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The Capitalist
The Capitalist: where economics meets politics. New episodes every Wednesday.
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Episodes
The CapitalistRoss Clark: Britain is heading for a debt crisis
‘The basis of this crisis is a very fundamental truth: it is politically easier to spend money than it is to raise it.’ This week on The Capitalist, Marc…
The CapitalistBest of CapX: What’s anti-fascist about price controls?
‘And do we really think government is going to speculate better than the assembled forces of the world’s speculators? Or is it more likely to be the idiot…
The CapitalistLiam Halligan & Daniel Herring: what’s in the Budget?
John Healey has delivered his first Budget as Chancellor. In this special edition of The Capitalist, Liam Halligan is joined by Daniel Herring, the Centre for…
The CapitalistBest of CapX: Healey’s Budget will be built on sand
'The best course would be to grip spending, not least on welfare, and use the savings to cut the deficit and taxes on business, that essential engine of…
The CapitalistDavid Frost: the fight to stay out of the EU starts now
‘Most people believe we’ve been living in some sort of crazy neoliberal lab experiment for the last 40 years… And that’s because nobody has tried to challenge…
The CapitalistRobert Tombs: Britain needs a better story
Why has it become a reflex for Britain to emphasise the worst of our history while neglecting the best? This week on The Capitalist, Marc Sidwell speaks with…
The CapitalistBest of CapX: The Tories rediscover Adam Smith
‘She [Badenoch] promised to build a missile and drone defence system called Britannia Shield, telling the hall that if Russia fires a missile at Manchester…
The CapitalistAndrew Griffith: we’re ready for the battle of ideas
At a Centre for Policy Studies fringe event at the Conservative Party Conference in Birmingham, the CPS's new Director Liam Halligan put the questions to…
The CapitalistBest of CapX: How to make British infrastructure cheap again
‘The Bakerloo line extension, if it is ever built, will be the most expensive underground line built anywhere in the world outside of New York City.’ Britain…
The CapitalistHelen Whately: young people need jobs, not handouts
What should we do about the nearly one million young people not in education, employment or training? The Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary Helen Whately…
The CapitalistBest of CapX: Trump is right about Britain’s tech laws
‘American firms dominate the tech industry and so almost any domestic digital regulation a foreign government passes will land disproportionately on US…
The CapitalistChelsea Follett: the past was worse than you think
Why do so many people – on the Right as well as the Left – look back fondly on a pre-industrial world they would never actually want to live in? This week on…
The CapitalistBest of CapX: Corporate welfare is Britain’s blind spot
‘You cannot reform what you cannot measure, and Britain cannot presently measure corporate welfare in any meaningful way.’ From support for wind farms to…
The CapitalistLiam Halligan: Britain needs saving from itself
What does the fight for free markets look like in 2026 – and how can Britain escape its high-debt, high-tax, low-growth doom loop? Liam Halligan, the new…
The CapitalistBest of CapX: Labour are a bigger threat to jobs than AI
‘The only thing more power-hungry than AI are, of course, leftist politicians themselves.’ Economist William Stanley Jevons noticed that making a technology…
The CapitalistDaniel Hannan: our debt is now a national security threat
Is Britain’s own debt now as dangerous as any foreign rival? This week on The Capitalist, Marc Sidwell speaks to Daniel Hannan, the writer, peer and former MEP…
The CapitalistBest of CapX: Don't let China win the AI standards war
‘The nations whose standards the world adopts win far more than the nations that merely rent their software by the month.’ The UK used to allow proprietary…
The CapitalistJulian Jessop: Burnham's growth plan won't work
Will the man who paints himself as the antidote to Thatcherism lead us back to the worst of the 1970s? This week on The Capitalist, as Britain’s borrowing…
The CapitalistBest of CapX: Why can’t Britain build data centres?
