Here is an idiotic question for an England football fan this summer. Which would they prefer winning? The World Cup itself? Or the FIFA Fair Play Trophy, awarded to the side with the best disciplinary record during the tournament? The answer: it might be nice if England plays decently, but all of us would hugely […]
In 2020, the European Union launched its Green Deal. Six years later, investments in hydrogen-based projects have collapsed, and electricity prices are twice as high as in the US and China. Europe is losing its competitive edge. In our research for the Institute of Economic Affairs, we identify eight reasons why the EU Green Deal […]
The war in Iran continues, and Donald Trump is trying to avoid an enduring oil shock by assembling an international alliance to protect the Strait of Hormuz. But as the realities on the ground play out, so too does the war of narratives. Vali Nasr, a professor at Johns Hopkins University who frequently appears on […]
London is the undisputed capital of global currency markets, with around 38% of global foreign-exchange trading taking place in the UK. But the infrastructure of money is evolving. Stablecoins, digital forms of traditional currencies, are rapidly becoming an important part of global finance. One of the largest issuers, Circle’s USDC, processed $8.4 trillion in transactions in January […]
Something is going very wrong in European football. The sport has never been richer, yet it has rarely felt flatter. The great promise of football – its unpredictability, its capacity for genuine surprise – is eroding before our eyes. Every year, a handful of ‘superclubs’ hoover up the most promising players, dominate domestic leagues, collect […]
While peace proposals are circulating to end this ruinous conflict, any deal that results in a lasting peace will need to ensure Ukraine is economically and militarily strong enough to resist future Russian aggression. That requires money – lots of it – to rebuild shattered infrastructure and maintain a technologically advanced military. The obvious source […]
Will France need to be bailed out under the latest of the European Central Bank’s (ECB) damage limitation devices, the magically named Transmission Protection Instrument? France’s minority government under embattled Prime Minister Sébastien Lecornu has finally succeeded in passing a social security budget – by including a provision temporarily suspending President Emmanuel Macron’s flagship pension […]
Our staff and contributors have rounded up some of their favourite works of the year, and whether you’re after a history of English poetry or a sleazy Frenchman’s account of a trip to Lanzarote, there’s something for everyone in CapX’s Books of 2025. Robert Colvile, CapX Editor-in-Chief Since we’ve all had enough of politics at […]
Rents go up and up and up. That is how most people my age view their lot in the property market, particularly in London. A steady, year-on-year increase in rent eats up any increases in wages they earn and more. If you look at the statistics over the past few years, they’re right to think […]
Today’s S&P UK construction data should set alarm bells ringing in Number 10. Construction activity across housing, commercial and civil engineering has seen its steepest fall since the pandemic, with new orders nosediving and employment declining for eleven consecutive months. This is not a natural cooling of the market. It is the predictable consequence of […]
The Tobacco and Vapes Bill is back in the Lords. I, like many sensible-minded people in Westminster, had hoped the Labour Government had finally realised that it was an unworkable mess which runs roughshod over personal liberty, places ridiculous burdens on small independent shops and risks an explosion in criminality. That it would rightly be […]
The unfashionable truth about Margaret Thatcher is that she was never a radical. She was in fact Britain’s great counter-radical – the leader who hauled politics back from establishment extremism posing as moderation. By the late 1970s, the establishment ‘wets’, both within Conservative and Labour, had incrementally normalised endless subsidies, 83p tax rates and government-by-stoppage […]
Democrat Governors in California, Maryland, Virginia and the Republican Governor of Utah are wrestling with a key question: could a strong approach to the issues facing boys and men win back lost support? In the United States, the Democrats’ journey into identitarianism led to half the population thinking their presidential candidate didn’t care about the […]
Effective trade policy is built on one thing above all: a sound grasp of competitive advantage in overseas markets. Understand this, and a country can feel its way towards export-driven prosperity. Ignore it, and trade policy is flying blind – and so is industrial policy. The UK has been free to craft its own trade […]
Britain has a long and proud history of innovation – stretching from the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions right through to modern successes in the fintech and life sciences sectors. Unfortunately, in recent years another trend has emerged, of start-ups incubating ideas in the UK before listing their businesses overseas, primarily in the US. Of the […]
Labour have promised to grow the economy and make Britain more competitive. But one of the things that growth depends on – fast and reliable mobile signal – is being quietly undermined by a law most people have never heard of. Unless ministers act soon, the plan to bring 5G to every part of the […]
Keir Starmer has announced the most un-British of proposals. Despite mandatory ID schemes having been rejected at every attempt to introduce them since 1950, Labour will require every adult in the UK to use a state-mandated digital ID to prove their identity. It is central to the British liberal tradition that those who live in […]
Evidence of Britain’s deleterious energy policy continues to pile up. Earlier this week, Ineos Energy announced an end to all investment in Britain. This comes after the closure of the Grangemouth refinery, the UKs’s oldest, earlier this year by Petroineos, and a warning from the wider Ineos conglomerate – the world’s fourth-largest chemical company, which […]
Europe is in steep structural economic decline. The decline is now so embedded that Europe is at a crossroads. Either she rediscovers her dynamism, or the continent faces increasing global marginalisation and a relative fall in living standards. Just a generation ago, the European Union accounted for almost a quarter of global GDP on a […]
Although competing rumours have been circulating throughout the summer, no one knew what to really expect from the Bloquons-Tout! (‘Let’s Block Everything!’) day of action announced on social media throughout France for September 10. Was this the resurfacing of the gilets jaunes movement, which frightened the country and then faded into the pandemic of 2020? […]
