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The Capitalist
by The Capitalist, from CapX
The Capitalist: where economics meets politics. New episodes every Wednesday. briefing.capx.co
Episodes
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Robert 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 Robert Tombs, emeritus professor of French history at Cambridge and author of The English and Their History, about Our Islands’ Story, the...
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Best 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, Andy Burnham’s £2 bus fares will not save anybody.’ Are the Tories back on track? That’s what Kemi Badenoch was trying to prove in her…
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Andrew 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 Shadow Chancellor Andrew Griffith. Griffith, a former FTSE 100 finance director, begins with why Britain’s growth rate never recovered after...
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Best 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 is pretty good at spending money on infrastructure. But Ben Hopkinson argues we don’t get much for our money. HS2, at up to £102.7 billion...
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Helen 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 joined Marc Sidwell on The Capitalist on the day the Conservatives unveiled their answer: a Get to Work plan that would require under-25s...
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Best 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 companies.’ The Trump administration has admonished its British counterparts over digital regulations like the Online Safety Act. Ben…
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Chelsea 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 Capitalist, Chelsea Follett of the Cato Institute speaks with Marc Sidwell about her new book, ‘The Grim Old Days: An Introduction to…
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Best 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 assorted tax reliefs, corporate welfare receives far less attention than voter welfare, but Alan Hibben argues it should be easier to cut – if…
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Liam 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 Director of the Centre for Policy Studies – and so now in charge of CapX as well – joins Marc Sidwell on The Capitalist to explain why he…
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Best 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 more efficient means people will use it a lot more, rather than less — his example was coal and the steam engine. James Price argues the…
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Daniel 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 who has just taken over as Director-General of the Institute of Economic Affairs – Britain’s original free-market think tank – at a…
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Best 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 technology to compete alongside its open alternatives. Damian Green argues that as we enter the age of AI, our Government seems unsure how to...
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Julian 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 costs spiked and Andy Burnham faced MPs as Prime Minister, Marc Sidwell spoke to the economist Julian Jessop about Burnham’s plans – and…
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Best 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 first data centre, which helped us win the Second World War. James Price says that nowadays we can barely build them, thanks to Nimby...
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Jonn 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 technologies – from sewers to lifts – that make urban life possible. They discuss what it takes to keep a modern city running, and whether...
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Best 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 hour spent on paperwork is an hour not spent selling, investing or training staff. Ministers are held to account when they spend public...
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Dalibor 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. Dalibor Rohac thinks it needs to be seen as a geopolitical failing as well. This week on The Capitalist, Rohac, incoming director of research…
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Despatch: 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 out breaking Rachel Reeves's fiscal rules to borrow more, he's asked his Chancellor to find 'wriggle room' within them. Penrose argues…
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Richard 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 Right. He had high hopes for Donald Trump’s second term, and coined the term ‘Tech Right’, hoping for an administration that worked...
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Despatch: 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 Basharzad. Most of those who crossed the border soon returned home, but thousands remained and dozens died in the chaos. Even the most…
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Alex 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 that bin men and teaching assistants should, in fact, be paid the same. These rules bankrupted Birmingham City Council, and the big...
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Despatch: 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 Minister’s recent announcements so dispiriting. Burnham says he wants Whitehall to give power away, but he seems determined to grip…
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Who 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 in the making. CapX editor Marc Sidwell sits down with Rainer Zitelmann to discuss ‘New Space Capitalism’, Zitelmann's account of how...
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Despatch: 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 energy bills are scarce consolation when people can’t get jobs. There is no other way. John Healey needs to find the courage to reform...
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Andrew 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 Secretary Andrew Griffith to ask whether Burnham is about to double down on a bigger state or finally embrace growth. They also discuss why...
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Despatch: 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 third-party platforms like YouTube. Smart TVs are covered too, with plans to reserve nine of the top home screen tiles for public service...
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The 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 – and a sense of personal virtue is no substitute for a plan, as the fate of his predecessor shows. In this week’s episode of The...
