In March 2022, amid the world’s collective dismay over Russia’s brazen aggression against Ukraine, I witnessed an interesting scene unfold within the Council of Europe in Strasbourg: British delegates rose en masse in the plenary hall, delivering impassioned speeches in defence of the cherished principles of the rule of law and international order – principles […]
War often has a chilling effect on freedom. Sometimes this is necessary. Being at war necessitates restrictions that would be completely out of place in normal society. This expectation is even written into international law, with clear examples and acceptable reasons – especially during war – for restrictions on human rights and personal freedoms. Yet […]
Below is a transcript of a speech delivered by Isabel Díaz Ayuso, the President of the Community of Madrid, at the ‘Remaking Conservatism’ Margaret Thatcher Conference hosted by the Centre for Policy Studies on March 17, 2025. For these last few years, first as a candidate and then as regional President for the Partido Popular, […]
The blunt reality is that there will be dwindling appetite and patience in the US Congress – and in the American body politic writ large – to expend increasingly precious funds on behalf of nations that are apparently unwilling to devote the necessary resources or make the necessary changes to be serious and capable partners […]
So, what happens now? There is general agreement that last Friday’s White House meeting was a disaster. Nothing like that has ever occurred in the Oval Office. It was the sort of way in which Stalin might have treated one of his colleagues, before ordering him to be taken off and shot. The Western Alliance: […]
Yesterday, Germany went to the polls to elect the 630 members of the Bundestag following the demise of Chancellor Olaf Scholz’s government in December. It is an invitation to the cliché of Teutonic efficiency, but by early evening an exit poll suggested that the results were broadly in line with predictions. Now attention is focusing […]
If you need to hold a summit, Paris comes highly recommended: since the peace conference which produced the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, there have been at least four similar major meetings in the French capital. It was natural enough, then, that European leaders responded to President Emmanuel Macron’s invitation and converged on Paris on […]
President Donald Trump addressed his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin via social media last week, calling on him to settle now and stop the war in Ukraine or face increased sanctions. However, as the experience of his predecessor shows, this may be easier said than done. Can Trump deliver more effective sanctions than Joe Biden, and […]
When Labour came to power, some Ulster unionists believed that their problems with the Irish Sea border might start to ease. They hoped that Keir Starmer’s plans to ‘reset’ the UK’s relationship with the EU would make trade barriers between Great Britain and Northern Ireland increasingly redundant. So far, the Government has done almost nothing […]
After World War II, social democracy gradually became the reigning political and economic idea in Western Europe. Seen as a synthesis of different ideas that were opposed to the two extreme poles of fascism and communism, it attracted not just stalwart Labour politicians such as Dennis Healey, but also those on the Left of the […]
Health policy, and the politics of health, are two very different things. When Otto von Bismarck set about his mammoth social insurance reforms of the 1880s, he was motivated by one thing: politics. Specifically, he wanted to stifle and negate the allure of the Social Democrats, who had been steadily gaining support in the Reichstag. […]
A prominent European leader correctly identifies that EU states are lagging behind their global competitors. The reason? Low growth induced by piles of red tape imposed since the financial crisis. Sounds familiar, right? Except it’s not Liz Truss saying this, but Mario Draghi, former European Central Bank chief and ex-Prime Minister of Italy. Career technocrat […]
The Prime Minister is in Germany, his first visit to the country since taking office last month, and it is inevitably being billed as an opportunity to ‘reset’ the United Kingdom’s relations with Europe. Keir Starmer has met the Chancellor of Germany, Olaf Scholz, four times already since 5 July, but this is a set-piece […]
The Ukrainian strike into Russian territory around Kursk, which began on 6 August, has been cause for cheer among those who support the right of Ukraine not just to defend its borders but to exist. By crossing into Russia in considerable force, the Ukrainian armed forces have changed the narrative of the war and unsettled […]
In Europe, we’ve seen the pattern again and again since 2015: Mass low-skilled immigration spurs a backlash The backlash strengthens nationalist parties, who then get 10, 20, 30 per cent of the seats in the legislature The normal political parties create a cordon sanitaire, some kind of promise not to do business with the baddies […]
When the exit poll for the French legislative elections dropped on Friday, there was widespread elation. Rassemblement National (RN), formerly the National Front (FN), had seemed poised after the first round to form the next government; instead, it was pushed into third place, behind a hard-left coalition – the New Popular Front (NPF) – and […]
Watch or listen to CapX’s weekly podcast ‘The Capitalist’ wherever you get your podcasts.
