Everyone talks about growth. How we don’t have it. How we desperately need it. From the Global Financial Crisis to war-induced energy crises to trade-crashing tariffs at the clicks of American fingers, our economy seems forever at the mercy of worldly vicissitudes. International onlookers could not be faulted for thinking that, for the past 18 […]
As much as I hate to admit it, there is a lot to like in the Government’s water white paper. But there’s a reason for that: the best ideas are lifted straight from the Conservative Party. Stripped of the hollow slogans and performative toughness about tackling sewage that have dominated the debate in recent years, […]
In 2018, with ‘The Coddling of the American Mind’, Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt launched a sustained attack on what they called the culture of ‘safetyism’ in American parenting and on university campuses. Their target was the belief that children and young adults are fragile beings who must be protected from uncomfortable ideas and the […]
Rachel Reeves pulled out of an event at the London Stock Exchange yesterday at the last minute to join Keir Starmer in an emergency press conference, responding to Donald Trump’s latest gambit over Greenland. Reeves planned, in her abandoned address, to unveil newly revamped frameworks, which came into effect on Monday, designed to lead the […]
Rents go up and up and up. That is how most people my age view their lot in the property market, particularly in London. A steady, year-on-year increase in rent eats up any increases in wages they earn and more. If you look at the statistics over the past few years, they’re right to think […]
Today’s S&P UK construction data should set alarm bells ringing in Number 10. Construction activity across housing, commercial and civil engineering has seen its steepest fall since the pandemic, with new orders nosediving and employment declining for eleven consecutive months. This is not a natural cooling of the market. It is the predictable consequence of […]
As we head into the Budget, the Government continues to make all the right noises about growth. Yet the policy still falls far short of the rhetoric – as confirmed by the latest GDP figures, which once again painted the picture of a flatlining economy. The gap between rhetoric and reality is nowhere more apparent […]
Economic growth has become the defining issue of our time. After years of stagnating productivity, squeezed living standards, rising taxes and ballooning government debt, the key question that our politicians are grappling with is whether we can reverse this decline and kickstart economic growth once again. This centrality of this to our politics is evidenced […]
Britain has a long and proud history of innovation – stretching from the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions right through to modern successes in the fintech and life sciences sectors. Unfortunately, in recent years another trend has emerged, of start-ups incubating ideas in the UK before listing their businesses overseas, primarily in the US. Of the […]
Enshittification is everywhere. When the term was coined in late 2022 by the author Cory Doctorow, it swiftly went viral and became embedded in the lexicon. By the end of last year, it had been added to several dictionaries. The neologism describes the way online platforms degrade in quality as they prioritise profit. Sites lock […]
Angela Rayner’s resignation has left Britain’s housing ambitions at a crossroads. Her successor, Steve Reed, inherits a sector already in steep decline and faces an urgent choice: change course, or risk Labour’s central pledge of 1.5 million new homes slipping out of reach before the first brick is laid. The urgency could not be clearer. […]
Marx was wrong, Burnham was right: capitalism wasn’t replaced by communism, but by managerialism. In ‘The Managerial Revolution’ (1941), James Burnham wrote that the bourgeoisie weren’t sinking into the proletariat – they were being replaced by ‘administrators, technicians, managers’. If, like me, you love Edmund Burke, this might remind you of his mournful line: ‘The […]
Even though it was introduced by the previous government, the Football Governance Bill – which MPs passed yesterday and will create an Independent Football Regulator (IFR) – attracted strong opposition. Critics say that a regulator will damage the innovation so critical to making English football (especially the Premier League) such a powerful economic generator for […]
Britain is facing a crisis of confidence – a pervasive regulatory culture driven by the belief that whenever something goes wrong, no matter how minor, it must be regulated out of existence. This mindset, which seeks to eliminate risk at all costs, may sound protective, but it is profoundly destructive. Eliminating all risk means suffocating […]
On departing office in 2010, Labour’s Treasury chief secretary Liam Byrne infamously left a note pointing out that there was no money left. It’s a pity that the incoming coalition government did not have its attention drawn so explicitly to another poisoned inheritance – that of New Labour’s swansong legislation the Equality Act 2010 (EA). […]
There is a reliable rule in Whitehall that if you do not want people to pay attention to something, you should make it sound as boring as possible. A case in point: today the House of Commons will consider for the first time the Product Regulation and Metrology Bill, a compact, 15-clause proposal which originated […]
Watch or listen to CapX’s weekly podcast ‘The Capitalist’ wherever you get your podcasts.
