The Roman historian Livy can claim to have invented an entire genre. Midway through his vast History of Rome, he breaks off from the narrative to ask a question nobody had thought to put in print before: what would have happened had Alexander the Great turned his armies west and marched on Italy? It is […]
In his first days as Prime Minister, Andy Burnham announced a series of populist pledges that purport to address the cost of living, but fail to address the deep structural issues afflicting the British economy. Burnham will soon discover – like the four short-lived predecessors who held office before him – that the voters of […]
I’m 23. Like many of my friends, I endured the British education system all the way to university: GCSEs, A levels and then an undergraduate degree. Now, with little opportunity to progress in the small town we grew up in, those same friends are now looking to move to a city for work. For some, […]
Last week, Andy Burnham inaugurated ‘No 10 North’, his signature project, by working for the first time from the government’s new Manchester base, a self-styled ‘situation room for growth’. The symbolism was clear: power would no longer be concentrated in Whitehall. But the rhetoric remains stronger than the detail. The detail we have is concerning. […]
Britain’s spending and tax choices now fall to John Healey. My expectation? Higher spending, higher taxes and meaningless tweaks to welfare reform. Tuesday’s decision to cut VAT from domestic electricity bills could save the average household around £45 a year. Fine as far as it goes. But it will do nothing to boost productivity, stimulate […]
The media headlines all tell a consistent story about AI and employment: We’re doomed! ‘Robots may shatter the global economic order within a decade,’ says The Telegraph. ‘A World Without Work’ is coming, The Atlantic predicts. ‘The brave new world of robots and lost jobs’ is upon us, The Washington Post says. Most gloomily, Forbes […]
John Healey is the eleventh chancellor since the 2008 global financial crisis. Some of his predecessors served only briefly, but the direction of travel has been clear, regardless of who occupied Number 11. Growth has been modest, living standards have stagnated and the public finances have deteriorated. The pandemic made matters worse, but the direction […]
Below is a speech incoming Prime Minister Andy Burnham could give – one that would unite the country around a shared vision of prosperity. Prosperity for All My fellow citizens, Today, as I stand before you as your Prime Minister, I want to cut through the political noise and give you the unvarnished truth about […]
In Gordium, the capital of Phrygia, stood an oxcart, its yoke connected to the pole by a knot of cornel bark so intricate that no one could find where it began or ended. An oracle promised that whoever undid it would rule all Asia. For generations, clever men picked at it, theorised, and organised what […]
Britain is in a growth emergency. But our political class refuses to act like it. Government after government, prime minister after prime minister, it has failed to take the radical action required. Economic growth has been on a downward trajectory for 70 years. We have gone from one of the richest countries in the world […]
The OBR’s latest Fiscal Risks and Sustainability report, published this week, gives a blunt assessment of the UK’s public finances: we can’t go on like this. If nothing changes, government debt will rise to an unsustainable 300% of GDP in 50 years’ time. How did things get so bad? Well, there’s one big demographic challenge […]
‘It is time for Whitehall to accept that growth cannot be ordered from the top down,’ Andy Burnham said in his first major speech since returning to Parliament. ‘Instead, it can only be nurtured from the bottom up.’ He is right. The man about to enter Downing Street has seen what much of his party […]
As the Sex Pistols sounded the last honk of their guitar amps in a San Francisco rock venue in 1978, Johnny Rotten leered over the crowd one final time. “Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?” A strange question to ask a group of punks perhaps, if one made more explicable by Rotten’s swift departure […]
In a recent speech, Andy Burnham, Makerfield’s new MP and likely our next PM, said he would end ‘trickle-down’ economics. What on earth was he talking about? The Left often accuses the Right – and particularly the last Conservative government – of practising this voodoo art form. Supposedly, right-wingers give tax breaks to the ‘rich’ […]
Since Andy Burnham became the Mayor of Manchester in 2017, the term Manchesterism has taken on a new meaning. To him, it stands for the expansion of the public sector and a managerial state. Now, with Keir Starmer on the brink of resignation and Burnham’s Makerfield by-election win clearing his path to Westminster, Britain may […]
Last Friday, the most capable AI model in the world went dark. Anthropic had released Fable 5 three days earlier; on June 12, a U.S. executive order cut off access for foreign nationals. With no clean way to wall Americans off from the rest of us inside a global system used by hundreds of millions […]
Keir Starmer is now an empty-vessel Prime Minister, nominally in office but visibly out of power. His fall from grace after Labour’s emphatic win almost two years ago brings an end to stage one of a government in collapse. Starmer has gone from weak leader to lame duck in a matter of days, and Andy […]
The UK has the lowest business investment of any G7 country. The last time its business investment stood above the G7 median as a proportion of GDP, John Major was Prime Minister. The Labour government’s instinct, both in its manifesto and in practice, reflects the old Keynesian mindset that “The duty of ordering the current […]
As we reflect on the decade since the EU referendum, one question is seemingly on everyone’s lips – was it worth it? I answer this with an unequivocal yes. Brexit has definitely been worth it. When I speak to people, the motivation behind this question often seems to be driven by a feeling that politicians […]
Sir Keir Starmer has announced his resignation as Prime Minister – either from mid-July or from mid-September, depending on how the Labour leadership process goes (coronation vs contest). He will thus have been prime minister for somewhere between about 730 and 800 days, following his victory by a huge majority in the 2024 General Election. […]
The Greek poets understood that the cruellest fate is not the one a man brings upon himself, but the one that was waiting for him before he arrived. Oedipus did not choose his fate, indeed he walked into it with the very best of intentions. So too, in his quieter and more lawyerly fashion, did […]
Britain has built a tribunal system so sprawling and risk-free that it now consumes the very people who should be running organisations, improving products and services and designing more productive companies. What was meant to be a quick, low-cost alternative to the courts has become a parallel bureaucracy that traps skilled workers in disclosure exercises […]
Watch or listen to CapX’s weekly podcast ‘The Capitalist’ wherever you get your podcasts.