‘In Britain, we can force £100 million to be spent on a bat tunnel; imagine what our planning system will do with a gigawatt campus.’ Britain is the home of…
The CapitalistJonn Elledge: how we invented the city
This week on The Capitalist, Marc Sidwell speaks to the writer and CapX columnist Jonn Elledge. His new book ‘31 Inventions That Built Our World’, surveys the…
The CapitalistBest of CapX: Red tape is a tax on time
Compliance costs British business around £52 billion a year. Damian Pudner asks how much of that is wasted on rules nobody has bothered to think through? Every…
The CapitalistDalibor Rohac: capitalism can save the West
Are Nimbys a threat to national security? Britain’s inability to build houses and infrastructure is rightly at the heart of our domestic political debate…
The CapitalistDespatch: A £3 trillion problem
Britain's national debt has just passed £3 trillion for the first time – and John Penrose says it's time to get it under control. But while Andy Burnham ruled…
The CapitalistRichard Hanania: Can you trust a populist?
Richard Hanania had a ringside seat for the rise of MAGA, as his Substack essays on anti-woke issues gained traction at the highest level of the new American…
The CapitalistDespatch: The flaw at the heart of the EU
The recent Spanish border crisis – in which some 72,000 illegal migrants crossed into Ceuta from Morocco – should be a wake-up call for Europe, argues Mani…
The CapitalistAlex Tabarrok: Britain's equal pay madness
Britain’s ‘equal value’ pay rules go well beyond upholding equal pay for the same work, and mean that tribunals have the power to ignore the market and decide…
The CapitalistDespatch: Ben Houchen – we need real devolution
Give Andy Burnham his due. He has been arguing for devolution for the best part of a decade. But Tees Valley Mayor Ben Houchen says that’s what makes the Prime…
The CapitalistWho owns the Moon?
In June, SpaceX went public in the largest IPO in history. Three days earlier, a German historian published a book explaining why that moment had been 60 years…
The CapitalistDespatch: Helen Whately on welfare reform
Our new Chancellor has a problem: paying for Andy Burnham’s plans. Raising taxes will damage the economy, and won’t raise enough. Lower bus fares and VAT off…
The CapitalistAndrew Griffith – does Burnham understand business?
Britain has a new prime minister. But will Andy Burnham’s new government reverse years of stagnation? CapX editor Marc Sidwell sits down with Shadow Business…
The CapitalistDespatch: The regulator shouldn’t rig your YouTube feed
Rather than letting people choose between freely-competing broadcasters, Ofcom wants to put a thumb on the scale for favoured 'trustworthy' sources, even on…
The CapitalistThe Capitalist Podcast: Burnham's trap
Andy Burnham is days away from becoming prime minister. According to economist Andrew Lilico, he’s inheriting an economy with almost no room left to manoeuvre…
The CapitalistThe Capitalist Podcast: Gawain Towler – Farage under fire
Nigel Farage has just resigned his seat to force a by-election in Clacton. The establishment, his allies say, is trying to destroy him. Perhaps – but have they…
The CapitalistDespatch: Burnham can’t outrun the Westminster bubble on a Pendolino
Andy Burnham wants to escape the Westminster bubble by shipping bits of No.10 to Manchester. Neil Garratt of the London Assembly isn’t buying it – he says the…
The CapitalistThe Capitalist Podcast: Jeremy Hunt – the choice Burnham can't duck
Britain is in trouble. Its economy is stagnant, and its politics are in turmoil, with Andy Burnham set to be our seventh prime minister in a decade. Yet former…
The CapitalistThe Capitalist Podcast: Britain's lost ambition
From Disraeli's One Nation vision to Thatcher's Right to Buy, aspiration was once the animating principle of British conservatism. Yet after 14 years of…
The CapitalistThe Capitalist Podcast: Matthew Elliott – how Brexit was won
Ten years ago, Matthew Elliott ran the campaign that changed Britain forever. As the architect of Vote Leave, he helped deliver a result that almost nobody –…
The CapitalistDespatch: Rachel Reeves is sleepwalking toward an IMF bailout
Britain's national debt is heading for £3 trillion. Servicing it costs roughly the annual wages of four million full-time workers. And a former chief economist…
The CapitalistThe Capitalist Podcast: Is Britain About to Scan Every Smartphone?
