Labour in office has accomplished vital things for Britain’s national security. Out of government, its record is more patchy and it’s had its share of fools. Writing in 1938, the former party leader George Lansbury wrote: “[T]o live, Germany needs peace as much as any nation in the world. No one understands this better than […]
The psychology of the mass murderer holds a gruesome fascination for the general reader. The subject makes good journalistic copy. To allow that interest to obscure the depravity of the crimes is a moral failing. That’s precisely what the New York Times did this week in publishing a piece by Jessica Stern, an American scholar […]
Politicians vary in ability and intellect, but most are genuinely dedicated to public welfare. Political parties may have what in my view are misguided policies but they do not set out to deliberately mislead the public. These opinions may not be fashionable but they seem to me, as a political observer, to be true. They […]
This is a miserable election. The least bad outcome would be another hung parliament, which is sadly not an option that exists on the ballot paper. I don’t wish Britain to embark on either the economic and diplomatic harm of the Conservative plans for Brexit or the delusions of state socialism. The Tory rhetoric of […]
Launching Labour’s election campaign yesterday, Jeremy Corbyn called on journalists to “just report what we say”. He evaded such questions as whether he would step down if Labour loses, how he would vote in a second referendum (which is actually the party’s policy), and whether the members of his shadow cabinet would take the corresponding […]
“How could you, Equador [sic]?” asked Pamela Anderson plaintively on Twitter this morning. It evidently struck hard that her friend Julian Assange had been dragged literally kicking and screaming from his bolthole at the Ecuadorian embassy, but in truth Ecuador’s government and diplomats have put up with a lot from their uninvited guest over the […]
Luciana Berger, MP for Liverpool Wavertree, said at the launch of the Independent Group of MPs this morning that she had become “embarrassed and ashamed” to remain in the institutionally anti-Semitic party that Labour has become. I have no idea whether the group will be electorally significant but those words encapsulate the problem that many […]
The hubris and vaulting ambition of New Labour were epitomised, according to popular political mythology, in its commitment to an ethical foreign policy. What role did this apparently unbounded meddling, asked critics, leave for national self-interest? Yet the image is based on a misquotation. In his famed speech in 1997 on taking office as foreign […]
President Maduro of Venezuela is fat. This isn’t a puerile jibe. It’s a factual observation that provides an insight into the plight of a proud nation with 30 million people and two centuries of independence behind it. Venezuela is a country blessed with abundant natural resources, yet nine out of ten households say they lack […]
The Grenfell Tower fire in London in 2017 claimed 71 lives. It was a horrific tragedy and a colossal failing of public safety. If you were to watch a three-part film on YouTube titled Failed by the State: The Struggle in the Shadow of Grenfell, you’d learn that it was also an exemplar of the […]
This week CapX is republishing some of our favourite articles of the year. This piece first appeared on November 23. In the 2017 French presidential election, stories emerged on social media that Emmanuel Macron held offshore bank accounts and was in a secret gay relationship. These claims were completely false. On taking office, President Macron […]
Over the Christmas week, CapX is republishing its favourite pieces from the past year. This piece was first published on January 16. Labour has never in its history been a socialist party. It was founded for the instrumental reason of representing workers’ interests in Parliament (hence the “Labour” Party, rather than the “Socialist” Party). For […]
In the 2017 French presidential election, stories emerged on social media that Emmanuel Macron held offshore bank accounts and was in a secret gay relationship. These claims were completely false. On taking office, President Macron criticised the Russian state propaganda organs Sputnik and Russia Today for spreading baseless rumours to harm his electoral chances against […]
Russia under the regime of Vladimir Putin is a rogue state but not an especially capable one. That’s the ineluctable conclusion to be drawn from the attempts of Russian spies to target the cyber operations of the Foreign Office, the Porton Down research facility and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). These […]
Wooden, pedestrian, halting, and with weird vocal inflections and randomly emphasised words: as a platform speaker, Jeremy Corbyn is truly in the class of Edward Heath. Yet yesterday’s conference speech was slightly better written and more confidently delivered than his previous ones. It was in fact that tone that was most striking. And to me, […]
The poisoning of Sergei and Yulia Skripal in March was not a rogue operation, the Prime Minister told MPs yesterday. She might have added that the attack using a nerve agent was, on the available evidence, the operation of a rogue state. The Putin regime has created a political culture of lethal violence against its […]
Labour is in a crisis of its own making. A plainly anti-Semitic comment by Jeremy Corbyn from 2013 resurfaced last week. The party’s new-found hostility (it is not too strong a word) to Jews today prompted Frank Field, the veteran MP for Birkenhead, to resign the Labour whip. Yet Mr Corbyn’s insinuation that Zionists are […]
Iran’s theocratic regime is a threat to the stability and peace of the Middle East. Yet President Trump’s response is a near-textbook case of irrationality and disruptive unilateralism. The dispute bodes ill in every respect. The US imposed unilateral sanctions on Iran today. These affect, among other things, Iran’s purchases of US dollar banknotes, trade […]
The Labour government of 1974-79 faced a crisis of weak growth, spiralling inflation and a plummeting exchange rate. Brian Sedgemore, a backbench MP who fancied his credentials as an economic guru, went to see Denis Healey, the chancellor of the exchequer, to propose the left’s Alternative Economic Strategy of import controls, price controls and compulsory […]
By this time next week, the security of Western democratic nations may have been irreparably damaged. It is at least a plausible outcome that a US president who openly despises the country’s allies and the policies of his postwar predecessors will have wrecked the transatlantic alliance. I hope this is mere alarmism but the risks are […]
