In this debut edition of The Capitalist: a bold new political movement takes aim at red tape to get Britain building, the Chancellor faces criticism over an economy teetering on the edge, and the Conservatives grapple with the path to reinvention. Insightful, sharp, and always forward-looking.

Find out more about Looking for Growth by visiting their website. And make sure you're subscribed to CapX's unmissable daily briefings from the heart of Westminster.

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Despatch is a fresh addition to The Capitalist, delivering standout writing from the team behind CapX’s indispensable daily briefings. In this debut edition, Emma Revell, External Affairs Director at the Centre for Policy Studies, explores why the case for conservatism must be reimagined and communicated in a language that resonates with modern audiences.  

And don’t miss the premiere of The Capitalist, our new weekly podcast, launching next week.

This article was written by Emma Revell and read by Benjamin Wilson. For more sharp insights and thoughtful commentary, subscribe to CapX’s daily briefings.

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Trash, garbage, litter or rubbish – whatever you call it the world is producing ever more of the stuff. But where does it all go once it's left our colour-coded bins? And what about all those clothes you leave at the charity shop thining you've done a good turn?

The fascinating tapestry of grime that is the modern waste industry is documented in painstaking, illuminating detail in the new book Wasteland, written by our guest this week, Oliver Franklin-Wallis.

He takes us on a journey from hulking mountains of waste on the outskirts of New Delhi to abandoned mining towns in Oklahoma and back-street repair shops in Ghana, where engineers give new life to millions of the West's discarded gadgets.

A truly enlightening, somewhat shocking episode this week – and I'd heartily recommend Oli's book to all our listeners.

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Not many podcast guests start by telling you they are in pain. Even fewer that the source of their discomfort is the scars inflicted by North Korean prison camp guards. Then again, not many podcast guests have seen what Timothy has.

This remarkable man has escaped the Kim regime, not once but twice and lived o tell his extraordinary tale. His is a story of tireless courage, resilience and, in his account, a great deal of luck. Timothy now has a new life here in the UK, working for a charity called Open Doors that helps Christians facing persecution all over the world, including the 300,000 toiling under the vengeful eye of the Kim regime. 

He joined us down the line for what was one of the most moving, humbling episodes of Free Exchange we've ever recorded.

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Stats! What we need is stats!

If Dickens' hard-nosed utilitarian Thomas Gradgrind was around today he'd probably be knee-deep in SAGE briefings and ONS data bulletins, trying to work out what the heck is going on with this virus. 

In the absence of a fictional Victorian schoolmaster, who better to lead us through the numerical mire than Tim Harford - the economist, author, broadcaster and TED-talker - whose new book 'How To Make The World Add Up' is an invaluable guide to seeing through the statistical fog. 

It's much more than just a handy Spark Notes for numeracy though, as Tim delves into the deeply held psychological biases that lead us down the wrong path. 

This was a great discussion about a book packed with insights and wonderful nuggets, such as: what do the inner workings of a toilet tell us about political polarisation? 

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What do Ancient Rome, Muslim Spain and Song era China have in common?

Military might, sophisticated legal systems or, perhaps, intellectual brilliance?

All of these things played their part in creating the great empire of the past, but the answer is something a little more abstract.

In his latest book the Swedish historian Johan Norberg argues that that every truly successful civilisation is defined by one key ingredient – openness. To new ideas, new people and new technology.

At a time when much of that life-enhancing, economy-expanding openness seems under threat from pandemic panic and populist demagoguery, his optimistic message feels particularly urgent.

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Not many organisations can claim to have had Adam Smith, Edmund Burke and Karl Marx as members. Then again, not many organisations are anything like the Royal Society for the Encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce – better known today as the RSA. For over 260 years Its mission has been nothing short of improving an entire nation – funding inventions, encouraging trade, planting millions of trees, putting on the Great Exhibition and creating Britain’s first exam board. And int hat time it has been a hotbed of utilitarianism, a home to conservatives, radicals and even the founding father of communism.

Who better to discuss this fascinating, intensely colourful history than Anton Howes, the RSA’s house historian, whose history of the Society, Arts and Minds, was released in May. 

