I first heard the names Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes when I was a high-school sophomore. My teacher announced, as if it were a fact as firm as any law of thermodynamics, that the Great Depression was caused by laissez-faire policies advocated by Smith, and that salvation came from the more scientifically sound ideas […]
It is time to choose your favourite cliché. Grasp the nettle, bite the bullet. Whichever it is, Kemi Badenoch has done it. For years, many eminent Tories have been aware that the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and its legal penumbra are causing problems here. But there were determined efforts at evasion. Just kick […]
Far from bringing any sense of national cohesion, St George’s Day this year seems to have set politicians and commentators at loggerheads more than ever. It is not just the row that followed the Church moving the saint’s day this year to the following week because of its clash with Easter celebrations. It is also […]
It’s a familiar story: pro-migration propagandists, fears of manpower shortages, a humanitarian crisis in Europe, an ambitious but nebulous foreign policy and a government riven by factionalism – all combining to create the perfect conditions for an unprecedented migrant inflow and a swift public backlash. Stand aside, Boris – I am of course referring to […]
It’s fifty years since Margaret Thatcher became leader of the Conservatives. Over the decade and a half in which she led the party, Thatcher would remake conservatism, the state and the economy in her own image. Yet she may never have become leader, and the word ‘Thatcherism’ may never have crossed anybody’s lips, had it […]
We have been here before, when matters seemed, if anything, even worse. I was reminded of this by a work of light fiction, perfect for holiday reading, by Jim Naughtie, called ‘Paris Spring’, set in the spring of 1968. Back then, it was some time since there had been a French revolution, so it might […]
Over the coming weeks, CapX will be running a number of perspectives on the future of the Conservative Party. If you have an idea you would like to contribute, get in touch at [email protected]. Both of Britain’s main political parties are rudderless. Both lack a clear sense of their identity, of what their core beliefs and […]
‘The Centre for Policy Studies was where our Conservative revolution began.’ That phrase, from which this book takes its title, forms the first line of Margaret Thatcher’s speaking notes for her address to the think tank’s AGM in 1991, less than a year after being forced out of Downing Street. She went on to list […]
The piece below is Tim Congdon’s chapter from ‘Conservative Revolution: The Centre for Policy Studies at 50’, published on June 4. It can be purchased here. The economic policies of Margaret Thatcher, then and at the time, were presented as a dangerous innovation. The Centre for Policy Studies, from which many of those policies emerged, […]
The piece below is Alys Denby’s chapter from ‘Conservative Revolution: The Centre for Policy Studies at 50’, published on June 4. It can be purchased here. You can use the code CPSBOOK to get a discounted copy. ‘The climate of opinion… is shaped by the battle of ideas and by experience. If socialists, irrespective of […]
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Centre for Policy Studies and the 10th of CapX, we’ve been republishing CPS pamphlets from our archive. This week, it’s Gertrude Himmelfarb’s 1987 paper ‘Victorian Values and Twentieth-Century Condescension’. In it, Himmelfarb argued that Thatcher’s government truly knew what attitudes drove most Britons, and critiqued the ‘social-control’ theory […]
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Centre for Policy Studies and the 10th of CapX, we’ve been republishing CPS pamphlets from our archive. This week, it’s Niall Ferguson’s 2009 paper ‘Too big to live’, in which he makes the case that the 2008 financial crash was not due to the excesses of the free […]
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Centre for Policy Studies and the 10th of CapX, we’ve been republishing CPS pamphlets from our archive. This week, it’s Hugh Thomas’ foreshadowing of the modern culture wars, History, Capitalism and Freedom, which includes a foreword from Margaret Thatcher. Foreword by the Rt. Hon. Mrs Margaret Thatcher MP […]
To celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Centre for Policy Studies and the 10th of CapX, we’ve been republishing CPS pamphlets by some of the most influential figures in the history of British conservatism. For this week’s edition, we’ve republished Michael Portillo’s speech given to the Centre for Policy Studies’ meeting at Conservative Party Conference […]
Hereditary privilege is unfashionable these days – even Conservatives are more comfortable talking about meritocracy and equality of opportunity. Yet class remains a defining feature of British society and a source of enduring fascination. And in delightfully snobby 1988 address to the Centre for Policy Studies – which CapX is republishing today to mark our […]
To mark the 50th anniversary of the foundation of the Centre for Policy Studies and the 10th anniversary of CapX, we have delved into the archive to uncover the foundations of modern conservative thought. From our founders Margaret Thatcher and Sir Keith Joseph, to Peregrine Worsthorne, Kingsley Amis, T.E. Utley, Charles Moore, Shirley Letwin, Ferdinand […]
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