The remarkable decline of British nuclear capability

James Price has a useful if depressing CAPX piece on the need to regenerate British nuclear capability. 


Britain needs to ignore the Blob and go nuclear

• A groundbreaking American nuclear project puts the UK to shame
• Nuclear power should be a British success story, but it isn't
• Time and again, Nimbyism and bureaucracy have got in the way of affordable energy

Three C-17 Globemasters. Eight shipping containers. The first nuclear reactor in history to be moved by air. While it feels like the opening of one of those special-forces slop series on Amazon that I count as one of my guiltiest pleasures, this is the very real Operation Windlord.

The operation, conducted by the US Air Force in February to ferry a five-megawatt unit from California to a desert lab in Utah, is now in its next phase: engineers are racing to switch it on by July 4, the 250th anniversary of American independence. The reactor was built by Valar Atomics, a three-year-old startup that, like Operation Windlord, takes its name from Lord of the Rings.

There was a time when this story would have been Britain’s. When Queen Elizabeth opened Calder Hall in 1956, we became the first nation on earth to feed grid-scale civil nuclear power into a domestic electricity supply. By 1965, the year of Winston Churchill’s funeral, Britain had built more operational reactors than the United States, the Soviet Union and France combined. We commissioned 26 of them between 1956 and 1971, with sites approved in months and reactors connected to the grid in under five years.

Then, thanks to the usual morass of blob mentality and Nimbyism, we stopped. We have not built a single new commercial reactor since Sizewell B in 1995. The one we are currently building, Hinkley Point C, is on track to be the most expensive nuclear station in human history: roughly six times what South Korea spends per megawatt for the same job. There is a fascinating essay explaining this in Works in Progress that reads more like tragedy than history.

The whole piece is well worth reading as a reminder of how hopelessly adrift we are in the UK. There are moves towards nuclear, but nothing very encouraging. 

The link to Works in Progress is worth following too - it's a complex story.

Beneath the façade

David Shipley has a useful Critic piece on organised crime operating from dodgy small businesses on the high street. Useful because it is yet another of those familiar issues the Establishment has chosen to ignore for years. Apparently even the BBC has condescended to notice now though. 

 

The underworld on the high street

Beneath the façade of everyday commerce, organised crime has quietly captured British high streets

Something may be stirring in Britain. After decades in which our institutions turned a blind eye to the reality of mass migration and multiculturalism, it seems reality is dawning on them.

Earlier this month the BBC ran a series of exposes titled “The Immigration Fraudsters”, reporting on what they called a “shadow industry of law firms and advisers” helping people to cheat the asylum system (although Suella Braveman raised the issue three years ago). Now the Chartered Trading Standards Institute (CTSI) has published a detailed report which reveals the extent to which whole sectors of the economy have become dominated by organised crime. This has also been an open secret for many years — as far back as 2001, the UK’s “Drugs Czar” described how money laundering was taking place in London, often via “legitimate businesses” operated by Turks and Eastern Europeans. Indeed only last May Robert Jenrick made a video in which he spoke about “weird Turkish barber shops”.

Familiar but the whole piece is worth reading if even politicians are required to notice. This is the hot-spot map produced in the Chartered Trading Standards Institute report. No surprises there either.

 

Britain is poorer than people think

Matthew Lesh has a useful CAPX piece on an old British problem, the sluggish nature of economic growth. Worth reading, although voting for political charlatans and loons who don't believe in economic growth is also an old British problem. They don't believe in education either. 


Britain is poorer than people think

• New polling shows that growth still matters to the British public
• Britons know something has gone badly wrong – they just need to see how far we’ve fallen
• The public want prosperity, not excuses

Not too long ago Keir Starmer was banging on about how growth is his ‘number one mission’. Now, with the economy once again faltering – real GDP grew by an anaemic 0.1% in the last quarter of 2025, following an equally disappointing 0.1% in the previous quarter – we are hearing a bit less on this topic.

But have no doubt: the British public still dreams of a more prosperous society.

An expansive new public opinion research project, published by the Institute of Economic Affairs and undertaken by Freshwater Strategy, highlights that despite widespread pessimism, few have given up. When asked whether the UK should focus more on growth, an overwhelming 87% agree, compared to just 9% who say the country is already wealthy enough. This view cuts across the usual political divides, with strong support across genders, age groups, educational levels and regions. We may have a more divided politics than at any time in modern history, but there’s at least one thing pretty much everyone agrees on: growth.

Mark needs a smarter plan

Canadian prime minister Mark Carney may have a plan but past performance tells us it won't be smart enough.