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Brendan Simms is one of Britain’s leading historians. Professor of the History of International Relations at Peterhouse College, Cambridge, Brendan has published extensively on Britain’s role in the world, European grand strategy, and the rise of fascism in the C20th. His books are widely acclaimed and include Europe: The Battle for Supremacy, Britain’s Europe: A Thousand Years of Conflict and Cooperation, and his latest, Hitler: Only the World was Enough.

Our Deputy Editor, Frank Lawton, sat down with Brendan for discussion that ranged from the Holy Roman Empire to the future of Europe (with the odd trip down a Brexit byway for good measure).

But first, Frank began by asking if there was such a thing as ‘historical thinking’ and whether it was of any use to policy makers.

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Lord David Willetts has been an intellectual titan on the centre right for the past 30 years. Having worked in Margaret Thatcher’s policy unit, Willetts was an MP between 1992 and 2015, and served as a Cabinet Minister in the coalition government. He is President of the independent think-tank the Resolution Foundation, and the author of a number of books, including The Pinch: How Baby Boomers took their children’s future – and why they should give it back.

The book caused quite a stir on publication in 2010, and its thesis has proved remarkably prescient in the years since. So to mark the release of the second edition, our Deputy Editor Frank Lawton sat down with him to discuss the broken social contract and how to fix it.

Frank began by asking him when – as a Baby Boomer himself – he first realised he was to blame for everything.

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He’s best known for coming up with the terms death tax and climate change, so it’s fair to say Frank Luntz knows a thing or two about political communication – making him an ideal guest for the CapX Podcast. 

We sat down to discuss his latest project for the Centre for Policy Studies delving into how the British public really feel about that most American of values: Freedom.

Few will be surprised to learn that it’s not an idea that animates our democracy in the same way it does for our gun-toting cousin across the Atlantic – but for those of us who care about choice and liberty, the detail of his findings are deeply worrying.

Perhaps most concerning, from a CapX perspective, is that almost half of British either can’t tell or see no difference between capitalism and socialism.

So as well getting his characteristically lively takes on all the latest political gossip on both sides of the pond, I asked Frank how those of us who value freedom make the case to a populus who seem to care more about fairness than prosperity?

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It’s the Brexit Election – at least according to some broadcasters – yet we’ve had relatively little scrutiny of what ‘getting Brexit done’ actually means if Boris Johnson does win his cherished majority.

To shine a light on the next phase of negotiations, I caught up with one of the key players involved in putting together the Withdrawal Agreement. Raoul Ruparel spent two years as Special Adviser to then Brexit Secretary David Davis, followed by a year in 10 Downing St as Theresa May’s Special Adviser on Europe. 

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Throughout 2019, CapX has been working with the anti-poverty charity the Joseph Rowntree Foundation on a project about rebalancing Britain - looking at how to tackle the longstanding issues in the British economy such as the gap between towns and cities, rural and urban areas and the different regions of the UK.

A big focus of that project has been how to improve the lot of low-income voters. So to discuss that this week, we brought together JRF’s Executive Director Claire Ainsley; pollster extraordinaire James Kanagasooriam; and CapX's Deputy Editor Frank Lawton. I began by asking Claire about just how important low-income voters will be in the coming election. 

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This week we were delighted to welcome Peter Pomerantsev to CapX Towers. Peter is one of the world’s leading writers on propaganda and fake news, and has even given evidence to the US Congress on Russian disinformation. He also boasts a fascinating and varied CV, including many years working as a TV producer in Putin’s Russia – an experience he documented in gripping style in his first book ‘Nothing Is Real and Everything is Possible’. 

Peter sat down with CapX Editor John Ashmore to discuss his latest book ‘This Is Not Propaganda: Adventures in the War Against Reality”, in which Peter travels the world finding out how despots and demagogues are twisting the truth – and how we can start to fight back.

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Our guest this week is entrepreneur, economist, air force veteran and latterly candidate for the US Congress, Tim Kane. 

