The Chancellor is right to guard against complacency On the face of it, the Chancellor had reason to feel “Tiggerish” on delivering his Spring Statement: lower borrowing, continued employment growth, inflation set to fall, real wages set to rise, debt finally starting to fall as a percentage of GDP. But as Daniel Mahoney and I […]
Jeremy Corbyn opened his speech to the Labour Party conference – after the chants of “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn!” had finally, finally died down – with a genuinely moving story. He told the audience about Margaret Bondfield, a 19th-century teenage shop assistant from Brighton who was so shocked by the working conditions she saw around her […]
Over the Christmas week, CapX is republishing its favourite pieces from the past year. This was first published on June 12. “We know the importance of managing public finances,” reads the draft of the Labour manifesto that was leaked to the press last night. “So our manifesto is fully costed, with all current spending paid […]
It’s no secret that the housing shortage is one of the greatest challenges that Britain faces – and, indeed, one of the biggest reasons why young voters have rejected the Conservative Party in such numbers. When I started speaking to the Tory MPs who are taking part in the Centre for Policy Studies’ “New Generation” […]
Most Budgets are all about the rabbits in the hat. This one was all about the elephant in the room. That elephant being, of course, the socking great productivity downgrade inflicted upon Philip Hammond by the Office for Budget Responsibility. The key sentences came in what the Chancellor called, with a jab at his colleague […]
If you’re trying to explain Britain’s sky-high employment rate, a good place to start is the OECD’s statistics on business creation. The UK, it turns out, creates more “employer enterprises” (ie firms that actually hire people other than their owners) than pretty much any of its European rivals. But there’s a problem. As Rishi Sunak […]
Announcing its first rate rise in years this week, the Bank of England specifically highlighted the “noticeable impact” that Brexit is having on the economic outlook: “Uncertainties associated with Brexit,” it said, “are weighing on domestic activity, which has slowed even as global growth has risen significantly. And Brexit-related constraints on investment and labour supply appear […]
There are two popular theories about the labour market. The first is that automation is clawing its way up the wage scale, throwing the shelf-stackers out of work before setting its sights on the lawyers and the doctors. The next is that the job market is being hollowed out from the middle. The inevitable culmination […]
As central bankers met in New York this week for the annual meetings of the International Monetary Fund and World Bank, one question above all was on their minds: what the hell’s happening? The global economy is built around the consensus that the best way to deliver solid and stable growth is via solid and […]
Theresa May may not have the love of her party. But she has its admiring, horrified sympathy. If her speech today had been precisely choreographed to act as a metaphor for her premiership, it could not have been more perfect. A bright, confident start. A sudden disruption (via a “comedian” with a P45). The whole […]
CapX’s Editor offers his own take on what the Prime Minister should have said today. We meet today in Manchester to remember the things that unite us – as a Conservative Party, but also as a country. We remember the victims of the terrible attack here just months ago – the innocent people slain in the […]
Like pets and their owners, all political parties come to resemble their leaders. Or is it the other way round? I first came to Conservative Party conference more than a decade ago. Then, as now, Boris Johnson was the centre of attention. The blond bombshell had dared to commit an act of news, attacking the […]
On Monday Oct 2, at the Conservative Party Conference, we’ve got a real treat for CapX readers: I’ll be talking to Daniel Hannan MEP about politics, Brexit and the case for free trade. Daniel was at the heart of the Eurosceptic movement for many decades, and was later one of the prime movers in the […]
However bad you think it is for the Conservatives, it’s actually worse. That’s the message this week not from Labour Party conference, where John McDonnell and Jeremy Corbyn occasionally interrupted the delirious chants of their supporters to announce a nationalisation here and a spending commitment there. Nor from any of the latest intrigues around the […]
Jeremy Corbyn opened his speech to the Labour Party conference – after the chants of “Oh, Jeremy Corbyn!” had finally, finally died down – with a genuinely moving story. He told the audience about Margaret Bondfield, a 19th-century teenage shop assistant from Brighton who was so shocked by the working conditions she saw around her […]
The Queen in Alice Through the Looking-Glass was famously able to believe “as many as six impossible things before breakfast”. But I think John McDonnell has just about got her beat. In McDonnell’s case, his remarkable skill is not believing things that are impossible, but mutually contradictory. So he can simultaneously announce in his speech […]
They called it “Tory Glastonbury” – but it was more like a therapy session. In a garden in the Berkshire countryside, roughly 200 politicians, businessmen and think tankers gathered yesterday for the Big Tent Ideas Festival. The aim was to identify where the Conservatives have gone wrong – and how on earth they can put […]
Theresa May has just delivered the speech that both Britain and Europe needed to hear. The problem is that they needed to hear it a year ago. In her remarks in Florence, Mrs May did two important things. The first is that she praised the Europeans to high heavens. The woman who accused Brussels of […]
Spot the odd one out in the following list of baby names: Izacc, Hemi, Henderson, Excellence, Bertrand, Alfie-J, Kylo, Kyrone, Colbie, Saint, L, Artjom, Theophilus, Nigel, Daenerys and Cobain. The obvious answer is “Nigel” – because it’s the only one that’s traditional, solid and British. But it’s also the only one that’s extinct. Today, the […]
Many people – very clever people – say that this week’s rows over the Brexit bill are nothing much to worry about. Yes, David Davis and Michel Barnier seem to be fundamentally at odds over everything from the size of Britain’s fiscal obligations to who ate the last chocolate biscuit on the negotiating table. Yes, […]
