What does Makerfield mean for the Right?

Plus: prolific shoplifters, broken defence and the tribunal trap

Jun 18, 2026

Vote ~~Labour~~ Andy. The odds-on favourite to win the Makerfield by-election, Andy Burnham, has mentioned his party in only 3% of his Facebook ads. Just as well he’s not running to lead it or anything.

The current Government continues for now, although who knows what happens tomorrow once the result comes in. Keir Starmer’s administration confirmed today it is still ‘strongly minded’ to nationalise British Steel. That’s a mistake. As are its impending steel tariffs.

In other news, the Conservatives announced some bold plans to dial back regulation on the City (see below). Of course, first they need a few more MPs, and they might even be in for a surprise victory tonight. No, not that one.

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

Employment tribunals are strangling British growth

Alan Hibben

‘When the most rational use of scarce managerial and professional time is to minimise exposure to a proliferating network of potentially ruinous hearings, it is hardly surprising that investment and innovation look weak.’

Britain has built a tribunal system so sprawling and risk-free that it now consumes the very people who should be running productive companies. A quick, supposedly low-cost alternative to the courts has become a bureaucratic trap. A new paper from the Centre for Policy Studies argues that a country that spends this much time litigating the past should not be surprised that it struggles to build the future. Read More

The nanny state doesn't care about your facts

Christopher Snowdon

‘The media were far more interested in reporting Jamie Oliver’s opinions of the sugar tax than in covering the academic evidence.’

A new book, ‘Inside the Sausage Factory’, examines four public health campaigns. They all failed, and it turns out that the evidence for them wasn’t very good, but that isn’t really the point. A bad policy introduced on the basis of poor evidence is still an evidence-based policy. The real question is whether the policies were evidence-based at all. Read More

More spending won't fix Britain's defence

James Price

‘Funnelling more money through a broken pipe just means more waste.’

The defence sector is never going to be a pure free market. Technically it is a monopsony: a sector with a single buyer. Aside from the handful of libertarians who believe in recreational nukes on principle, no one cavils at this. But some therefore say that there can be no market forces involved in the process. This is, to use an untechnical term, total rot. Read More

Stat of the day

The CapX Reading List

The best of the web today

Will Makerfield unite the Right?

Oliver Dean, ConservativeHome

‘In Makerfield, an insurgent Restore Party may well hand Burnham an easy win. In Aberdeen South, the dynamic is rather similar, with Reform poised to take enough votes from the Tories that the SNP secure re-election.’

When the Right splits, it is the Left that wins. But after Makerfield, should right-of-centre parties do a deal? A united Right may well prevent a progressive coalition being handed the keys to No.10 in 2029. It may also, in the process, end the Conservative Party as a serious political force. Read More

Let's slash the regulations holding the City back

Andrew Griffith, City AM

‘In the 1980s, the City had one person working in regulation for every 11,000 working in the financial sector; today it has one for every 75.’

Anyone who worked in the City in the 1990s knows what it felt like to work at the world’s greatest intersection of capital and private enterprise. Not any more. Despite its vitality, storied history and deep strengths, Britain’s financial services industry is in trouble. It’s time for a fightback. Read More