Tim is also the co-author with Glenn Hubbard of the acclaimed book ‘Balance: the Economics of Great powers from ancient Rome to modern America’ – I started by asking him about the thesis behind the book and why it is that great powers end up falling on hard times. 

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What is the future of capitalism? This week's Free Exchange exchange, recorded live at the Conservative Party Conference in Manchester, debates just that. 

Our Editor John Ashmore chaired an expert panel including the RSA's Alan Lockey, digital policy expert Casey Calista and fellow of the Adam Smith Institute and self-declared inventor of neoliberalism, Sam Bowman, as they discussed the rise of platform capitalism, solving Britain's productivity crisis and whether we should be scared of big tech.

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Are the Conservatives doomed by demographics? With younger and BME voters rejecting the party, what can the Tories do to turn things around and put together an election-winning coalition, not just for the upcoming poll, but for the many to come in the future?

That was the question facing the panel for our CapX live debate at the Tory conference in Manchester last week.

I invited Conservative activists Elena Bunbury and Resham Kotecha along with polling supremo Joe Twyman to chat about the challenge ahead, the perils of tokenism, and how the party can truly offer something for everyone.

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How do we really live now? From a Romanian truck driver to an Amazon deliveryman and a factory production line worker, Ben Judah tried to answer that question by speaking to the people whose labour makes the freedom and prosperity the rest of us enjoy possible – for his latest book This is Europe.

The author and Atlantic Council fellow crossed the continent conducting hours of painstaking interviews with people whose vivid stories reveal the powerful forces reshaping our world: migration, technology, war and climate change.

He joined the CapX podcast to discuss a book, by turns harrowing and uplifting, about a promise of unity, peace and the good life that’s realised for some in Europe – but painfully illusive for others. And our conversation was almost as wide ranging as the land it covers…

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Gisela Stuart is a rare figure in British politics - a Labour politician who campaigned wholeheartedly for Brexit.

As an MP from 1997-2017, Gisela is perhaps best known for her role in the 2016 referendum, where she chaired the Vote Leave campaign and appeared in the TV debates.

But her deep interest in constitutional and foreign affairs long-predates that referendum. Gisela sat on the Foreign Affairs Select Committee for nearly a decade, was a founding signatory to the foreign policy think tank The Henry Jackson Society, and is now Chair of Wilton Park, an executive agency of the Foreign Office dedicated to mediation and resolving international conflict.

Our Assistant Editor, Frank Lawton, sat down with her to chat all things foreign affairs.

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This week it was our great pleasure to be joined by journalist Marie Le Conte, whose new book on Westminster gossip lifts the lift on how things really work in the corridors of power.

We sat down to chat about the power of WhatsApp, clashing political cultures, and the fine art of coffee hopping.

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This week we're going international and talking about two connected regimes that have been brought to their knees by brutal authoritarian governments: Cuba and Venezuela.

Boris Arenas Gonzalez was blocked from leaving Cuba by the Communist regime, so joins us down the line from Havana to talk about the political situation, the centrality of the black market, and his life as a pro-democracy activist.

Diego Moya Ocampos grew up in Venezuela and now works as a political risk analyst at IHS Market in London. Rather than seeing the situation in Venezuela as evidence of the failure of central planning, Ocampos argues that the governing class operates in practice as a criminal cartel.

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Peter Riddell is one of the country’s most respected analysts of the workings of government, parliament and Whitehall.

Prior to his current role as Commissioner for Public Appointments, Peter was the Director of the Institute for Government, and a journalist with over 40 years experience during which he has held editorial positions at The FT and The Times.

He is also the author of 8 books, including 15 Minutes of Power: The Uncertain Life of British Ministers and In Defence of Politicians (In Spite of Themselves). Our Assistant Editor Frank Lawton began by asking why politicians needed defending in the first place.

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Our guest this week is a true heavyweight of the British political scene. 

Sir Malcolm Rifkind spent more than a decade in Cabinet from 1986 to 1997, beginning as Scotland Secretary under Margaret Thatcher before going on to serve as Transport Secretary, Defence Secretary and finally Foreign Secretary under John Major. 

