CapX, London (2025)

04/12/2025

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 a policy environment that has become more expensive, more uncertain and harder for businesses to navigate. Instead of giving firms the stability to invest, recent decisions have weakened confidence across the construction supply chain at exactly the moment Britain needs it to be firing on all cylinders.

✍️Steven Mulholland

Construction activity has seen its steepest fall since the pandemic

04/12/2025

I agree with David Lammy.

The trouble is, I agree with 2020 David Lammy, who said this:

"A jury trial gives people the final say on the guilt or innocence of their fellow citizens. It entrusts the public to make life-changing decisions, rather than merely leaving it in the hands of lawyers. This is a civic duty – developed over centuries – which ensures fairness and representation in the criminal justice system and forms part of the bedrock of our democracy."

I think that was right, and – charitably, perhaps – I don’t think that even David Lammy really believes the David Lammy of 2025, who now proposes to do away with juries in the majority of cases they presently hear.

Let us not pretend for a moment that this plan is about addressing the backlog of cases waiting to be heard. There are three reasons for this.

First, juries aren’t slowing the system down, in any case. This second reason is because any change would not be retrospective, so all cases in the backlog would still be heard by a jury. These two points mean that the mechanism the Government has proposed won’t do anything to address the problem they have identified. But thirdly, if this were really about the backlog, the Government would be telling us that its proposed changes would be temporary, to revert to the historic norm after it has gone. That is quite clearly not the basis upon which they are proceeding. While the Government is certainly exploiting the present temporary difficulty to justify its changes, it don’t even pretend to claim that the solution it has identified will sunset when it is resolved. No, these changes are permanent. Again, as one David Lammy said in 2020 – ‘it would be wrong of the government to abandon this valuable tradition for short term benefit’.

Nor do these proposals reflect the conclusions of Brian Leveson, whose report made recommendations that went nowhere near as far as Lammy now wishes us to go. We should be clear: no matter how much he claims to be following Leveson’s conclusions in his vandalism, this isn’t what Leveson concluded. We have a rash; the doctor recommended some ointment; Lammy doesn’t get to say that he is following the doctor’s orders when he produces the guillotine.

✍️Alex Deane

Our justice system is not perfect, but that does not justify taking an axe to it

04/12/2025

When Baroness Hallett published her Module 2 report of the Covid-19 Inquiry on 20 November, declaring that the government’s response was ‘too little, too late’ and that 23,000 lives could have been saved by locking down one week earlier, I found myself reflecting on the surreal years I spent as Head of Research for the Covid Recovery Group (CRG). Did we miss something? Has the £200 million inquiry found some evidence that we hadn’t countered that would dispel all of the arguments we made back then, and continue to make now?

I then read the Module 2 report, and these reflective thoughts turned to outright anger. Again and again, the Inquiry included evidence and relied on modelling for its conclusions that the CRG, among other organisations, had disproved. The Inquiry has uncritically accepted the premise that earlier and harder lockdowns were the solution, ignoring the vast body of evidence suggesting the opposite. It has also failed to weigh up the full costs and consequences of lockdown restrictions. I am half-tempted to suggest an inquiry into the Covid Inquiry.

While it had its moment in the spotlight, the report was quickly buried by the chaos in the run-up to and following the Budget. We cannot allow its conclusions to become our future pandemic policy: if we do, our society, economy and indeed, health, will suffer greatly.

In November 2020, Steve Baker and Mark Harper launched the CRG during the second national lockdown: throughout all of the Covid pandemic, we were the only organised parliamentary opposition to lockdown policy. The formation of the CRG followed the Brady Amendment in September 2020, which sought to ensure the House of Commons would debate and vote on any future coronavirus measures before they came into force. I was honoured to work on that effort and subsequently work for the CRG. Steve and Mark are heroes for what they did during the pandemic.

✍️Harry Richer

The Covid Inquiry's pro-lockdown narrative is highly questionable

03/12/2025

A new report on economic inequality for the G20 by Joseph Stiglitz shows that no rich countries have a problem. Yes, yes, I know, that’s a really rather different message from the shrieking of domestic politics, but this is a big international report written in part by a Nobel laureate, and we’re going to have to at least consider what is being said in it. And it leads us to an interesting cure for inequality – get rich.

At which point, an observation not in the report but one available by looking through any window at the real world. Those places that have been even mildly capitalist and free market for more than a few decades are rich by these global standards – and also don’t have that high inequality that must be abjured. Places that have only done so more recently are getting rich. Those that are not and have not been aren’t rich. And, to complete our box of four possibilities, nowhere has got rich by not being roughly capitalist and free market.

