The Capitalist

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 2008. He points to a tax system that discourages risk, a state now spending 45p in every pound, an ageing population that governments tried to offset with high immigration and years of quantitative easing that rewarded owning assets over building businesses. He accepts that Conservative governments share the blame. In his view the party’s biggest failure was that it stopped making the case for markets, and by the end it was telling people how to heat their homes and regulating how fruit yogurt is advertised.On the public finances, he compares Britain to Wile E. Coyote, clinging to the cliff edge while paying more for 30-year borrowing than Greece, Portugal, Morocco and Bulgaria. He insists the problem is political rather than economic: the Chancellor, John Healey, could find the savings ‘this afternoon’ if Labour were willing to reform welfare. He also explains why high energy costs are only one layer of ‘the whole stack’ holding British business back, and why he thinks handing power to arm’s-length regulators has been a disaster. Get full access to The CapX Briefing at briefing.capx.co/subscribe

‘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 for 140 miles of track, is the most expensive high-speed railway in the world. Ben's new report for the Centre for Policy Studies lays out eight policy challenges – and how to fix them.Each week we bring you an example of the best writing from CapX, read aloud. For hosted conversations, listen to The Capitalist, every Wednesday.Get full access to the CapX Briefing at briefing.capx.co Get full access to The CapX Briefing at briefing.capx.co/subscribe

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 claiming benefits to join an intensive programme from day one, or lose their payments.They discuss the case for taking family finances into account when young people claim, as well as the party’s separate proposal for a prepaid benefits card for the long-term unemployed that would block spending on alcohol, tobacco and gambling. She also explained why she still sees Margaret Thatcher, not the 1970s Andy Burnham looks back to, as the model for a Conservative government. Get full access to The CapX Briefing at briefing.capx.co/subscribe

‘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 Ramanauskas, a former trader adviser to the UK government, explains that the US feels hard done by because while the UK says these policies are neutral, they tend to affect American firms the most because of their size and revenue. For once, Trump is in the right on trade. These laws are non-tariff trade barriers and Andy Burnham should repeal them.Each week we bring you an example of the best writing from CapX, read aloud. For hosted conversations, listen to The Capitalist, every Wednesday.Get full access to the CapX Briefing at briefing.capx.co Get full access to The CapX Briefing at briefing.capx.co/subscribe

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 the Preindustrial Past’. It sets out what life was really like before modern economic growth: famine every few years, streets that doubled as open sewers and a world in which parents put their surviving children to work instead of playing with them.We discussed why the fantasy of cosy village life is so persistent and how it feeds today’s scepticism about growth and AI. We also covered why the pre-industrial world was no environmental idyll, and what passed for entertainment when an execution was a family day out. Plus, the Dutch mob who killed and ate their prime minister in 1672. Get full access to The CapX Briefing at briefing.capx.co/subscribe