Correcting the blunt language shortage

Opposition leader says personal income tax in Spain can drop if government would steal less

Alberto Núñez Feijóo, leader of Spain’s main opposition People’s Party (PP), has promised to cut personal income tax from the first year of a future PP government.

He and staked his political future on the pledge, declaring he would resign as prime minister if Spaniards end up paying as much tax as they do under the current Socialist administration...

In unusually blunt language, Feijóo told the audience that there is “margin” to reduce taxes and improve services “if superfluous spending is eliminated and nobody steals within the government”.

If governments rake in significantly more money than it costs to run the machinery of government then what do we call it? 

If the welfare state becomes so bloated and unaffordable that heavy taxes drive people and businesses away, then we need blunt language to describe what is going on. If politicians don't even know where all the money goes, then we also need blunt language to describe the consequent lack of democratic accountability.

Blunt language is not abuse, but serious problems with the machinery of government have to be described in terms harsh and accurate enough to make political points worth making.

Your money is our money

From Blackout News, AI translation from the original German.    

Government takes control of the Federal Court of Audit

In Berlin, the CDU/CSU and SPD are taking control of the Federal Court of Auditors, damaging the very authority that is supposed to independently audit the government's handling of taxpayers' money. After the departure of the previous president Kay Scheller after twelve years, the CDU member of the Bundestag Ansgar Heveling is to become the new president, while the SPD has already filled the vice post with the former Minister of Construction Klara Geywitz. The process hits the core of state financial supervision, because it means that both top offices go to politicians of the governing parties. Heveling's personality is particularly explosive, as he is considered a close confidant of Chancellor Friedrich Merz and still comes from active parliamentary business. The consequence is serious: one of the last effective control bodies of the federal government visibly loses distance from the very power it is supposed to monitor

Control of billions in party hands in the future

The Federal Court of Audit is not a subsidiary authority. It examines whether ministries are wasting money, projects failing or concealing risks. This is precisely why this institution needs political distance. If the government fills the top with its own people, it damages the independence of control.

Cheap as Ships

Royal Navy in talks to sell Batch I offshore patrol vessels to Uruguay

Local media reports the UK has offered to sell the three River-class Batch I OPVs, HMS Tyne, HMS Mersey and HMS Severn to the Uruguayan Navy when they go out of service in 2028.

In October 2025, the Uruguayan government announced that it would terminate a contract with Spanish shipyard Cardama, signed in December 2023, for two 1,500-tonne OPVs that were due to be delivered in 2028. The reasons given for the cancellation were “contractual irregularities” and possible fraud.

The acquisition of second-hand OPVs by Uruguay is seen as a short-term solution to the gap left while plans are developed to acquire new-build vessels in the longer term. The River-class would meet the Uruguayan Navy’s requirements for ocean-going vessels. Each ship would reportedly be sold for around $20M (£15M), compared with around $60M for a brand-new OPV. The Uruguayans will need to see more detailed technical documentation and consider support arrangements before advancing negotiations...

All three Batch I OPVs have now completed a life extension refit designed to see them serve for another five years and have been well-maintained throughout their lives. Inevitably, there is no plan to replace them in 2028 as there is no budget. Some of the Batch II OPVs, mostly forward-deployed overseas, will have to be brought back home to take over their roles while Type 31 frigates eventually replace them. The vague official line is now that the first Type 31 frigate, HMS Venturer, will not enter service “until the end of the decade”, so another gap is looming. Building a new batch of low-cost OPVs would be a sensible solution, or at least extending the Batch I in service rather than selling them overseas.

A creeping reduction of industrial substance

From Blackout News, AI translation from the original German. Relative industrial decline is an issue we in the UK have been familiar with for decades and the issue sets lots of hares running. For example, if industrial production does go elsewhere and AI takes on a range of other functions, what is the point of mass immigration? 

Or to take another topical example, it is glaringly obvious that Net Zero does not favour industrial production and is likely to drive it to less ideologically hamstrung countries. 

Automotive industry is increasingly relocating vehicle production abroad

In Germany and other major car countries in Western Europe, vehicle production has been collapsing noticeably for years. Manufacturers are increasingly relocating their production to Eastern Europe. Last year, unit sales in Germany, Spain, Italy and the UK together were more than a quarter below the level of 2019. In Germany, the minus was 16 percent, in Italy and Great Britain even more than 40 percent each. The main reasons for this are high costs, overcapacities at the plants and fiercer international competition. At the same time, pressure is growing due to weak profits, problems in China and the USA and expensive electric cars with low margins. The main consequences are therefore falling production, endangered locations, job losses and a creeping reduction of industrial substance.

