Halligan: Britain needs saving

Plus: choosing safety over freedom, and the case for billionaire donations

Sep 16, 2026

Britain is closer to 1976 than 1997 right now – that’s what Liam Halligan, the new Director of the Centre for Policy Studies, told me when we sat down for this week’s edition of The Capitalist. And, he says, if we’re nearer to going to the IMF for a bailout than we are to a rerun of Tony Blair’s Cool Britannia, Britain needs the same solutions today that the CPS was founded to promote back in the mid-Seventies. Much more below.

Meanwhile, the state of the public finances is starting to make even the ever-optimistic Andy Burnham sound more like his predecessor. Today he announced his Government would ‘take difficult decisions’ at the Budget. No, not those difficult decisions. Whatever he promises, we all know who these decisions will be difficult for: taxpayers.

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

After 9/11 we chose safety over freedom

Mani Basharzad

‘In the modern world, people do not lose their liberty through the invasion of an emperor from a neighbouring country, but through the subtle surrender of their own freedom in exchange for a little more safety.’

Days after 9/11, the 10-year US Treasury yield was 4.68%. Now it’s breaking 5%. High spending paid for by high debt has become the new normal. Gordon Brown once wanted British debt capped at 40% of GDP; it is nearing 95%, with Italy at 138.9%. That is the price of a hyper-protective state where a quarter of adults believe they are disabled. Read More

Billionaire donors are good for democracy

Andrew Tettenborn

‘If you want to ensure effective political input comes from those likely to be motivated by genuine and passionate belief in a political ideal, it’s the individual plutocrat every time.’

Labour peers want to cap political donations and retrospectively confiscate the £72m Reform received from two crypto billionaires. Behind it sits an assumption: that many small donations are the only legitimate way to fund a party. Why should that be the only model? Parties beholden to no subscriber base can afford radical ideas. Voters can judge for themselves. Read More

The Capitalist: 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 Director of the Centre for Policy Studies – and so now in charge of CapX as well – joined me on The Capitalist to explain why he decided to get more involved in frontline policymaking.

He argues that our perilous fiscal position today looks alarmingly similar to the mid-Seventies, when the CPS was founded to break a failing consensus, only two years before that same consensus forced Britain to go to the IMF for a bailout. Fifty years later, he says, the case for free enterprise and limited government must be won all over again.

We discussed why Britain’s debt interest bill is a moral failure, not just a fiscal one; why he thinks the market will not fund upfront tax cuts, however much he wants them; and why he blames his own trade – economics journalism – for leaving the public unequipped to hold politicians to account.

Best of the Web

Public control, private blame

Christopher Snowdon, The Critic

‘In Britain… companies remain mostly in private hands while levers of competition, such as advertising and pricing, are treated with growing contempt and are increasingly regulated.’

Andy Burnham says he wants public control, not public ownership – and his Chancellor John Healey is making similar noises about a ‘strategic state’. The result is a capitalist command economy: firms left in private hands but given so many targets, mandates and price controls that they become agents of the state, bearing the blame while politicians keep the power. Read More

Slowing AI won't slow the disruption

Ryan Bourne, The Times 🔒

‘There are thus scenarios where countries get substantially richer but it feels like a major recession for its professional class. And Britain looks sensitive to these effects.’

Dario Amodei’s proposed slowdown in frontier AI won’t mute the technology’s economic effects. AI-powered growth depends on business adoption, which still has a long way to go. With two-thirds of British jobs highly exposed, we could grow much richer as a country while many graduates struggle to adjust – a recipe for a politically explosive future. Read More