In 2010 David Cameron appointed Sir Malcolm to chair Parliament’s Joint Intelligence Committee, with oversight of MI5, MI6 and GCHQ.

I sat down with Sir Malcolm to discuss the changing role of the Foreign Secretary, how Britain should deal with a rising China and what the future holds after Brexit. 

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Our guest this week is the journalist and author Owen Bennett. Owen has been a member of the parliamentary lobby since 2014, writing for publications such as the Daily Express, HP and City AM, and he was recently appointed Whitehall Editor at the Daily Telegraph. 

In between reporting on the highs and lows of British politics he’s managed to write three books – Following Farage, The Brexit Club and his soon-to-be-released biography Michael Gove, A Man In A Hurry. We sat down to talk about Gove’s upbringing, his time in the Oxford Union and those infamous cocaine revelations. 

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As with so much modern political theatre, the debate on artificial intelligence has become polarised to a point that is often profoundly unhelpful, with a false dichotomy between 'doomers' and utopians who see AI as a solution to the world's many problems, both technical and social.

Between those positions is a world of nuance and wildly varying predictions on what this expanding new technology could mean. All the while commentators and politicians talk about 'AI policy' as if it were a single thing, rather than a whole suite of overlapping issues: they range from the banal – discriminatory algorithms and deepfake of politicians, say – to the unnerving prospect of AI reaching a human-like level of intelligence. As one of our guests in this week's episode puts it, at this stage talking about 'AI policy' is about as useful as talking about 'electricity policy'.

To hammer out some of those questions we brought together Connor Axiotes, the Lead on Risk Policy at the Adam Smith Institute, and our own Head of Tech from the Centre for Policy Studies, Matthew Feeney.

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Is Rory Stewart 2019’s answer to Nick Clegg? Scottish Conservative leader Ruth Davidson thinks so. Like Nick Clegg, she said of the unlikely star of the early phases of the Tory leadership contest, he is 'changing political communication'. But, she added, 'like Nick, I fear the electorate will appreciate him yet vote for someone else.'

Whether or not you think this week’s guest is the best candidate to be the next Conservative leader, Rory Stewart has been a breath of fresh air in the last week or so, escaping Westminster to tour the country and talk politics with whoever will listen. With his social media videos he has cut out the middle man and inserted himself into the conversation about the future of his party and the country.

Now most of his colleagues expect these walking tours to be an entertaining distraction before they settle down to the serious task of selecting Britain’s next Prime Minister. But Stewart isn’t running to be a inoffensive amuse bouche. He means business.

For this week's episode of Free Exchange, I met up with him in St James’s Park to talk about everything from the social care and Brexit to opium pipes and why he is the 'Trumpian anti-Trump'.

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My guest for the first in a new run of Free Exchange episodes is the New York Times columnist and bestselling author David Brooks. His previous books include The Road to Character, The Social Animal and Bobos in Paradise. Most recently, he is the author of The Second Mountain.

In his latest work, he deals with a bigger issue than the stuff we usually worry about here at CapX: what does it mean to live a good life? 

That is a personal question, and The Second Mountain is a very personal book. But it is not without political implications. Mr Brooks is critical of meritocracy. He cites the grim statistics about deaths of despair and loneliness in America. He thinks something needs to change if people are to live more fulfilling lives, and his book is an attempt to put his finger on what that thing might be. 

Mr Brooks was in London earlier this week and came to CapX's offices to talk about The Second Mountain. I started by asking him about the personal crisis that serves as the book's starting point. 

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We spend an awful lot of time worrying about the political weather. But behind the day-to-day drama, the political climate is changing too - and in fundamental ways. 

One of the biggest shifts in recent years is the widening generational gap. There have always been differences between younger and older voters, but they are getting harder and harder to ignore. In fact, age – not class or income – is now the best predictor of how someone will vote.

The younger you are, the less likely you are to vote Tory. And that problem for the right appears to be getting worse. So if you want to understand the challenges the Conservative Party face, tackling the generational aspect of modern politics is unavoidable. 

