Even David Cameron doesn’t want to rejoin the EU these days. But Andy Burnham keeps inching us closer. It seems the UK has just agreed to apply the EU’s AI Act to products in Northern Ireland, a move that puts pressure on the rest of the UK to follow suit – and threatens to strangle the sector that offers our best hope for growth.
On The Capitalist podcast this week, I sat down with Sky News economics editor Ed Conway to discuss whether free trade can survive the new world disorder and why the Corn Laws were the Brexit of the 19th century. More below.
And on CapX today, Helen Whately sets out her plan for welfare reform. Labour can’t deliver, she argues, and the Conservatives now have a thought-through programme to make welfare a safety net, not a lifestyle choice.
Below you’ll find all the latest pieces from CapX, plus what we’re reading from around the web.
Marc Sidwell
Editor, CapX
Today’s Takes
Fresh thinking from CapX
Let’s get Britain working again
Helen Whately
‘Next week Alan Milburn will tell us the answer to the NEETs crisis is to spend yet more money: on subsidised work placements and ineffective government schemes. We have a better plan.’
With 6.7 million working-age people out of work and on benefits, and PIP claimants having doubled since 2019, Britain’s welfare state is a long way from William Beveridge’s original vision. The Shadow Work and Pensions Secretary sets out where the Conservatives would find £36.1bn in savings – and the five principles behind her plan to fix it. Read More
British universities are not fit for purpose
Len Shackleton
‘Our university set-up is failing students, business and the taxpayer. It is over-regulated, limiting competition and innovation, yet at the same time fails to focus on the key question of what a university should be in the 21st century.’
Our higher education sector is in big trouble. Many universities are in dire financial straits, and their willingness to accept students with weaker academic credentials has helped drive grade inflation. That in turn has made degrees less valuable as a signal of quality to employers. This is a sector where we are supposed to be world-leading. It urgently needs to be dragged out of its malaise. Read More
The Capitalist: Ed Conway – is free trade in retreat?
On the CapX podcast, I talked with Ed Conway about his new book Trade World, and the prospects for free trade in a more dangerous age.
We discussed why he sees the repeal of the Corn Laws as the Brexit of the 19th century, why the US-China trade war looks set to outlast Trump and why he thinks the real threat from Chinese car imports lies less in the finished cars than in the components inside them.
Best of the Web
The Civil Service won’t reform itself
Ameer Kotecha, The Spectator
‘The problem with the Civil Service is the deadwood, the self-defeating structures and perverse incentives – and the fact that all are propagated by a senior mandarin class too cowardly or too institutionalised to do anything about it.’
Antonia Romeo gave a speech last night about reforming the Civil Service. It was full of lofty ambitions and principles but lacking in any sort of detailed plan. We have known what is wrong for a while. All of the recommendations in the 1968 Fulton report are appropriate and still need implementing. But politicians need to make it happen, and Andy Burnham shows even less interest in doing so than Keir Starmer. Read More
Young people have become social media scapegoats
Ben Sixsmith, The Critic
‘We need a broad cultural change that will also address our own screenbound habits. This will not be accomplished by regulations (as if Lisa-sodding-Nandy could spearhead the revival of the good life).’
The UK is on the path to digital authoritarianism. Restrictions of under-16s’ social media use could even limit their access to websites like eBay and Spotify. Lisa Nandy would like the state to be more interventionist in these matters. But many young people would still find workarounds, and such rules are really a kind of moral outsourcing – a way of dodging our own digital sins. Read More
AI is accelerating – how to get Britain ready
Neil O'Brien
Stat of the Day
And if you want more...
– Time to refocus on human welfare, not climate change (City AM)
– The wonderful shallowness of Andy Burnham (Financial Times 🔒)
– Nvidia and the history of ‘sexpionage’ (The Conversation)
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Well done on selecting a moron for the X comment.
Brexit, the gift that keeps on disappointing us. On one side because fucking morons still think it was about Sovrintee and on the other because others knew that this was about damaging the U.K. economically, socially and reputationally.