The Capitalist

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 borrowing costs are the highest in the G7, higher even than Portugal, Spain and Greece – not primarily because of the deficit or the debt stock, but because Britain has become an inflation outlier, and markets are pricing in the risk that the situation gets worse.

When Josh Simons stepped aside for Andy Burnham on a single Friday, yields jumped 18 basis points. Stride puts a number on it: Burnham penalty that if sustained would cost the equivalent of £300 per working household.

The broader charge sheet against the current government includes: a deficit that ran 75% above inherited plans in Labour's first year and again in its second; a quarter of a trillion pounds in additional borrowing across a single Parliament; fiscal rules changed to permit more borrowing the moment they became inconvenient; and a Prime Minister too weakened by his own MPsto make the welfare reforms even his Chancellor admits are needed.

Against this, Stride sets out the Conservatives' golden rule – for every pound of savings identified, at least half goes to deficit reduction – and makes the case that the Tories' plan is the only serious fiscal commitment on offer. Reform's numbers don't add up, he argues, and its representatives have said so themselves on air. Labour's leadership contenders are, in their different ways, each a version of the same problem.

Following his speech, the Shadow Chancellor takes questions on quantitative tightening, the triple lock, the OBR's limitations, defence investment and the EU.
Stay informed with CapX's unmissable daily briefings from the heart of Westminster. Go to capx.co to subscribe.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 one problem: it doesn't add up.

Mani Basharzad of the Institute of Economic Affairs argues that the Manchester model rests on borrowing that bond markets are already pricing with suspicion, a council that is among the most indebted in the country, and a breezy confidence that infrastructure debt is categorically different from any other kind. (It isn't.) Then there is the welfare question: Burnham has shown no appetite for restraint. And the wealth taxes he has quietly signalled would do to capital what rent controls do to housing.

The deepest problem is one of logic. Burnham wants growth and expanded welfare. He wants business confidence and more borrowing. He wants reform and the preservation of every existing structure. As Ludwig von Mises observed, you cannot split the difference between the government and the market. There is no third solution – only planned chaos.

Despatch brings you the best writing from CapX's unrivalled daily newsletter from the heart of Westminster.
Stay informed with CapX's unmissable daily briefings from the heart of Westminster. Go to capx.co to subscribe.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 economy, why the markets are spooked, and what a change of Labour leadership could mean for the country's already precarious fiscal position.

Pickering's central argument: Britain's borrowing costs are the highest in the G7 not because of its deficit or its debt, but because of its inflation record. And that inflation, he contends, is not bad luck — it is the predictable consequence of two decades of policy choices that have systematically rationed Britain's own factors of production.

Land, labour, energy, commodities: each has been constrained in turn, shrinking the economic pie even as demand has grown. The result is an economy that borrows to fund current consumption while steadily eroding the private sector's productive potential.

Even as the predictable leadership tension rolls on, the underlying problem, Pickering argues, will not change with the occupant of Number Ten. His prescription is neither complicated nor politically fashionable: deregulate land, labour and planning; cut government spending by three to five percentage points of GDP; let taxes follow. But above all, fix energy. Britain has 25 per cent less electricity available to it than in 2005. Until that changes, every other reform is working against the tide.
Stay informed with CapX's unmissable daily briefings from the heart of Westminster. Go to capx.co to subscribe.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 to kill than many assume. Drawing comparisons with Harold Wilson, John Major and Margaret Thatcher’s Conservatives, Evans suggests that beneath the chaos of five-party politics, Labour and the Conservatives still retain deeper institutional resilience than their critics admit.

Despatch brings you the best articles from CapX’s unrivalled daily newsletter.
Stay informed with CapX's unmissable daily briefings from the heart of Westminster. Go to capx.co to subscribe.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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 roughly £100 billion annually. A new report from the Jobs Foundation makes for uncomfortable reading, but it also offers concrete proposals for what to do about it.

Marc Sidwell is joined by Andrew Allum, international strategist and one of the report's authors, to discuss what it will take to close the investment gap – and whether Britain still has the political will to try.
Stay informed with CapX's unmissable daily briefings from the heart of Westminster. Go to capx.co to subscribe.
Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.