The EU has once again got itself tied up in one of those gloriously French snits concerning economics. Various of the Enarques, politicians and bureaucrats – if there is a meaningful distinction between the three in France – insist that once the UK leaves the EU, euro clearing will have to leave London. Their preference, of course, is for […]
Around 250 years ago, Britain launched the world’s first Industrial Revolution, powered by steam and innovations like the spinning jenny. This dramatically improved the efficiency of the textiles sector, and started the process of mechanisation and automation that soon attracted opposition from the Luddites, a group of English weavers and textile workers who destroyed machinery […]
CEO pay packages are just dreadful, MPs tell us today, and must, therefore, be changed. Given that MPs are more intelligent, better educated, have more information, and are generally just more perfectly formed than the rest of us, we must do as they say, of course. We know that MPs are all of these things […]
Behold once again the miracle of competition upon a marketplace. The attempt to lure financial services firms away from the City and into remnant-EU states is leading to intense lobbying to scrap the more insane bits of EU regulation and taxation. That is the finding of a new report from the Sheffield University Political Economy […]
“Well, in our country,” said Alice, still panting a little, “you’d generally get to somewhere else – if you run very fast for a long time, as we’ve been doing.” “A slow sort of country!” said the Queen. “Now, here, you see, it takes all the running you can do, to keep in the same […]
Earlier this month, Harvard University hosted a conference on the historical connections between universities and slavery. This capped a long string of admissions by institutions of higher education – including Yale, Brown, Princeton, Georgetown, Columbia, and Harvard – of their involvement in the “peculiar institution”. “Only by coming to terms with history,” said Drew Gilpin Faust, Harvard’s […]
The world has a refugee crisis because the issue has long been left in a silo of humanitarian relief. The United Nations system views refugees purely as victims to be relieved by the provision of food and shelter. The organisational form that this has taken is the camp: refugees are supposed to go to camps where food […]
Most people who work in business and government have probably played the game Monopoly at least once in their lives. In the UK version, Mayfair commands the greatest rent of £2,000 with a hotel, compared to only £450 for Whitechapel Road. Mayfair was clearly the swankiest district in London back in the 1930s. In contrast, […]
Two tech companies, two contrasting trajectories. Snap (formerly Snapchat) hit the headlines this week when a post-IPO bidding frenzy saw it soar to a $34 billion valuation. Uber, meanwhile, saw its reputation and potential valuation plummet after a blog about workplace sexism unleashed a firestorm of criticism, culminating in grovelling promises from the CEO to […]
RBS has reported a loss of £7 billion for 2016. That is its ninth straight year of losses, taking its total cumulative loss over the period to more than £58 billion, more than the £45.5 billion the government injected into it in the 2008 and 2009 bailouts. The government’s stake in RBS was acquired for […]
History demonstrates that in terms of ensuring opportunity and prosperity, the forces of individual freedom, limited government, and free enterprise will always trump statist policies that perpetuate favouritism in economics and politics. Since 1995, the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom has documented these principles in operation around the globe and highlights why economic freedom matters. […]
The aborted £115 billion takeover of British-Dutch firm Unilever by the American giant Kraft Heinz has raised, once again, the question of when foreign takeovers should be welcomed. During her July 2016 bid to be Conservative Party leader and Prime Minister, Theresa May mentioned Kraft’s 2010 takeover of Cadbury as an example of the kind […]
There was shock, horror and outrage today as it was revealed that business rates for Amazon will fall as those for high street retailers rise. CVS, a company which specialises in estimating rents and rates, tells us that Amazon will pay £148,000 a year less in rates under the pending revaluation – even as high street […]
Market economies depend very heavily upon trust. As I sit here in this café, I am drinking tea someone made me. I trust that the person that made the tea has not sought to poison me, has not made the water so scalding I will be injured, has used cow’s milk instead of soya. I […]
Neither crystal meth nor rent boys are entirely unknown pleasures among churchmen or bankers. But we do have to thank the Co-Op Bank for bringing all four together in the one person. Paul Flowers, the so-called “Crystal Methodist”, was kicked out of first the bank and then the Church after lurid accusations emerged about expenses abuse, drug […]
In his CapX weekly briefing two weeks ago, Robert Colvile commented on the “remarkable stability of Brexit Britain”. He highlighted the Prime Minister Theresa May’s big poll lead over Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn and concluded that “the May supremacy looks like a welcome source of relief”, given the uncertainties elsewhere in the world. Since then, Mrs […]
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