Alys Denby
CapX
United Kingdom
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Past articles by Alys:
Gareth Southgate is a metaphor for the state of the nation – but not the one you think
Few aspects of British culture are more smug and sanctimonious than the theatre, so it’s no surprise that Gareth Southgate is the latest subject to be brought to the stage. The National Theatre has announced that Joseph Fiennes will star as the football manager in Dear England, a new play by the This House and […] → Read More
No, singing cartoon babies are not a danger to society
Kids have terrible taste, and nowhere is this more evident than in their affection for CoComelon. For those fortunate enough to have avoided this cultural phenomenon, it’s a YouTube Channel where bug-eyed, candy-coloured creatures regurgitate irritating nursery rhymes. The crudeness of the animation and the piercing repetitiveness of the vocals have made it a huge […] → Read More
Has Jacinda Ardern let women down?
As a woman and a professional opinion-haver, I ought to have a strong view on Jacinda Ardern, who has resigned as Prime Minister of New Zealand declaring she no longer has ‘enough in the tank’. Other top women have weighed in, with Angela Rayner describing her as ‘inspirational’ while Edwina Currie told Times Radio ‘it […] → Read More
Three Prime Ministers and a funeral – CapX's Year in Review
As dawn broke on January 1, 2022 the nation could have been forgiven for looking to the year ahead with cautious optimism. The success of the vaccine booster scheme combined with the milder Omicron variant had turned Covid from a terrifying killer into little more than a sniffle for many. With the pandemic fading into […] → Read More
The CapX Podcast: Baroness Dambisa Moyo on the global growth challenge
. . Baroness Dambisa Moyo is a seriously impressive woman. She’s worked at the World Bank and Goldman Sachs analysing global economic trends, and sat on the boards of numerous FTSE100 companies including Barclays and Chevron. She’s also the author of five books including best-sellers Dead Aid – a critique of development policy in Africa […] → Read More
It'll take more than a tax break to get Brits making babies
‘Bonk for Britain’ was an eye-catching headline in this week’s Sun on Sunday, and no it wasn’t about yet another Westminster sex scandal. An unnamed Cabinet minister has told the paper that women should get tax cuts for having children. I’m sceptical about this. When my husband and I were trying for a baby, thoughts […] → Read More
The 45p tax rate is economically irrelevant – but politically essential
The mini-budget hasn’t broken the economy, but it might just have broken the Conservative Party. On Sunday, Party Chairman Jake Berry was in bullish mood, promising that MPs who voted against scrapping the 45p tax rate would see the whip withdrawn. On Monday, the policy was abandoned. This isn’t the fastest policy reversal in recent […] → Read More
The CapX Podcast: Exam questions with Dr David James
It’s results season, so as well as an opportunity to offer congratulations or commiserations to all our many teenage listeners getting their GCSEs and A Levels this week, it’s a chance to talk about education policy. This is the first year since the pandemic that anyone has sat public examinations, which means an inevitable readjustment […] → Read More
Weekly briefing: How Boris strayed from the herd
If his downfall played out like a Shakespearean tragedy, then Boris Johnson’s rhetoric didn’t exactly match up. In an ungracious resignation speech, he blamed the ‘herd mentality’ of his parliamentary colleagues, and made the shrugging claim that ‘them’s the breaks’. But the manner of his departure also helps to explain why it happened. Johnson has […] → Read More
The CapX Podcast: Boris got done
Just last week Boris Johnson was bestriding the world stage, joking about showing his pecs to Putin at the G7 and Nato summit. Today he is Prime Minister in name only, having reluctantly agreed to leave office after more than 50 of his ministers resigned. It’s an ignominious ending to a dramatic premiership, In just […] → Read More
There's no such thing as a 'right' to an abortion
I’m sorry, I know it’s a betrayal of my sex, but there’s really only one word to describe aspects of the British response to the repeal of Roe v Wade: hysterical. Look, I get it. America is the shining city on a hill. Never mind its moral leadership in recent decades has been questionable, nor […] → Read More
Judgement day for Boris?
Anything that’s had this much hype was bound to be disappointing. For months, ministers have been telling us that we must await the Sue Gray report like it was the opening of the seventh seal. In the end it was less Revelation than a bunch of stuff we already knew. Yes, there’s more detail about […] → Read More
Angela Rayner and the state of the Oxford Union
Politics is never a walk in the park, least of all for Labour’s Deputy Leader, Angela Rayner, who came under attack over the weekend simply for having legs. I don’t wish to dignify the pervy claims by anonymous Tory sources, reported in the Mail on Sunday, that Rayner ‘likes to put Mr Johnson ‘off his […] → Read More
201 babies have died – the NHS should be ashamed of itself
Numbers are no way to express a human tragedy, but those in the Ockenden Report into maternity services at Shrewsbury and Telford Hospital NHS Trust are nonetheless devastating. The inquiry examined 1,592 incidents since 2000. It found that poor care led to the deaths of 201 babies and nine mothers; 94 babies suffered avoidable brain […] → Read More
Failed EU policies have harmed the environment – it's time to take back control of nature
Britain is no longer such a green and pleasant land. Almost half of our species are in long term decline and 1 in 6 are threatened by extinction. The government has committed in law to halt the decline of nature by 2030. But achieving this will require bold reforms to how we manage our land and […] → Read More
Djoke's aside – anti-vaxxers aren't the biggest problem in the pandemic
It will come as a no surprise to students of Novak Djokovic’s career that he ‘has always supported the freedom to choose what you put in your body’. Here, after all, is a man who eschews gluten but is happy to eat the grass at Wimbledon. But it’s not the tennis player’s unusual diet that’s […] → Read More
Gill stands – but attacks on statues make us smaller, meaner and uglier
BBC bashing is something of a national pastime (just ask Nadine Dorries), but it found new expression last week when a protester scaled Broadcasting House to knock chunks off a statue with a hammer. The perpetrator apparently objected to the depiction of Shakespeare’s Prospero and Ariel because the artist who created it, Eric Gill, was […] → Read More
Why wearing your clothes twice won't save the planet
What does a red blazer have to do with climate change? When Carrie Johnson met other G20 leaders’ wives in Rome wearing a jacket that she’d previously sported at the Conservative Party Conference, it was interpreted in some quarters a sign of her ‘eco-credientials’. Cue Twitter wags claiming they must be Greta Thunberg because they […] → Read More
Pregnant women are the forgotten victims of the pandemic
Picture a world in which Covid killed children and pregnant women. Questions about schools, social distancing and personal responsibility would be framed completely differently, and the cost/benefit calculations radically altered. It’s difficult to imagine a slogan as drily institutional as ‘protect the NHS’ if thousands of babies were dying. We’re now getting a harrowing glimpse […] → Read More
'Free' childcare is making everyone poorer
Petitions are one of the bluntest instruments in politics. Two of the biggest petitions ever to appear on the UK Parliament website called for Britain to stay in the EU and Donald Trump to be banned from a State visit to the UK – both were demonstrable failures. Likewise unweighted surveys are a good way […] → Read More