The decline often remains a marginal topic in the public, but it affects a core area of German industry. Manufacturers are building fewer vehicles and at the same time relocating parts of production to countries with lower costs. Industry expert Stefan Bratzel said: "Nobody is talking about it loudly, but we have a creeping relocation of production and jobs abroad." In doing so, he describes not only a trend, but a deep structural change.

The Lanyard Made Flesh

Marcus Walker has a delightfully pungent Critic piece on government by the lanyard class.


The malignant mediocrity of managerialism

A country ruled by lawyers and HR managers will be culturally dessicated and politically sclerotic

It is one of history’s ironies that the House of Commons voted to slash trials by jury on the same day as the House of Lords voted finally to expel the last remaining hereditary peers from Parliament.

It was the hereditary barons of England who forced King John to agree that “No Freeman shall be taken or imprisoned, or be disseised of his Freehold, or Liberties, or free Customs, or be outlawed, or exiled, or any other wise destroyed; nor will We not pass upon him, nor condemn him, but by lawful judgment of his Peers…” The barons have gone, and so have our ancient liberties, and both on the same day. Only the bishops still sit in that ancient council, heirs of Stephen Langton, the Archbishop of Canterbury who led the barons against the king in 1215. They are unlikely to be removed right now because no Labour leader with any sense would remove 26 cast-iron supporters from the upper house.

There is something more than historical timing that links these two decisions. They both reflect the belief that the only people trusted to make decisions are those who have been properly credentialled and have been authorised by people like us. If you want to know who the “us” is, look at who dominates the Labour Party, the Civil Service, the National Trust, the Church of England, and every other institution of note. A world run for and by a managerial legalistic caste, in which it is impossible to rise, or even survive, if you do not submit to their marks of authority, mediated by speaking the right language, submitting to the right training, earning the right credentials. Deep mediocrity calls to deep mediocrity, and proof of it only comes with a certificate.


The whole piece is well worth reading for the entertaining way it scythes through the desperate mediocrity of our governing classes.


This whole reform is a consequence of having Keir Starmer — the Lanyard Made Flesh — sitting in Number 10. Of course the man who once headed the Crown Prosecution Service believes only lawyers should be involved in judging crime; of course he doesn’t trust any old widow, tramp, salesman, student, business woman, or golf club gardener to try a person for their liberty. How could he? He has been trained and has the certificates for it, they have not. Law is something done to people not by people.

An act of historic cowardice

Joseph Dinnage has an interesting CAPX piece on the wildlife on banknotes issue. Worth reading, although I'd call it another shift towards infantilisation as well as an act of historic cowardice. A two for one offer we might say.

Churchill vs hedgehogs

• Replacing Winston Churchill with hedgehogs on our banknotes is an act of historic cowardice
• The last thing we should be doing is subordinating our history to the politics of progressive interest groups
• If we do not champion our history, it gets forgotten

In Britain, we have grown up with not only the monarch on our currency, but also with the faces of some of our greatest countrymen and women. Jane Austen, Alan Turing, Winston Churchill, JMW Turner, Adam Smith, Charles Darwin and William Shakespeare: over the years, all these figures and more have appeared on our banknotes, serving as a regular reminder of the world-leading talent Britain is capable of producing.

Yet as the 21st century demonstrates to us with violent regularity, all beauty must die in the name of ‘progress’, and our banknotes will soon bear images of our native fauna, rather than the human beings who actually made this country great.

Deeply humiliating

Tertius Bonnin has a topical CAPX on Sanae Takaichi, Japan’s first female Prime Minister. Essentially a story of leadership and that rare ability to blend leadership with tough-minded political honesty.


What Britain can learn from Japanese Thatcherism

• The parallels between Japan and Britain are striking – and for Westminster, deeply humiliating
• Sanae Takaichi has proved that the public doesn’t want consensus if it means standing still
• Japan’s Prime Minister is creating a new generation of popular capitalists

In the pre-dawn stillness of Tokyo’s Nagatacho district, the lights on the fifth floor of the Kantei remain stubbornly ablaze. Inside, Japan’s first female Prime Minister is likely to be on her fourth cup of tea and her eighteenth hour of work. Sanae Takaichi does not believe in Japan’s legendary ‘lost decades’ (roughly 1991-2021) of stagnation, only in the ‘work, work, work’ philosophy that has become her trademark, and now, her country’s new mandate.

