it begins… Donald Trump will be the Republican nominee. In the Indiana primary the golf-obsessed poltroon crushed Ted Cruz, making it impossible for anyone to stop him. He will have enough delegates before the convention and the chairman of the Republican National Committee has already declared him the presumptive nominee and offered up the RNC’s services. […]
A Republican party that should have done a better job preventing the rise of Trump, via offering a narrower and better field, is fighting a brave rearguard action attempting to prevent Trump become the candidate. Yet it looks as though Ted Cruz (who is redeeming himself a little by his patriotic battle to avert a global […]
One of the most affecting pieces of coverage of the Hillsborough verdict was the simplest. The BBC’s Today programme Radio 4 earlier this week simply ran lengthy clips of the live commentary by Peter Jones from the ground on the day – the 15th April 1989 – when 96 Liverpool fans lost their lives and […]