The QED is obvious, isn’t it? The poor places with excessive inequality require more capitalism and markets so that they become rich and have less inequality

✍️Tim Worstall

The cure for high economic inequality is for more countries to get rich

02/12/2025

It has been a long time coming. It is five months since Zarah Sultana, the Rosa Luxemburg of Coventry South, announced that she was resigning her membership of the Labour Party and forming a new left-wing political group with Jeremy Corbyn. The pair would co-lead a party supported by the other independents elected in 2024 and founded on a full house of leftist talking points: fighting poverty and the rising cost of living, the malign nature of so-called welfare ‘reform’, radical redistribution of wealth, the iniquity of controls on immigration and, the favourite curtain call for politicians on the Left, the plight of the Palestinian people and the UK’s complicity in Israel’s so-called ‘genocide’ in Gaza.

The movement did not have the slickest start in that Sultana seemed not to have informed her ‘co-leader’ of the announcement. Corbyn had been dropping hints that he might lead some new political force, but he was caught off-guard and reputedly furious at Sultana’s lack of consultation.

It was some weeks before what was eventually given the interim name ‘Your Party’ was formally launched. Since then, it has been beset by internal disagreements over structure, personnel, direction, priorities and its permanent name, its followers displaying the discipline and mutual goodwill usually associated with ferrets in a sack. A high or low point – depending on your perspective – was a dispute over who was responsible for the money paid in membership fees, leaving Sultana temporarily in possession around £800,000 and considering legal action against some alleged party colleagues.

Early on, there had been a commitment to holding an inaugural conference in the autumn, though there were times when that seemed an implausible goal for so fissiparous and many-headed an alliance (it would place a heavier burden on the word ‘organisation’ than it could bear). To the credit of the participants, however, ‘Your Party’ (name TBC) held its first national gathering at the Arena and Convention Centre in Liverpool at the end of last month. Might the project finally be underway?

✍️Eliot Wilson

Your Party has been more soap opera than revolutionary movement

02/12/2025

In the last year, the UK has finally started to get serious about nuclear energy. Financing has been secured for Sizewell C, multiple sites have been approved for small modular reactors (SMRs), and now Keir Starmer has formally accepted the recommendations of the new Nuclear Regulatory Taskforce (NRT), setting the stage for a ‘radical reset’ of Britain’s nuclear regulations.

Taken together, these events signal a pivot away from energy insecurity and toward a more resilient, clean energy future.

If the UK plays its cards right, it can outpace both the US and many EU countries in delivering clean, continuous, reliable power at scale.

✍️Zion Lights

It’s time to remove the regulatory barriers blocking new reactors

02/12/2025

More than 100 years ago, when progressives in America first pushed for minimum wage laws, they understood perfectly well how they would function. And no, these laws were not intended to improve the lives of vulnerable workers. In fact, the opposite was true, and that was precisely the point. In 1913, progressive journalist Paul Kellogg argued for a minimum wage of $3 per day for immigrants, nearly double the $1.50 earned by ordinary labourers. Progressives believed America was facing what they called ‘race suicide’, and the purpose of the minimum wage was simple: to make it harder for supposedly ‘racially undesirable’ immigrant groups to find jobs or compete in the labour market.

Today, of course, the rhetoric has reversed. Progressives insist they want to make it easier for disadvantaged groups to find work. But in advancing new minimum wage increases, they seem to have forgotten the underlying economics they once relied upon.

Writing an article for a centre-right publication about the minimum wage can feel repetitive: minimum wages cause unemployment; they harm the very people they are supposed to help; the law of unintended consequences and etc. Yet this article is not about repeating those familiar arguments. It is about what has happened to economists themselves.

In 1976, a group of leading economists at major American universities were asked a straightforward question: ‘Does a minimum wage increase unemployment among young and unskilled workers?’ A striking 90% answered yes. At the time, the basic mechanism was considered obvious. But in 2015, when the Initiative on Global Markets asked top economists whether a $15 federal minimum wage would reduce employment, the profession appeared almost equally split. Around 45% agreed that such an increase would substantially reduce employment for low-wage workers, and the remainder disagreed, were unsure or declined to answer.

Yet if one opens an undergraduate microeconomics textbook or attends a first-year economics lecture, one of the earliest lessons involves the minimum wage and unemployment.

✍️Mani Basharzad

The arguments for a minimum wage are rooted in racism and economic illiteracy

01/12/2025

Keir Starmer was out and about on Monday, desperately trying to save his Chancellor and his own premiership (for their fates are now inextricably intertwined) from the aftermath of the Budget. He denied Rachel Reeves had misled everyone in the run-up to the Budget and sought to convince his MPs that things will get better from here for the Government, saying they had now travelled through the ‘narrowest part of the tunnel’ on the cost of living.

But once you are seen as lying not only to the public and the media, but also to your fellow Cabinet ministers, the clock must really be ticking on your political careers. It can only be a matter of time now before Starmer and Reeves go.