On Monday, Onward, a centre-right think tank, published the latest set of polling on the Conservatives’ generational woes. For this week’s episode of Free Exchange I spoke to Will Tanner, director of Onward and former adviser to Theresa May, about what is driving Britain’s widening age gap, and what the Conservative Party should do about it.  

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Just when you think it can’t get any worse, it does. Westminster’s Brexit crisis continues to deepen and the mood on all sides in SW1 continues to darken. Which is why this week on Free Exchange my colleague John Ashmore and I decided to cheer ourselves up by talking to Matt Forde. 

Matt is one of Britain’s leading political comedians. He hosts 'Unspun' on Dave and his podcast ‘The Political Party’ features interviews with some of the most interesting people in politics. 

We spoke to Matt about his time as a political adviser, whether it’s getting harder to make jokes about politics as the debate gets nastier and why he’s fallen out of love with the Labour party.

Tickets are available now for his new show, 'Brexit Through the Gift Shop' at the Bloomsbury Theatre on May 25.

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Ever since Theresa May wrote to Donald Tusk to trigger Article 50 two years ago, March 29th, 2019, has been a Brexit lodestar. The UK’s planned departure date has been a point of comparative clarity in what has been an exceptionally turbulent period.

This week, the Prime Minister officially abandoned her plan for Britain to leave the EU on time, writing to Donald Tusk to ask for a short extension to Article 50.

There is no guarantee that the EU will accept the request. More generally, with just nine days to go until what was supposed to be Brexit day, what will happen next remains staggeringly unclear.

In an emergency episode of Free Exchange, CapX's Editor Oliver Wiseman spoke to three astute Brexitologists to try to make sense of the great riddle of British politics that only gets more complicated.

Helping me get my head around the latest developments was the Institute for Government’s Tim Durrant, Open Europe’s Dominic Walsh and CapX’s very own John Ashmore.

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Tony Blair was arguably the most electorally successful Prime Minister in recent British history. And yet, if you ask British voters today what they think of the man behind New Labour the answer is not exactly an enthusiastic thumbs up. Just 22 per cent think Blair did a good job, while 49 per cent think he did a bad job.

Nowhere is the repudiation of Blair clearer than at the top of the Labour Party. For those with their hands on the reins today, ‘Blairite’ is about the worst insult going. And it is impossible to understand the rise of Corbyn without appreciating Blair’s legacy.

My guest this week is someone who takes a very different view of Blair. John Rentoul is the Independent’s chief political commentator who, unusually for a Westminster journalist, also teaches a course on Tony Blair with Jon Davis at King’s College, London.

Davis and Rentoul have just published a book on the Blair government aptly titled Heroes or Villains? The Blair Government Reconsidered. They make generous use of fascinating first-hand testimony to paint a more flattering portrait of New Labour than many on both the left or the right would agree with.

For this week’s episode of Free Exchange, I spoke to John Rentoul about things Blair: what were his biggest achievements? How much of the blame does he deserve for contemporary political problems? Why was his relationship with Gordon Brown quite so dysfunctional? And how, ultimately, will history judge him?  

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If someone utters the word ‘neoliberal’ in a political debate, chances are they’re using it as a term of abuse. However, in recent years, a small but growing group have tried to reclaim the word, transforming an insult left-wingers hurl at free marketeers to something more meaningful. My guest on the podcast this week is a member of that group.

As well as being one of the most compelling advocates of neoliberalism, Sam Bowman is a font of interesting and thought-provoking opinions on a wide range of policy questions. Until a few years ago, Sam worked at the Adam Smith Institute. Now he works at the consultancy Fingleton Associates. He is also an occasional CapX contributor.

He recently came into our offices to talk all things neoliberalism. I hope you enjoy the conversation. 

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My guest this week is Gisela Stuart. Gisela was elected as the Labour MP for Birmingham Edgbaston in the 1997 landside that brought New Labour to power. Her seat had returned a Conservative MP for the previous 99 years but she won as the Labour candidate in five successive elections before stepping down in 2017.

Gisela became a household name late on in her political career, when, during the 2016 referendum, she chaired the Leave campaign, taking part in the televised Wembley debate watched by millions and touring the country with Boris Johnson and Michael Gove in the now infamous Vote Leave battle bus.

