John Ashmore
CapX
Ireland
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Past articles by John:
The CapX Podcast: Gavin Jackson on how money makes the world go round
This week we’re talking about moola, lolly, dough or dosh – the thing that makes the world go round…Money. Get more from CapX Follow us on Twitter Join us on Facebook Sign up to our email bulletins Subscribe to The CapX Podcast In his recent book Money in One Lesson the economic journalist Gavin Jackson […] → Read More
The CapX Podcast: Alex Massie on the Sturgeon succession
Nicola Sturgeon’s resignation on Wednesday morning was a slightly puzzling political event – ‘shocking’, in the sense that it heralds the departure of a politician who has occupied the highest perch in Scottish politics for so long, but also not all that surprising, given both the First Minister’s recent political travails and the fact she […] → Read More
There's no 'scandal' in Labour's GPC Files, just a crude political hatchet job
You might not have heard of Government Procurement Cards (GPCs) but they’re all the rage today. Labour’s newly published ‘GPC Files’ – which sounds very much like a weird Twitter conspiracy theory – purport to reveal a ‘scandalous catalogue of waste’, redolent of ‘the last days of Rome’. According to Angela Rayner, Tory ministers have […] → Read More
The CapX Podcast: Sam Richards on remaking Britain
Britain isn’t working well for many of us right now. The cost of energy, housing, and food are too high, while decent jobs with real prospects are hard to come by. Those aren’t my words, but the clarion call of a new campaign group that aims to get Britain building again – Britain Remade starts from the […] → Read More
The CapX Podcast: Why is tax so taxing?
Few political questions are as basic, or as pressing, as how a government raises the money it spends – and the last year in British politics has provided ample examples of the political pitfalls of tax reform. In principle a good tax system should be a winning combination of fairness, efficiency, smooth revenue raising and […] → Read More
The CapX Podcast: Christopher Snowdon on why Nanny doesn't know best
From sin taxes to plain packaging, smoking bans to warnings about the perils of office cake, the reach of Britain’s nanny state has never felt more pervasive or pedantic. Just this week the public health panjandrums came up with a new wheeze – proposing reducing the calorie content of certain naughty foods by 10% in […] → Read More
John Longworth on how to make Brexit work for Britain
This week’s podcast guest. John Longworth, is a real titan of UK PLC. As a scientist, business, entrepreneur and advocate for the interests of British business, there aren’t many who have John’s breadth or depth of experience – something he’s bringing to bear now as chairman of the Independent Business Network, which represents our often […] → Read More
The CapX Podcast: Samuel Hughes on solving the housing puzzle
. CapX regulars know all too well the parlous state of British housing. We don’t build enough, what we do build is often shoddy and angrily opposed by local people, and both rents and mortgages are increasingly out of the reach of even those on middling income. There is no single silver bullet, no snapping […] → Read More
Does it matter whether or not Rishi Sunak uses an NHS GP?
Does Rishi Sunak use a private GP? I suspect many will share my instinctive eye-rolling at the genre of question posed by the BBC’s Laura Kuennsberg yesterday. Yes, we all love Our NHS and all that, but why shouldn’t the Prime Minister of one of the world’s wealthiest countries avail himself of private healthcare if […] → Read More
CapX authors choose their Books of 2022
If ever a year needed some literary distractions, it was 2022. Our contributors have served up a feast of recommendations, from dense histories and serious political analyses to more whimsical offerings, there’s something for everyone in CapX’s Books of 2022.Robert Colvile Since he agreed to fly over for our annual conference, it seems rude not […] → Read More
The CapX Podcast: Educating England
Wherever you look workers are going on strike and our schools are no exception – even though Jeremy Hunt managed to find an extra few billion behind the Treasury couch for education at his recent Autumn Statement. So what’s going on here, why are union leaders still balloting, and what’s the state of English schools […] → Read More
The CapX Podcast: Census sensibilities
What kind of country is Britain today? That might be a rather broad question, but thanks to the recently published census, we can have a stab at answering it – at least for England and Wales. For this week’s topical podcast we kick off with deep dive into those findings, what they say about Britain’s […] → Read More
Tyler Cowen on talent, economic optimism – and where to find a decent curry
Our guest this week is one of a kind.. A truly polymathic personality, there’s not much Tyler Cowen doesn’t have a well informed view on, from the merits of Bradford curry houses to the future of cryptocurrencies and the fate of Trussonomics. That breadth of interest is evident from his prolific writing on his Marginal […] → Read More
The CapX Podcast: Oliver Wiseman on America's 'red ripple'
We’re turning our gaze Stateside this week where the mid-term Congressional elections promised a red wave and delivered, well, something more like a ripple. It was a pretty bad night for Donald Trump, a pretty good one for Joe Biden and a fascinating tee-up for the presidential race in a couple of years’ time. To […] → Read More
The CapX Podcast: Ian Acheson on police, prisons and protecting the border
Law and order has shot up the political agenda in the last year or so, with the chaos in the Channel, damning reports into the culture of the Met Police and chaos in the prison system. Just this week we’ve seen the firebombing of a migrant centre in Dover and uproar over the treatment of […] → Read More
The CapX Podcast: Iuliia Mendel on working for Zelensky and Ukraine's fight for survival
Volodymyr Zelensky became a a global icon almost overnight following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February of this year. The force of his leadership and defiance in the face of overwhelming Russian force offered hope in his country’s darkest hour. For our guest this week, Zelensky’s heroic defiance came as no great surprise. Iuliia […] → Read More
If we're looking for bad policies to ditch, the triple-lock should be on the block
One of the few things Liz Truss didn’t u-turn on in the dying days of her premiership was the triple-lock for the state pension. That’s a pity, as it’s one of the measures we could most do with jettisoning. Before my inbox fills with missives from outraged senior citizens, I’m not saying that the elderly […] → Read More
The CapX Podcast: Bonds, Bailey and Bonking for Britain
We aren’t in the habit of quoting Lenin on CapX, but his observation that there are ‘decades when nothing happens and weeks when decades happen’ has felt pretty apposite recently. So there’s plenty to discuss in our latest topical podcast: from chaos in the gilt markets to the Government’s growing list of u-turns. We also […] → Read More
The CapX Podcast: Richard Reeves on why modern men are struggling
When we think of the fight for gender equality, more often than not it’s framed in terms of the unequal, often violent, treatment suffered by women and girls. In many, many places, that is very much still the case – but in the West the ‘battle of the sexes’ is not as clear cut as it […] → Read More
The CapX Podcast: Julian Jessop on a tough week for 'Trussonomics'
There’s no doubt it’s been tough week for proponents of so-called ‘Trussonomics’, with the Government’s Growth Plan taking pelters from all sides and the Bank of England stepping in to calm down the gilt markets. But does that mean the game is up for supply-side reformers? Our guest this week, Julian Jessop, has been in […] → Read More