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The 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 misjudged their target? Gawain Towler, Reform UK's director of communications from 2019 to 2024 and now a member of the party's governing...
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Despatch: 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 BBC’s own move 15 years ago proves relocating an office doesn’t automatically transform the culture inside. Then there’s the small matter…
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The 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 chancellor Jeremy Hunt has a surprisingly upbeat take on Britain’s potential – if our politicians can be bold enough. In this episode of...
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The 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 Conservative government, the housing crisis has torn up the old promises of reward for hard work. In the 1990s, a first-time buyer couple saving...
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The 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 – including many on his own side – genuinely believed would happen. A decade on, with some senior Labour figures openly discussing a return…
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Despatch: 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 of the IMF is now putting the odds of a major debt crisis before 2030 at better than fifty-fifty. Independent economist Damian Pudner...
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The 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 Britain – or face fines and potentially criminal liability. Framed as a child safety measure, the proposal has drawn fierce criticism from...
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Despatch: 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 lived as hunter-gatherers, in small groups where unpredictable resources were shared equally, regardless of individual effort. Our brains…
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The 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 and Chad P. Bown argue that with great powers now using trade as a weapon, there can be no simple return to the settled order of…
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Despatch: 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 charity stop being an independent voice for civil society and become, in effect, an arm of the state? In this piece by Benjamin Elks, published...
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The 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 role in the economy, and that using industrial policy to achieve the economic outcomes we want is just common sense. As president of the...
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Mel 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, Shadow Chancellor Mel Stride delivers his account of Britain's fiscal predicament and the Conservative Party's plan to fix it. Our…
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Despatch: 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 borrowing, backed by the Manchester skyline, and presented as a credible alternative to both austerity and the hard left. There is just…
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Kallum 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 and columnist for The Telegraph, joins CapX editor Marc Sidwell for a lucid diagnosis of what is really going wrong with the British…
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Despatch: 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 essay, Lee David Evans of the Mile End Institute argues that while the old political order may be gone, the old parties are proving harder…
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Why 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 ranked in the bottom quartile of advanced economies for private capital investment every year since 1995. The gap with our peers runs to...
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Live: 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 to press on. Recorded live at the Margaret Thatcher Conference in London, Charlotte Crosswell OBE chairs a conversation with Louis Mosley,...
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Despatch: 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 Nicholls, writer of Poke the Bear and host of The Right Dishonourable podcast, examines New York’s experiment under mayor Zohran Mamdani, arguing...
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The 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 Telegraph and author of Good Slut: How Money, Sex and Power Set Women Free, Zoe joins CapX editor Marc Sidwell to make the conservative...
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Despatch: 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 Government that appears to believe the answer is simply to press on. But Dr Gerard Lyons, research fellow at the Centre for Policy Studies, isn't...
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Is 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 of policy at Britain Remade, joins CapX editor Marc Sidwell for a forensic tour through the structural problems dragging on the British...
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Despatch: 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 don't. Both sides are missing the point – because Britain's welfare state isn't just poorly calibrated. It is built on a fundamental...
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Adrian 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. Adrian Wooldridge, Bloomberg columnist and author of "Centrists of the World Unite!", joins CapX editor Marc Sidwell for an unsentimental...
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ABOUT THIS SHOW
The Capitalist: where economics meets politics. New episodes every Wednesday.
briefing.capx.co
HOSTED BY
The Capitalist, from CapX
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How many episodes does The Capitalist have?
The Capitalist currently has 358 episodes available on PodParley. New episodes are automatically indexed when they're published to the podcast feed.
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The Capitalist: where economics meets politics. New episodes every Wednesday. briefing.capx.co
How often does The Capitalist release new episodes?
The Capitalist publishes regularly with 358 episodes available. Check the episode list for the typical release schedule.
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Who hosts The Capitalist?
The Capitalist is created and hosted by The Capitalist, from CapX.
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