Devotees of the Bridge, the Scandi-noir television hit featuring a blonde detective and her chubby grey-haired lothario sidekick, will have noticed that the bridge in the series that links Sweden and Denmark is a very nice bridge. Look how robust it is. Look at the clean lines and robust metalwork. If only the same could […]
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. When even Eurosceptic new Polish ministers are highly sceptical about your ideas for reforming the European Union, and you are a British Prime […]
Tony Blair was a highly successful leader in electoral terms. His party last won a general election a decade ago, when he was still, just, leader. But any Blair supporter who doubts that his project – the reinvention of Labour as natural party of government – was a disastrous failure need only look at the […]
It is said, sometimes by sensible people, that Donald Trump would be fine as President. He’s a business leader and he appoints good advisers and managers. Ignore all the reality TV nonsense that he spouts and focus on the way he would get stuff done. That’s the theory. And you hear it from some surprising […]
What’s this? An SNP MP campaigning against tax avoidance schemes is revealed to have benefitted from a scheme that could have been used to minimise tax. The Mail on Sunday Scottish edition alleges that Phil Boswell enjoyed an £18,000 interest free loan via an employment contract. These activities are entirely legal, but awkwardly Boswell has made much […]
The idea seems to have taken hold that pro-war MPs cheered in the Commons the other night when the result of the vote was announced. Partly it is down to MPs, such as the SNP’s Mhairi Black, who tweeted: “Will never forget the noise of some Labour and Tory cheering together at the idea of […]
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. What happens when the Corbynite shock troops who terrorise their opponents work out that the victorious Labour candidate in the Oldham by-election is […]
The Scottish Nationalists are excelling themselves over the Syria vote, I see. Mhairi Black tweeted of an allegedly dark night in parliament after MPs backed British involvement: “Will never forget the noise of some Labour and Tory cheering together at the idea of bombs falling.” That is, as we people from Paisley say, “utter garbage.” […]
Splits and the creation of new factions that peeled off used to be normal in the Commons of the 19th and early 20th century. Free traders split and found cause with other free traders in other parties and drifted across the spectrum. Unionists of particular dispositions clustered together. Groups formed that voted and dined together, […]
There is not much to praise in Labour’s handling of the Syria vote. I won’t recount the full extent of the shambles here because it falls into the life is too short category. But at least Labour is having an argument and allowing a free vote, which reflects the moral complexity of the situation. Labour […]
Anyone who spends any time around Westminster, who ever pops into a pub within shouting distance of Parliament, knows the peculiar intensity with which young Conservatives play politics. Advisers and the staff of MPs can be seen mixing with aspiring lobbyists and a smattering of hacks and bloggers, all sharing the latest gossip and refuelling. […]
One of the least convincing aspects of the current discussion in the UK about whether or not British firepower should be deployed in the bombing of ISIS in Syria is the invoking of the 1930s analogy by armchair generals. Neville Chamberlain always gets a bad press in these situations, whenever conflict is mooted, as though […]
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. Is the British Labour party doing it to win a bet? That is one possible explanation for the unfolding carnage under the calamitous […]
Senior executives at the Royal Bank of Scotland colluded to ensure that tens of millions of pounds in bankers’ bonuses were paid out shortly before the financial crisis, an RBS whistleblower will say in evidence in a UK court case that could cost the bank billions. It is understood that US-based Victor Hong, a risk […]
Lucky old George Osborne. The shadow chancellor John McDonnell put in a performance of such inadequacy and idiocy when he responded to George Osborne’s Autumn Statement that much of the attention will be on Labour failing to do its basic job. It is an opposition party under a leadership of clowns. McDonnell actually read from […]
John McDonnell is making a speech this weekend, in which the big idea seems to be something the Corbynites are referring to as “Socialism with an iPad.” Put to one side the reality that if Labour’s Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell and his comrades had been in a position of economic power in recent decades there […]
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. Another day, another attack by Islamist fascists in their war on innocents who do nothing more provocative than check into a hotel, go […]
There is horror in parts of the European media, and among many Europeans, at the backlash in the US against Syrian refugees. A string of politicians chasing the Republican nomination have declared themselves against the President’s plan to harbour 10,000 Syrian refugees. The House of Representatives voted to make it more difficult for refugees to […]
Such a lot is going wrong for Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters that one can become blasé about new revelations. The Sun reports that the Shadow Chancellor signed up to a series of stupid demands made by Hardline Socialist Bampots for a Labour Defeat (or some such fringe organisation.) One of the demands was the […]
There are so many ways in which a decent, centrist opposition leader could be holding the UK Tory government to account. For all its strengths, and David Cameron’s recent electoral vindication, there is much it is is doing that needs proper scrutiny. Why has the government locked itself into a bizarre, costly nuclear deal with […]
