In the year we celebrate the 250th anniversary of Adam Smith, we must also celebrate the idea that the wealth of nations and the free, fair exchange of goods and services are intricately connected. This idea is what made Britain one of the wealthiest countries in the world and – with one in three pounds […]
A spring conference rarely grabs the national headlines. It is typically a chance for party faithful to shore themselves up before a local election, and party officials to take a weekend away. It’s why much of Ed Davey’s spring conference speech last week floated under the national radar, bar the odd headline about the Liberal […]
This week’s edition of Nimby Watch comes from the one-time spa town of Epsom – famous for its salts and for its clocktower. So… where are we off to this week? We’re headed to the outskirts of Epsom, a town 14 miles to the south-west of London, not too far from Croydon. Building more houses […]
Anthony Scaramucci is set to tour the UK later this year, to promote his new book, ‘All the Wrong Moves’. People from cities such as London, Brighton and Manchester will have the opportunity to bask in the knowledge and experience of a political heavyweight who lasted less than a fortnight in the job. Sniping comments […]
Last Friday morning, there was a palpable sense that Britain was having a nervous breakdown. The abominable Greens had stormed to victory in the Gorton and Denton by-election; in Parliament Square, the statue of Winston Churchill had been defaced with graffiti branding the Greatest Briton a ‘Zionist war criminal’ and calling for the globalisation of […]
This week’s edition of Nimby Watch comes to you from the busiest railway station in the country. Want to have a guess where we are before you dive in? Okay then, where are you taking us this week – anywhere nice? We, my friend, are going to Liverpool Street Station, in the City of London. […]
There is something endearingly ridiculous about Matt Goodwin. The gamekeeper turned poacher of national populism is like the Alan Partridge of political studies: self-important but not self-aware and in a relentless pursuit of self-promotion. He was responsible, during his (very) brief time as a ConservativeHome columnist, for the funniest article that I have ever edited. […]
When it comes to the global trading system, there is an ongoing battle between two competing models. The first sees regulatory competition with equivalence and mutual recognition as far as regulations are concerned. That’s the classic system embodied by the likes of the United States, the World Trade Organisation and the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement […]
Say what you like about him – and I often do – but Tony Blair remains inescapable. Perhaps that is why, almost 30 years after he first entered No.10 as Prime Minister, Channel 4 has a new three-part series following his journey from Fettes to Iraq. The series features interviews with Blair’s wife Cherie and […]
Monetary policy errors are rarely obvious in real time. More often, they emerge slowly – the product of frameworks that persist beyond the conditions that once justified them. Britain now risks drifting into precisely such a moment. The Bank of England spent the better part of two years extinguishing the most severe inflation shock in […]
Poverty was once the norm. A quarter of babies died in their first year of life. In 1980, around 40% of the world’s population lived in extreme poverty. Today only 10% of people do. Much of this is thanks to fossil fuels. The burning of wood, then coal, gas and oil, enabled us to prosper. […]
‘Who governs Britain?’ asked Ted Heath in the February 1974 general election, only to receive an answer he neither liked nor expected. But today, when a Prime Minister with a majority of more than 150 seats is said to be fighting for his political life; when a Cabinet Secretary departs after barely fourteen months; when […]
‘It’s nice, isn’t it. The quiet.’ ‘This is what serious government looks like. This is how it makes appointments.’ This was the sentiment of the chattering classes upon Labour’s election victory in 2024. Britain, according to them, was about to become a safe heaven of peace and stability. Yet it’s now 2026, and the Government […]
How times change. It was only last autumn when I outlined here in CapX how an already-sleazy new Government needed an integrity reset to clean up politics and save its own reputation at the same time. Now it is increasingly clear that we are facing a growing integrity crisis in UK politics – and the […]
How can people without capital be expected to believe in capitalism? This is the challenge of our age, as ‘own nothing and be happy’ hardens into a new dividing line in Western politics. Westminster risks ignoring the emerging political economy of housing, even as public anger grows. Green Party leader Zack Polanski is already courting […]
Political predictions are a mug’s game. Think back to last November. The Tory Party was at Valley Forge. To call it demoralised would have been an understatement. Despairing would have been a more accurate assessment. Serious commentators wondered whether the party was finished. Certainly, its prospects seemed as bleak as those of its distant predecessors, […]
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