The Government has finally bowed to common sense and given the green light to the Jackdaw gas field in the North Sea. It’s the sensible move and a good start, although a decision on Rosebank is not yet forthcoming. Given the resistance both projects have faced, it’s worth setting out why Jackdaw’s approval is good […]
Under Westminster City Council’s planning policies you couldn’t build Parliament today. In the eyes of modern planners, the gothic revival Palace of Westminster would be considered ‘pastiche’ – and Westminster City Council writes on pastiche that: …pastiche designs, which are pale imitations of historic buildings, [are not] appropriate or desirable. There are lines like this […]
As the dust of party conferences settles and journalists try to read the runes of what they mean for the coming political year, two things are already clear. The first is that Andy Burnham’s conference speech was a masterclass in tickling the tummies of his party faithful, with a heady mix of teary emotion and […]
Just as there is a battle on the Right in Britain, so too is there a battle inside the Conservative Party for what the party should focus on. There are those who are concerned about the threat of political Islam, the damage to the social fabric of the Boriswave and other elements of mass immigration, […]
When William Buckley went on the front page of Time magazine, the title was simple: ‘Conservatism Can Be Fun’. That is what Kemi Badenoch has done at this conference. Conservatism can be fun, can be serious and can learn from its old mistakes. But most importantly, what makes it the world’s oldest party is its […]
This is a highlight from the event programme of the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) – CapX’s parent organisation – at this year’s Conservative Party Conference. You can watch all the panels and interviews on the CPS YouTube channel. The housing market has ground to a halt in London – in large part because of political decisions […]
This is a highlight from the event programme of the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) – CapX’s parent organisation – at this year’s Conservative Party Conference. You can watch all the panels and interviews on the CPS YouTube channel. The £23 billion [in welfare savings] is just the start. The number will be higher by […]
In the mid-90s, you could save up a deposit for a house in a year; now it takes about a decade. That’s a really meaningful change. That’s a whole stage of your life where 30 years ago you might reasonably have expected to become a homeowner and now that is highly unlikely In a room […]
Even before he became Prime Minister in July, Andy Burnham had talked about the country in institutional, positively mechanical ways. He promised to ‘give Britain the circuit-breaker it needs’, and said that his Number 10 North, part of the Office for the Prime Minister and Cabinet based – where else? – in Manchester, would be […]
On September 29, 1976, Britain’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, Denis Healey, announced his intention to apply to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) for a $3.9 billion loan, the largest ever requested. Britain, The Economist announced, was ‘bust’. This was a national humiliation, the crux of a decade of economic turmoil. Britain before 1979 was not […]
If rumours are to be believed, Kemi Badenoch and the Conservative Party are thinking about scrapping inheritance tax. Inheritance tax is a pernicious tax that punishes people for doing things that we are supposed to do: building things, saving and investing. Crucially, it is also a tax on loving your family and wanting to leave […]
The verdict is clear. The Right has woken up to the innate statism associated with a statutory Net Zero target. Reform UK reject it outright, and the Conservatives have pledged to scrap the 2050 deadline and the 2008 Climate Change Act by which net-zero targets are enforced. Both accept the approach is a millstone around […]
In 1920 a Scottish Unionist MP Noel Skelton coined the term ‘property-owning democracy’, arguing that widening the base of property ownership among the working class would stabilise democracy and counter socialism. The term came to the forefront of political discourse when Prime Minister Anthony Eden used it at the Conservative Party conference in 1946. However, […]
The reforms of Michael Gove represented a profound shift in England’s educational landscape, based upon the belief that outcomes improve when there is freedom with accountability. During his tenure as Education Secretary (2010-14), it became possible for all publicly funded schools to become academies, free schools could be created, and there were substantial reforms to […]
Whenever I think about Boris Johnson, the old French proverb ‘après moi le déluge’ comes to mind. It means a blithe, even nihilistic disregard for whatever ruination ensues after one’s own time. For many years, it was thought to have originated with Louis XV or his mistress Madame de Pompadour in the 1750s. It thus […]
At a few minutes past six on Friday morning, in a leisure centre on the Essex coast, the returning officer reached the bottom of a ballot paper roughly a metre long and announced a number that deserves more attention than it is likely to receive. Nigel Farage, 22,239 votes. The commentary had settled into its […]
This weekend the Telegraph ran a story with the striking headline ‘Burnham told to trade nuclear umbrella for access to single market’. The idea is the brainchild of Nick Boles, the former Conservative MP who quit the party in 2019 over Brexit, switched his allegiance to Labour and helped to advise Keir Starmer on the […]
Andy Burnham has made social care his early priority. After three decades and more than 20 reviews, the system remains a lottery that punishes thrift, leaves local authorities overstretched and offers no sustainable answer to rising demand driven by longevity and the growing numbers of working-age adults with complex needs. One in seven people still […]
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. […]
When I was born in 1998, Britain had reached an optimistic point. It was the era of ‘Cool Britannia’: Tony Blair had won a landslide majority the year before to the tune ‘Things Can Only Get Better’, business was confident in our economy, employment was rising and we had low inflation. Yet by the time […]
Let me give Andy Burnham his due. For the best part of a decade he was the most persuasive voice in the country for letting go – for the plain truth that a decision taken in Whitehall about a town no official has ever visited tends to be worse than the one the people who […]
‘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 […]
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