On Monday, a bombing raid on a humanitarian aid convoy in Syria killed 20 people, in a sustained and brutal bombardment that strained the recent cease-fire agreement to breaking point and beyond. The US blamed Russia or Syria. A Russian government spokesman countered that there were “no signs that any munitions hit the convoy” and […]
This is the weekly newsletter from CapX. To receive it by email every Friday, along with a short daily email of our top five stories, please subscribe here. David Cameron was sorry. He had won an election, saved the Union, cut the deficit. But, he confessed to his assembled constituency activists, he’d been unable to […]
The golden rule of British politics is that elections are won on the centre ground. Even in today’s fractured age, if you ask voters to position themselves on the political spectrum, 45 per cent would put themselves bang in the centre. The further you move to the left or right, the fewer voters you find. […]
Well, this is awkward. For the last few months, the hottest thing in economics has been the “elephant chart”. Produced by economists Christoph Lakner and Branko Milanovic, it showed how global income has changed over the past 20 years. The chart shows the poorest people in the world on the left and the richest on […]
There is often little place in politics for principle – unless that principle is one of self-preservation. For many, if not most, MPs, affairs of state (Brexit, grammar schools etc) took a back seat on Monday afternoon to concerns over their future employment. The Boundary Commission for England has revealed its proposals – matched by […]
This is the weekly newsletter from CapX. To receive it by email every Friday, along with a short daily email of our top five stories, please subscribe here. Should Britain build more grammar schools? Or a nuclear reactor at Hinkley Point? Should we remain part of the Single Market? Should we close the deficit or […]
“Hey, guy, tuck your shirt in, yeah?” The boy scurrying across the cafeteria of Samuel J Green Charter School mumbles an apology, and tidies away the trailing flap of his white shirt. Jay Altman gives a satisfied nod, bends to pick up a stray piece of litter on the floor, and then continues on his […]
The Temple of Bel survived the Romans and the Byzantines, the Umayyads and Mamluks, the British and the French. Now, in the wake of Isis’s occupation of Palmyra, only the entrance arch still stands. The rest, like so many of Palmyra’s treasures, has been desecrated or obliterated. Given how much Syria’s people have suffered, and […]
Jeremy Hunt’s decision to impose a new contract for junior doctors has left the government and the medical profession in a state of open warfare. And in gambling that doctors will eventually settle down and accept this new deal, Hunt has also left the Conservative Party in a very odd position: namely, betting against the […]
On Sunday morning, Johnny Rotten will collect his bus pass. I’m exaggerating, of course. For one thing, he’s got to wait till Monday for the offices to open, assuming he’s got the right forms. For another, he’s just 60, so he’ll only be able to claim free travel in London: to get around the rest […]
The City of London destroyed. Scotland departed. The British economy in ruins. Not a party political broadcast for the Stronger In campaign, but a gimlet-eyed prophecy from Britain’s European Union partners of what could happen if Britain votes for Brexit. On Monday, the think-tank Open Europe convened various members of the great and good to […]
There is a story the British political class tells itself about immigration. It goes like this. Labour’s decision to open the door to Eastern Europe was, everyone now accepts, a mistake. True, it provided that same political class with delightfully cheap plumbers, builders and cleaners. But it also put pressure on public services, strained community […]
“The Year of Europe” sounds like some atrocious reputation-building exercise dreamt up in the depths of the Berlaymont in Brussels – an attempt to burnish the European Union’s brand at the expense of its many taxpayers. But there aren’t many better ways of describing what’s in store for Britain in 2016. The fact is that, […]
Ken: The Ups and Downs of Ken Livingstone. Andrew Hosken, Arcadia Books, RPR £15.99 Jeremy Corbyn only appears once in the pages of ‘Ken’, and it is a bizarre cameo indeed. In 1994, Ken Livingstone announced that he was running against Tony Blair for Labour leader, with Corbyn as his deputy. The only problem was that […]
To say that Adele’s comeback single is a hit is a bit like saying that Cristiano Ronaldo knows his way around a football pitch. ‘Hello’ is a monster: the first single to be downloaded more than a million times in a week; more than a quarter of a billion views on YouTube; the best US […]
Well, this is embarrassing. Just two weeks into the job, Labour’s new policy chief has been suspended for endorsing another party. Under the mildly bizarre rules which govern the Labour party, one of the few hanging offences for a member or official is endorsing a competing candidate at an election. In Fisher’s case, it was […]
David Cameron’s renegotiation with Europe – which is expected to absorb much, if not all, of the Government’s attention over the coming year – is only just getting under way. But is it already beside the point? The reason I ask this is that the whole referendum campaign has been wrenched into a new and […]
All it took to prick the West’s conscience was a photograph. The image of a helpless child drowned on a Turkish beach has contributed to a remarkable shift in the public mood. As I write this, #refugeeswelcome is top of the Twitter trends and government ministers are rapidly backtracking from their “take no prisoners” (or […]
The rise of Donald Trump in the US and Jeremy Corbyn in the UK has been fodder for equal parts hand-wringing and glee among commentators. One has no hope of winning either his party’s leadership or a national election. The other has every chance of the former but zero chance of the latter – which, for […]