Keir Starmer is giving tech companies three months to activate on-device content scanning and age verification across all smartphones and tablets sold in…
The CapitalistDespatch: Why your inner caveman hates capitalism
Why do so many people instinctively distrust free markets? Erik Lidström's answer is rooted in evolutionary psychology. For nearly two million years, humans…
The CapitalistThe Capitalist Podcast: How to win a trade war
With Donald Trump back in the White House, tariffs have become front-page news, and advocates for free trade find themselves on the back foot. Soumaya Keynes…
The CapitalistDespatch: Who funds the charities?
Over £12 billion of taxpayer money flows to large charities every year – and 21 of them get 99% of their funding from government. So at what point does a…
The CapitalistThe industrial policy illusion
From the progressive left to the nationalist right – in Washington or Westminster – a new consensus is forming. It argues that government should play a larger…
The CapitalistMel Stride on the cost of instability
Britain is paying more to borrow than any other major Western economy. So why is Labour preoccupied with internal power struggles? In a special live address…
The CapitalistDespatch: Andy Burnham is overrated
Andy Burnham is heading for a leadership bid, and he's arrived with a big idea: Manchesterism. Apparently a form of business-friendly socialism, it's built on…
The CapitalistKallum Pickering: The bond markets will decide Britain's PM
Keir Starmer is fighting for his political life. The bond markets are watching — and they have a long memory. Kallum Pickering, chief economist at Peel Hunt…
The CapitalistDespatch: Why the old parties aren't dead
From fractured local elections to the rise of Reform and the Greens, British politics increasingly feels unstable, fragmented and unpredictable. Yet in this…
The CapitalistWhy aren't we investing our money?
When a business raises capital, it buys equipment, expands its operations, and hires people. That’s how investment becomes jobs. But the United Kingdom has…
The CapitalistLive: Palantir and the AI race
Britain may have stumbled almost accidentally into one of the best positions in the world to win the AI race. The question is whether it has the wit and will…
The CapitalistDespatch: Should the government run supermarkets?
As grocery prices rise and political pressure mounts, radical solutions are back on the table – including state-owned food stores. In this essay, Jimmy…
The CapitalistThe left stole feminism – let’s take it back
The feminist case for capitalism is one of the most powerful arguments nobody seems to be making. Zoe Strimpel has decided to make it anyway. A columnist for…
The CapitalistDespatch: A smarter path to Net Zero
War in Iran. Energy bills set to spike again this summer. Electricity prices that have gone from among the lowest in Europe to among the highest. And a…
The CapitalistIs Britain really broken?
Britain's reputation for decline has taken on a life of its own online. But how much of it is real — and what would it actually take to fix? Sam Dumitriu, head…
The CapitalistDespatch: Get Britain off the benefits treadmill
Labour's benefits reforms are now law. Ministers say they will cut poverty. Critics say they will simply transfer money from people who work to people who…
The CapitalistAdrian Wooldridge: How centrists fight back
Liberalism is under its greatest threat since the 1930s. The question is whether its defenders have the nerve to admit why – and the ideas to fight back…
The CapitalistSteve Davies: The Great Realignment
The political map we grew up with is obsolete. What comes next could be far more turbulent than anything we've seen so far. Historian Stephen Davies, author of…
The CapitalistDespatch: Driven to blackouts
In the winter of 1973, Britain ran on three days a week. Candles lit homes, shops shut early, and a Prime Minister insisted everything was under control —…
The CapitalistTyler Goodspeed: You're wrong about recessions
We have been telling ourselves the wrong story about recessions for four centuries. And the consequences of that error are bigger than you might think. Dr…
The CapitalistDespatch: Same mistakes, same results
Rachel Reeves delivers her Mais lecture. Zack Polanski addresses the New Economics Foundation. Both correctly identify the wounds – and then reach for policies…
The CapitalistHow the Tories win again
The Conservative Party has a plan to rebuild. But is it radical enough — and does it have the courage to see it through? James Cowling, founder of Next Gen…