Margaret Thatcher is back in the news. But it is not her admirers on the Right who have put her there. It is our new Labour Prime Minister, whose diagnosis of our country’s ills seems to be that Britain was on the right path up until 1979, when the Conservatives got into power and precipitated […]
In 1943, a Post Office engineer called Tommy Flowers built a codebreaking machine out of 1,500 thermionic valves, partly out of his own pocket. Within a year Colossus, the world’s first programmable electronic computer, was cracking Nazi High Command ciphers at Bletchley Park. Britain had invented the data centre, in a large shed, and chock-full […]
The elevation of an AI Minister to the Cabinet Office appears like a triumph for the technology. But Kanishka Narayan is, essentially, on his own island, floating between Andy Burnham’s inner circle and the Department for Business, Innovation, Science and Trade (BIST) – unmoored from AI’s former home, the Department for Science, Innovation and Technology […]
Britain and America have spent a decade arguing about Nimbyism as if it were a housing problem. It is much bigger than that: our inability to build, in a broad sense, has grown into a source of geopolitical weakness. The economic argument has been made already. Growth controls add anywhere from 17% to 38% to […]
‘A Waiter in Paris’ is the story of a young Englishman who graduated from a good university in London with a humanities degree, trained and educated for a world that no longer exists. ‘All while I applied for other, more “prestigious” jobs. Jobs that didn’t appear to exist anymore.’ That’s how Edward Chisholm puts it […]
How do you know this wasn’t written by an AI? If you’re reading CapX, you are presumably interested in free speech, critical thinking and originality. So you should care that what you’re reading was written by a person with a mind. But public life is becoming colonised with ‘copy’ generated by AI. It’s become so […]
Last week, the Community Security Trust’s (CST) report covering incidents between January and June 2026 showed alarming results. The unprecedented wave of antisemitism that started on October 7, 2023, when Hamas massacred and kidnapped over 1,200 people in Israel, shows no sign of easing. On the contrary. The 1,926 incidents recorded represent a 21% rise […]
During the 1979 general election campaign, Margaret Thatcher famously said: ‘I can’t bear Britain in decline. I just can’t.’ If you’re a seasoned research professional who shares that sentiment, and who wants to fight for a high-growth, low-tax, small-state Britain built on personal and economic freedom, then I have just the job opening for you. […]
The EU was born to ‘screw’ the US. That’s what Donald Trump told reporters in 2025: ‘That’s the purpose of it, and they’ve done a good job of it. But now I’m president.’ But that wasn’t always the United States’s view of the EU. As historian Andrew Roberts wrote, the American State Department ‘enthusiastically signed […]
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, […]
This week, Nimby Watch is in central London… Okay then, where are we this time? We’re in Belgravia, one of London’s swankiest neighbourhoods. Don’t say I never take you anywhere nice. Okay, fine. But neither one of us can afford anything here, as well you know, and I’m including coffee when I say that. Well… […]
It’s been a wild summer already. Britain’s onto its seventh prime minister in a decade, with Andy Burnham wasting no time rearranging the furniture – and, for part of the week, the postcode – of No 10. Outside Westminster, England gave us their best World Cup run in 60 years, though the trophy itself will […]
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 […]
As Andy Burnham stood outside Downing Street on Monday to launch his new regime, our new Prime Minister did his best to prove to his 349 parliamentary backers that they had made the right decision. Much of his speech was rhetorical filler. ‘I will put the care of people at the heart of everything I […]
‘I’m personally convinced that our civilisation is approaching its end,’ wrote the British journalist Malcolm Muggeridge in 1980. ‘I think of St Augustine when, in AD 410, the news was brought to him in Carthage that Rome had been sacked by the Barbarians.’ Jim Callaghan was equally gloomy. In 1974, he remarked: ‘When I am […]
Almost lost between this week’s national mourning (in England anyway) over the World Cup, and the endless Westminster fantasy-football speculation about who’s going to be in or out of Andy Burnham’s first cabinet, was an oh-so-British announcement about Dartmoor ponies. The endangered breed had been put in further peril by Natural England’s plans to protect […]
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 […]
Nigel Farage, the Member of Parliament for Clacton and leader of Reform UK, has resigned, triggering a by-election in the constituency. This follows weeks of speculation regarding an undeclared £5 million gift Farage received before he became an MP, as well as other gifts he allegedly should have declared. Farage intends to stand in the […]
Josiah Quincy Jr., who was the mayor of Boston in the middle of the nineteenth century, wrote in his Last Will and Testament that his son should read ‘John Locke’s works, – Lord Bacon’s works, – Gordon’s Tacitus, – and Cato’s Letters. May the spirit of liberty rest upon him!’ Indeed, there is nothing closer […]
Should Sadiq Khan decline to run for a fourth term as London mayor, his contribution to public life will largely have been stoking the culture war. From spaffing European symbols over the New Year’s fireworks to funding bemusing anti-misogyny campaigns, the public messaging has been relentless, if little else has. And yet there’s another cultural […]
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 […]
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