For Takaichi’s Liberal Democratic Party (LDP), the last few years have been a slow-motion descent into the political abyss. Bogged down by archaic slush-fund scandals and a public weary of institutional inertia, the party’s brand has rarely been more toxic. And yet, Takaichi has found a way to capitalise on her party’s decline as her personal popularity has soared.


Well worth reading as a reminder of something we in the UK don't have and are apparently unwilling to vote for. The contrast with Keir Starmer's government could hardly be more humiliating.


The parallels between Japan and Britain are striking – and for Westminster, deeply humiliating. Both are island nations grappling with the weight of past glories, ageing demographics, high levels of national debt and a productivity puzzle that has defied a decade of technocratic tinkering. However, while Britain remains trapped in a cycle of managed decline, Takaichi’s Japan appears to have found an offramp.

Beyond the Sleaze II

A sobering Blackout News piece on signs that Germany is gradually losing its automotive industry, much of it through self-inflicted official incompetence. Sounds familiar and reminds me of the sharp increase in the number of Chinese cars I've seen on local roads in the last year or so.

AI translation from the original German.

Germany is losing the automotive industry – if production migrates, it will not come back

The decline of the German automotive industry does not come with sirens, but with briefcases. The findings are brutal: the automotive industry is losing its substance – and much faster than many believe. This is reflected in plant closures, insolvencies and cancelled development budgets. There is a point at which all whitewashing ends: once production has migrated, it usually does not come back. This is because tools, supply chains and routines disappear with production, while new locations build up know-how at the same time. To do this, the suppliers follow the manufacturers to the locations abroad.

For the automotive industry, energy costs, taxes and approval times are crucial. This shapes the cost structures at the respective location. Germany combines high energy prices with a high tax burden, while permits eat up time. At the same time, the infrastructure is crumbling in many places and this is driving additional costs into every calculation. As a result, even strong brands are losing pace and speed, even though demand continues to exist globally.

The Comfortable Road to Ruin

Paul Lindwall has a very interesting Quadrant piece on an Australian problem we also see here in the UK - the rise of comfortable generations, insufficiently tested by adversity.


The Comfortable Road to Ruin

Freya Leach’s article in the December Quadrant, “How Conservatives Can Win the Youth Vote”, argues that young Australians “may be the first generation in our nation’s history to be worse off than their parents”. It is a striking claim, and one that resonates deeply in an era of surging housing costs, stagnant productivity and pervasive anxiety about the future. Leach identifies genuine problems: delayed family formation, insecure work, declining educational standards and a fracturing tax-transfer system. These pressures are real and deserve serious attention.

But the conclusion drawn from them, that today’s young are materially worse off than earlier generations, is far less secure. It rests on a narrow reading of relative income and asset distribution while ignoring the extraordinary expansion of absolute living standards that now defines Australian life. The deeper danger facing young Australians is not material impoverishment, but something more insidious: the erosion of agency and resilience born of unprecedented comfort.

We are not producing a generation deprived of opportunity. We are producing a generation untested by it. And that is the true comfortable road to ruin.


It's a deep and subtle problem of human behaviour, not unfamiliar, but the whole piece is well worth reading as an issue which isn't raised often enough. It's a problem of what we are, a problem the usual political nostrums can't touch.


If the intergenerational contract is to be restored, it will require more than tax adjustments or housing supply reforms, though both are essential. It will require a cultural recovery of responsibility, resilience and the dignity of difficulty.

We must pass on not only wealth, but wisdom. And wisdom begins with expecting something of the young.

Australia still has time. Rome lingered for centuries after its virtues had decayed. The question is whether we choose renewal now, or whether we continue comfortably, complacently and confidently down the road to ruin.

Don’t like Keir Starmer? Just see what comes next

Joseph Dinnage has a nicely depressing CAPX piece on the D-Team queuing up to take Keir Starmer's place. The title says it all, but the whole piece is well worth reading as a powerful antidote to cheerfulness.


Don’t like Keir Starmer? Just see what comes next

• After years of socialism under Miliband or Rayner, Britons will be screaming for fiscal conservatism
• If the Prime Minister resigns, who will win the race for economic credibility?
• As the public reckon with yet more spending and taxation, the more attuned they'll be to economic reality

Keir Starmer’s hands were shaking as he stood at the despatch box at this week’s PMQs, and who can blame him? Starmer knows the scandal over his appointment of Peter Mandelson as Ambassador to the United States could be his last as Prime Minister...

So when Starmer’s time comes, who might succeed him, and what could this mean for those of us forced to suffer their reign?

The bookies have Angela Rayner, Wes Streeting and Ed Miliband as the most likely to take over.

Oh well - Mrs H and I are off out for a coffee. Possibly a cake too as these are wild times.