✍️Andrew Lilico

The Prime Minister is trying to save his Chancellor – and his own skin

01/12/2025

On the Isle of Lewis, crofters still work the old way: one man, two dogs, a flock and the Atlantic wind. Watching Leslie and his collies, Bruce and Jude, round up sheep across the moor, I was struck by how little command was needed. After a whistle and a word, Bruce and Jude’s instincts took care of the rest. It was order without control, and freedom within purpose. This is liberty properly understood.

Lewis is home to many traditional industries: crofting, tweed weaving and fishing. It is a place where life still depends on skill, community and respect for the elements. When Leslie led his dogs up the slope, the scene felt timeless – as if little had changed in hundreds of years. Yet what struck me most was not nostalgia, but what this simple working relationship revealed about freedom, trust and the limits of control.

Bruce and Jude know exactly what to do when faced with a stubborn or stray sheep. Leslie doesn’t bark a dozen new commands; he trusts their judgement. They read the terrain, sense the flock’s movement, and decide how best to bring order. It’s a partnership built on mutual understanding. The dogs aren’t free in the sense of doing whatever they please. Instead, they’re free within the bounds of purpose and discipline. Their obedience doesn’t crush their independence; it makes their independence possible.

That relationship holds a lesson far beyond the croft. Today, governments too often resemble over-anxious shepherds, issuing endless directives in an attempt to control every variable. If Leslie tried to script each move Bruce and Jude made, chaos would follow. They’d be confused, hesitant and paralysed by instruction. The croft would fall apart under the weight of micromanagement. The same is true in governance: when the state presumes it must command every detail of life, initiative disappears, trust erodes and competence declines.

✍️Benjamin BH Ko

Freedom lies not in the absence of structure, but the presence of trust

01/12/2025

In this edition of Nimby Watch, we take a trip to the quiet – very quiet – village of Chapel-en-le-Frith, in Derbyshire…

Okay, what brings us to the Peak District, then? Well, it’s a small town in an idyllic part of the country. For most people, that would be reason enough. For our purposes, it’s also exactly the sort of place that ends up getting incredibly worked up over relatively minor developments.

Yep, that sounds about right. So what’s the bone of contention this time? It’s a multi-use game area – what most of us would call a kids’ park – with a skate area, built in a park inside the small town as something for its kids and teens to do.

That sounds… good? Everyone is always complaining about kids spending too much time staring at screens, and with local authority cuts, youth clubs everywhere have closed and there’s often nothing at all for kids to do. Surely no one is trying to stop this being built? Well… I have good news and I have bad news.

Okay, fire away. Well, the good news is that after a fundraising effort from across the local community, the park actually got built in 2010, and was by all accounts actually quite widely used.

This is clearly going to end badly, then. Yep. It was demolished in October, after a years-long legal battle between the council and three local residents, ostensibly over the noise that came from the play area.

✍️James Ball

If Nimbys are able to get playgrounds demolished, then there's no stopping them

27/11/2025

Britain faces a series of truly invidious problems. In order of salience: our debt, our spending addiction (not unrelated), our totally anaemic growth (ditto), our shrinking birth rates and our weakness in the face of international threats in the form of Russia, China and Islamism.

Given these, you might think that a Chancellor with an enormous majority, and years left until an election, might seek to tackle some of these problems. Instead, they were almost all shirked in favour of party management. Taxpayers of today and tomorrow have been soaked to buy votes from the most economically illiterate corpus of MPs ever to (dis)grace Parliament.

A truly noble Budget would have cut the corpulent welfare bill and dared the Labour backbenchers to rise up. It would have addressed birth rates with more thought than lifting the cap that has ensured parents live within their means. It would have been honest with the public about the ruinous scale of our debt. It would have found ways to further increase defence and intelligence spending, because Britain has worse enemies than those the Treasury thinks we can afford to face.

But above all, and in order to deal with those other issues, a Budget that meets this moment would have been one bursting with pro-growth policies. Instead, there was a quietly devastating footnote from the Economic and Fiscal Outlook, the official economic and fiscal forecast published by the Office for Budget Responsibility.

✍️James Price

Labour's Budget did nothing to solve Britain's myriad problems

26/11/2025

Those with the broadest shoulders may have the biggest homes, but as Michael Simmons of The Spectator has often said, they also have the longest legs. On Budget day, the final kites have been flown before Rachel Reeves brings the tax hammer down to fill her £30–40 billion black hole. One of her more destructive but popular ideas (amongst the people who won’t foot the bill) is that we are expecting to see a council tax surcharge on properties over £2 million in value.

With the Treasury spreadsheets currently aflame amid ballooning spending, an above-forecast borrowing rate and a failure to meaningfully slash welfare benefits, the Chancellor has turned to a council tax surcharge to make up revenues. This surcharge would be a 1% annual charge for the misfortune of owning a larger family home, often in central London. But this creates a number of serious problems, and misses the hard task of doing some major reform of our broken council tax system.

✍️Maxwell Marlow

Instead of tax reform, the Government is proposing a touch of populism

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