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 board, joined CapX editor Marc Sidwell in the immediate aftermath of Farage's dramatic announcement. He argues the campaign against his former boss is misreading both the man and the country.

Towler admits the drip, drip, drip of negative stories – the donations controversy, the billionaire friends, the standards investigation – are damaging, and that Farage was at best unwise to leave his flank exposed to attack.

He sees the bad press as an artillery barrage from the establishment: wear down morale, make ordinary Reform-minded voters reluctant to associate with a movement under constant fire and hope Farage decides the fight isn't worth it. Farage, instead, has decided to fight. Will voters be admired or appalled?

What the establishment may be missing, Towler says, is the English sense of fair play. People cannot abide the appearance of the entire machine turning on one man – and the more that narrative takes hold, the more it risks generating sympathy rather than aversion.

But the central question that will define the next phase of British politics is this: can a movement built around one figure survive – or strengthen – if that figure's relatable, clubbable image is damaged by his ties to the wealthy and doubts about whether he's willing to play by the rules?

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 of logistics: cancelled trains, no privacy for the journey and a Prime Minister who might need his own ‘GBR Force One’ just to get to work. Our PM-in-waiting needs to focus less on gimmicks and more on the hard job of actually reforming who government hires and how.

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

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 The Capitalist, he sits down to discuss his new book, ‘Can We Be Rich Again?’

Hunt advocates a radical programme for growth, and has a warning for Andy Burnham – reform welfare on day one, or see your administration fail like Keir Starmer’s.

For Hunt, scrapping the pension triple lock is now an economic and moral necessity. And he says we’ve got devolution completely wrong; if that’s Burnham’s big idea, he needs to fix it, fast.

He also discusses why our hidden strengths mean Britain is still on course to become the world’s fifth-biggest economy, and why its best days can still lie ahead.

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 5% of their wages could afford a deposit in three years. Today it would take 24.

How did the Conservative commitment to encouraging aspiration slip away – and what would it take to restore it?

Mario Creatura, a former special adviser to Theresa May in Downing Street, joins CapX editor Marc Sidwell to discuss 'A Blue Hope', Mario's new report for the Centre for Policy Studies. He explains what pushed ambition and opportunity off the Conservative agenda – and how to bring them back.

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 to the EU, Lord Elliott joins The Capitalist to look back at how Brexit was really won, and to make the case for why the battle isn’t over yet. He draws on his new book, ‘Ten Years On: The Untold Story of Brexit’, to reveal what really happened inside the campaign – and why he believes the argument for British independence remains as urgent as ever.

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 argues that the Government is running out of options quicker than many believe. Rachel Reeves can continue hoping for growth, or raise taxes or spend less. She and her colleagues aren't doing much more than talk about the first, they're running out of room on the second, and they will not discuss the third. That, Pudner concludes, is how you end up with the IMF knocking on the door.

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/subscribe

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 privacy advocates, civil liberties groups and free speech lawyers who warn it amounts to building a mass surveillance infrastructure under the pretext of safety. The messaging app Signal has already said it will not comply – will others follow? CapX Editor Marc Sidwell speaks with Preston Byrne, free speech lawyer and counsel to some of the internet's most controversial platforms, about what this proposal actually represents beneath the child-safety framing – and what it could mean for Britain’s tech sector.

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 are still wired for that world, and the very different rules of the market economy trigger unjustified suspicion.

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/subscribe

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 rules-based global trade that dominated the late twentieth century. Their new book, 'How to Win a Trade War', provides a tour through the toolkit of the trade warrior.

They join Marc Sidwell to discuss the new world of economic conflict, why tariffs are like a party drug – and how trade wars can still spiral out of control.

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 on CapX, he explores the blurry line between public service delivery and state-sponsored lobbying, what greater transparency and accountability could look like, and why getting this right matters for trust in British public life.

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/subscribe