There are a few things that are certain in life; trips to the loo, kicking the bucket and paying taxes. And in Britain, the last of those is particularly painful. By now we’ve all heard on a number of occasions that the tax burden is at its highest level since Clement Attlee was Prime Minister. […]
News of Lee Anderson’s defection to Reform UK was not what Rishi Sunak was hoping to wake up to on Monday morning. For a bit of background, Anderson, who served under Sunak as Deputy Chairman of the Conservative Party, recently lost the whip after accusing Mayor of London Sadiq Khan of being under the control […]
Liz Truss seems to have had quite the ideological conversion, or at least a sharp pivot. This week, the former Prime Minister went stateside to attend the Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC) in Washington DC. For context, conservative gatherings in America are very different to those held here – especially with a post-Trump Republican Party. […]
Over the last couple of centuries, the Greater Manchester constituency of Rochdale has suffered quite the fall from grace. Once revered for its wealth and represented by the great free-marketeer Richard Cobden, the old manufacturing town is now notorious for a major grooming gang scandal and for being the constituency that voted in the odious […]
What a week it’s been for the nanny state. In what will have come as a shock to us all, Heineken announced that the strength of John Smith’s Extra Smooth is to be reduced from 3.6% to 3.4% ABV. Oh, and on Monday the government declared its intention to push ahead with a ban on […]
For those living under a rock, this week’s news cycle has been dominated by the Post Office Horizon scandal – a story that has re-emerged in light of the ITV drama Mr Bates vs The Post Office. It follows Alan Bates (Toby Jones) in his Sisyphean struggle to take on powerful vested interests and edge […]
News of pub tycoon Tim Martin’s inclusion in the New Year’s Honour’s list has engendered the sort of the online bile reserved for anyone on the right who the government dares to recognise for years of public service. According to one enraged doomsayer, Martin’s knighthood is proof that the UK has become a ‘dank, rancid […]
It all started with a pair of shoes. At the CPS’ annual Keith Joseph Memorial Lecture, presented this week at the Institute of Directors, Professor Niall Ferguson told a packed room that he first appreciated the human cost of high inflation when he observed his mother’s shock at the price of his new school shoes […]
The scale of briefing, leaking and kite flying accompanying today’s Autumn Statement was such that it was almost impossible to be surprised by any of the measures announced. But if we learned anything, it’s that Jeremy Hunt is clearly an avid CapX reader. Many of his announcements, from full expensing to pension reform, have been […]
Things are not looking good for the Tories. In what Keir Starmer described, with some justification, as ‘history in the making’, Labour overturned huge majorities in the Tamworth and Mid Bedfordshire by-elections. Despite the best efforts of the CCHQ comms team to blame bad weather and low turnout, there’s no denying that these defeats were […]
What is it that defines a conservative? Benjamin Disraeli might have emphasised noblesse oblige, while Margaret Thatcher may have stressed the promotion of competition. Given how many iterations conservatism has had, it’s not an easy question to answer. However, what it certainly is not, is the unnecessary expansion of the state and degradation of individual […]
Over the coming days, a fleet of excited young Tories, many looking very smart in their fathers’ double-breasted suits, will be making their way to Manchester for this year’s Conservative Party Conference. However, there’s a malign serendipity in the fact that Tories are heading up to Manchester at the same time as they are rumoured […]
Picture the scene. You’re walking to the pub after a day of graft, music ringing in your headphones as thoughts of the day’s stress give way to childlike excitement for the first sip of continental lager. You arrive, order your chosen brew and assume an outside seat. Just as you’ve always done, you produce your […]
It’s enough to make any good free marketeer despair. Britain has the highest tax burden since the Attlee era, a health service that would make Solzhenitsyn weep and a central bank which fuelled inflation with prolonged quantitative easing (QE). It’s a Bermuda triangle of economic pressures that make growth disappear without trace. These, and a […]
Love them or loathe them, the successive lockdowns of 2020 and 2021 impacted every sphere of public and private life. From relationships to education, and of course the public finances, lockdown permeated it all. According to public health orthodoxy, suppressing the three A’s of alcohol availability, advertising and affordability – as we saw during lockdowns […]
