Often radical social innovations come from seeing the opportunity to address a previously unsolved problem. For many years, we thought that micro-credit was reaching people living in the harshest forms of extreme poverty. It wasn’t until researchers looked more closely in the 1990s that they found that in fact, it had failed to reach the […]
Muhammadu Buhari, a disciplinarian former military leader, came to power in Nigeria with a specific mandate to improve on his inept predecessor’s inability to confront the Islamist terror group Boko Haram, which has torn a terrifying path across the country. Even after the world rallied to help Nigeria rescue the 276 schoolgirls the group kidnapped […]
“The British people didn’t vote to make Britain poorer,” said Phillip Hammond of Brexit recently. Sounds fair. People won’t drink the potion unless they have reason to think it will do them good. But here’s the trouble. When will we know if Brexit is good or bad for us? Is it even possible to know? […]
Theresa May has barely had time to draw breath given recent events, but it is one of the curiosities of her government that, of all its priorities, we probably know the least about the direction of her economic policy. It’s not a totally blank canvas. The Prime Minister has made clear that she wants an […]
A couple of years ago, I commissioned a study in which 1,000 Swedes were asked eight questions about global development. On average, every age group and every income group was wrong on all eight questions – because they all thought the world was in bad shape and getting worse. Large majorities, for example, thought that hunger […]
Infrastructure spending is sexy again. Theresa May’s Government is expected to make the most of cheap borrowing rates and announce a roll out of infrastructure investment in the Autumn Statement. At the Conservative Party Conference last week, the Chancellor Philip Hammond spoke of “targeted, high-value investment in our economic infrastructure”, and Greg Clark, Secretary of State for BEIS, admitted that the nation […]
Back in 2013, I voiced concerns about the way in which China Development Bank (CDB) was running its infrastructure spending and foreign lending. Chen Yuan, then governor of the CBD, had turned the bankrupt bank into a vital instrument in the Chinese economy. By increasing its lending both within China and overseas, it became the world’s biggest development lender. […]
Throughout the West, patriotism is on the rise. Theresa May is a strong advocate. She took the opportunity in Birmingham to make the case that a passion for one’s country is not the threat some think it is. She’s right. But this attitude should go hand in hand with a vigorous global outlook. While internationalism and patriotism are […]
I was at the UN general assembly in New York the other day and talking to the foreign minister of another country. I won’t say which one, since I must preserve my reputation for diplomacy. But let’s just say they have an economy about the size of Australia (though getting smaller, alas), plenty of snow, […]
It is wonderful that Oxfam recognises the “astonishing progress in poverty reduction” over the past few decades, and that “business can be a great force for good” in this respect. But I want to be greedy. I want Oxfam and all those other organisations which, rightly and commendably, want to see a reduction in global […]
There can’t be many people in the world who have not heard something about the plight of the Yazidis over the last few years. The terrible campaign of violence and terror waged against my people, the kidnap and enslavement of our young women and girls, has been headline news for two summers now. There are still […]
There is no standard definition of what makes a country viable as a country. What are the materials, the history, the culture, the institutions that allow a territory to grow into a something more than just a geography of resources? What are the building blocks of an accountable and democratic state? Whatever these ingredients are, we know […]
On Monday, a bombing raid on a humanitarian aid convoy in Syria killed 20 people, in a sustained and brutal bombardment that strained the recent cease-fire agreement to breaking point and beyond. The US blamed Russia or Syria. A Russian government spokesman countered that there were “no signs that any munitions hit the convoy” and […]
The BBC may no longer have The Great British Bake Off but last week I found myself transfixed watching its ground-breaking documentary, Exodus. This is the kind of thing the BBC does better than most. The three-part series followed Syrians fleeing war torn Aleppo for the safety of Europe. Provided with camera phones to document their […]
When Barack Obama took the stage at a Hillary Clinton rally last week, the Philadelphia crowd erupted into a chorus of “Thank you”, lauding a leader who is as popular as ever among the Democratic faithful. “Save the thanks,” replied the President. “I’m not finished yet.” With the 2016 election approaching its final stages, you […]
Over the past few days, thousands of men and women gathered in Chaoshan in Hunan, southern China, the hometown of Mao Zedong, to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the passing of the Great Helmsman. They were all dressed up like Red Guards, and were commemorating the time between 1966 and 1976 when Mao launched the […]
Watch or listen to CapX’s weekly podcast ‘The Capitalist’ wherever you get your podcasts.