As a German-born ally of Europhile Tony Blair, she was, on paper at least, an unlikely person to head up the campaign to take Britain out of the EU. But meeting Gisela, it soon becomes clear you are dealing with an original thinker reluctant to follow anyone’s lead on a question as important as Europe.

I spoke to Gisela about the reason for Euroscepticism, the state of the Brexit debate, whether she supports the Prime Minister’s deal, the legacy of the referendum and the health of her party – including whether or not she would continue to take the Labour whip were she still an MP.

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We are said to be living in an age of rapid technological transformation, with another game-changing new gadget just around the corner and innovations overhauling everything from how we communicate to what jobs we do.

But is our economic system really as innovative as we think? Not according to this week’s guest on Free Exchange.

Fredrik Erixon argues that far from being dominated by swashbuckling entrepreneurs, the version of Western capitalism in place today is defined by a dreary managerialism and a stultifying aversion to risk. The result is slow growth, stagnating living standards -- and unhappy voters.

Fredrik set out this argument in a book called The Innovation Illusion: How So Little Is Created By So Many Working So Hard, which he wrote with co-author Bjorn Weigel a few years ago. Fredrik is also the director of the European Centre for International Political Economy, a think tank based in Brussels.

I spoke to Fredrik about the ways in which we have lost our way economically, what that means politically, and we can rediscover the recipe for success.

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My guest on the podcast this week is Rory Sutherland. Rory is the Vice Chairman of the advertising agency Ogilvy, a job title which the company’s website describes as ‘attractively vague’.

Rory is not your average ad man. After more than 20 years as a copywriter and creative director for the firm, he set up an in-house behavioural economics practice. And outside the day job, he writes the Wiki Man column for the Spectator.

In his journalism, speeches and in conversation Rory is a fount of counterintuitive, insightful and entertaining arguments that mean he is never knowingly dull.

I met him earlier this week at Ogilvy’s London offices, where we discussed, among many other things, the relationship between innovation and marketing, why McDonalds is a safer bet than the Fat Duck, and what economists get wrong about human nature. I started by asking him what advice he had for those of us keen to persuade more people of the merits of the market.

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There are few political questions as vexed as how to tax hard-pressed motorists. For many years, the Treasury has treated British drivers as a cash cow, levying high taxes while investing relatively little in the road network. 

Now, however, things are changing rapidly. The take-up of electric vehicles and the upcoming ban on new petrol and diesel cars presents a big fiscal headache for the Government. How will they replace all that fuel duty revenue in a world where far fewer people are driving gas-guzzling vehicles? 

Thankfully, we at the Centre for Policy Studies have the answer, as this week's guest - our Energy and Environment Researcher, Dillon Smith - sets out in a new report this week.

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This week's guest on Free Exchange is the co-author of one of the most consequential books written in recent years. Cass Sunstein is a professor at Harvard Law School and one of America's most prolific and prominent academics. Nudge, which he wrote with the economist Richard Thaler just over a decade ago, applied the insights of behavioural economics to policymaking. Its publication was the start of a quiet revolution in government, with the creation of so-called 'nudge units' that have found ways of boosting pension saving, reducing energy consumption and catching cancer earlier with small changes that make it as easy as possible for people to make the right choices.

I spoke to Cass about nudges, his time putting theory into practice in the Obama administration, and his new book, On Freedom, in which he argues that we need to rethink freedom of choice.

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This week's guest on Free Exchange, the CapX podcast, is Sir Paul Collier, Professor of Economics at the Blavatnik School of Government at the University of Oxford.

As a development economist, Paul has spent his life tackling some of the thorniest and most important questions around: what is holding the world’s poorest back? And what can be done to give them a route out of that poverty? His bestselling book The Bottom Billion, published a decade ago, quickly became a must-read for anyone remotely interested in the area.

More recently, however, Paul's focus has changed. His latest book, The Future of Capitalism, deals with what he thinks has gone wrong not in a failed African state, but here in the West. And he thinks our political and economic system isn’t living up to the promises we make about it. 

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