Stuart Archer was my favourite teacher at Batley Grammar School. A socialist of the most open-minded kind, he introduced me to EP Thompson, Edmund Burke and debating big ideas. I thought about him a lot when a more recent teacher there had to go into hiding to avoid the wrath of a religious mob. I […]
I’ve always thought of the culture war as the right’s Vietnam. With the Tories in power, conservatives were supposed to have decidedly superior firepower; yet since the ‘great awokening’ began in 2011, the war has not so much progressed as ground on, with increasingly little to show for it. In fact, despite an endless air […]
The Government’s endorsement of the proposal for an Independent Regulator for English professional football, set out in Tracey Crouch’s ‘Fan Led Review’ nearly 18 months ago, has been welcomed by many football fans and commentators. But faith in regulators suggests the triumph of hope over experience. In sectors such as energy, finance, water supply, the railways […]
Few aspects of British culture are more smug and sanctimonious than the theatre, so it’s no surprise that Gareth Southgate is the latest subject to be brought to the stage. The National Theatre has announced that Joseph Fiennes will star as the football manager in Dear England, a new play by the This House and […]
Kids have terrible taste, and nowhere is this more evident than in their affection for CoComelon. For those fortunate enough to have avoided this cultural phenomenon, it’s a YouTube Channel where bug-eyed, candy-coloured creatures regurgitate irritating nursery rhymes. The crudeness of the animation and the piercing repetitiveness of the vocals have made it a huge […]
With a White Paper on the horizon, the case for a robust Independent Regulator for English Football (IREF) has rarely felt stronger. While northern provincial towns such as Bury and Macclesfield have seen their clubs disappear as a result of gross financial mismanagement, the Premier League is an ever-growing embarrassment of riches. The latest Deloitte […]
In October last year history was made when Ai-Da, the humanoid robot artist, gave evidence to the House of Lords Communications Committee. The day was insightful and bizarre in equal measure – at one point the old IT adage of ‘turning it off and on again’ had to be deployed to reboot Ai-Da as proceedings […]
Twice over the past two years the UK Government has said ‘no’ to reforming the Gender Recognition Act to remove medical assessment and bring in a system of self-declaration. The first time was in 2020 after an intense consultation and lobbying by Stonewall and other LGBT groups. The second was in December 2021 in response […]
George Osborne – the British Museum’s current chairman – is close to agreeing a loan agreement to send the Elgin Marbles to Athens. This should horrify not only his fellow Tories, but anyone with even a passing interest in history. It would be an act of vandalism, based on spurious historical and legal arguments, that […]
Strikes. The cost-of-living. The NHS crisis (if it still makes sense to distinguish the crisis from the institution at this point). It’s fair to say that few people looking ahead to 2023 see very much for Britain to look forward to. But there is one bright spot on the national calendar: the King’s coronation. Especially […]
On my Christmas trip back to my home town of Nottingham, I found my remaining school friends firmly established with young families, mortgages and careers in bloom. We’re also hardly young any more: My group are the oldest millennials and are entering middle age. And yet despite having accumulated all these symbolic markers of adulthood, […]
If ever a year needed some literary distractions, it was 2022. Our contributors have served up a feast of recommendations, from dense histories and serious political analyses to more whimsical offerings, there’s something for everyone in CapX’s Books of 2022. Robert Colvile Since he agreed to fly over for our annual conference, it seems rude […]
As someone who used to be teetotal, I can think of very few things that would have been more likely to alienate me from my employer and my colleagues than if the office Christmas party was made drink-free in a bid to make me feel included. (My demands were much more reasonable: that the organisers […]
As a journalist, you hardly need me to tell you that I have disposition towards cynicism. Show me a good deed and my first instinct is usually to ask what we’re not being told about it. But life would be pretty soulless if such cynicism was one’s only reaction. There are, of course, some people […]
One of the stranger features of the ‘culture war’ is that it appears only ever to be being waged by one side. The backlash against this or that progressive initiative is the culture war, but the initiative itself – despite being explicitly aimed at changing the culture – is not. The Wellcome Collection’s decision to […]
There’s a fun game to be played with the New York Times’ coverage of British crime. It’s very simple, and you can play along at home: how many paragraphs will it take the paper to tell you what the sympathetic victim of the legal system actually did? Take this recent piece on modern slavery. The […]
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