Who will win the race for economic credibility? One thing is certain: if Starmer resigns over his former ambassador’s questionable ties, the chances are that whomever takes over will be even worse. And as the public reckon with the misery of a socialist economy, the more attuned they’ll become to the realities of regulatory creep, high taxation and unaffordable public spending. Any party with the guts to stand for the opposite will be on to a winner.

Serious economic challenges

China's population declines for a fourth straight year amid record low birthrates

China's population has shrunk for the fourth straight year as birthrates hit a record low, national data shows.

Xiujian Peng, senior research fellow at the Centre of Policy Studies at Victoria University, said adjusting work expectations could help couples balance family life and have the energy to have more children.

She said allowing both men and women to work from home, and guaranteeing a woman's job after giving birth would help.

"Ensuring job security and preventing workplace discrimination against women who give birth can reduce the career costs of motherhood and encourage higher fertility," Dr Peng said.

However, she said these policies would not be enough to reverse the decline.

"These policies may stop the further decline of births or slightly increase the births number, but they can not change China's population decline trend," she said.

"Even if China's government could reverse the fertility decline immediately and increase its total fertility rate to a replacement level of 2.1, it will still take around 70 years for China's population to increase again.

"But many countries' experience in east Asia and Europe has told us there is no quick fix for a low fertility rate, so we will see China's total population will continue to decline in this century."

She added that in the long term, the population decline could lead to serious economic challenges for China.

And invading Taiwan won't make the slightest difference. Immigration isn't a solution either.

Modern Britain In Four Headlines

Labour civil war erupts as MP breaks ranks calling for Keir Starmer to be replaced

Blackburn MP quits Jeremy Corbyn's new party due to 'infighting'

BBC must get its house in order, Starmer to tell Trump

Peter Mandelson spotted peeing in public as he's stripped of honour

A Game of Rackets

Up to now, America has not been a good milieu for the rise of a mass movement. What starts out here as a mass movement ends up as a racket, a cult, or a corporation.

Eric Hoffer - The Temper of Our Time (1967)


Suppose we extend Hoffer’s observation to a claim that UK political parties have evolved a mix of cults and rackets. Not so much as a permanent viewpoint, but to outline a worst case scenario where UK political parties eventually lose whatever genuine connection to democratic accountability they once had.

In which case it could be said for example, that the Green Party is a pseudo-environmental political cult, as the Lib Dems have become, while Labour has always been a cult with a fondness for politically-inspired rackets. Tories struggle to know what they are now the democratic political charade has collapsed, so they seem destined to go under.

More generally, Net Zero is an unmistakable mix of cult and rackets. It has become a monster, so huge that it tends to obscure numerous other progressive cults and petty government rackets from featherbedding to vast and dubious networks of patronage, including cult patronage.

The cult/racket problem seems to be one reason why civilisations fail, too many political cults and rackets eat away at the social fabric which maintains a civilisation as civilised. They erode the importance of social norms and civilised behaviour which need to be widely understood if not always adhered to.

As stated at the beginning, to describe UK political parties as cults and rackets merely highlights a worst case scenario. Unfortunately it is also becoming more useful.

Jaguar Car Evolution

Interesting video. To my eye it suggests that Jaguar car individualism began to fade after 1957. It's a matter of taste, all gone now though.

 

The policy forever scrambling to find a rationale

Tom Jones has an interesting CAPX piece on attempts to build a rationale for mass migration on the back of problems posed by declining birth rates.


Infinite migration will not solve our fertility crisis

• Some policymakers warn that foreign workers will be crucial to offset demographic decline – they're wrong
• Why do we assume that migrants will continue to adopt the fertility patterns of the countries of origin?
• We need productivity improvements, not population increases at all costs

At the annual Jackson Hole symposium in Wyoming this week, central bank leaders from Japan, the Eurozone and the UK warned that their economies need further immigration in order to fuel growth.

According to their warning, ageing populations and declining birth rates threaten long-term economic growth and price stability across advanced economies, and without a significant increase in foreign workers, labour shortages will intensify and inflationary pressures may rise...

When the mass migration project began, policymakers told us it was pure economic rocket fuel. As the huge economics benefits failed to materialise, we began to be told that the benefits were primarily cultural. Now we are told our societies will simply collapse without it. Immigration, as noted Christopher Caldwell, is the policy forever scrambling to find a rationale.


The whole piece is well worth reading, particularly in view of the fertility convergence issue. I recall reading a book about demographics and the impending first world problem of declining birth rates about fifty years ago. Even then, immigration was seen as an ineffective solution because of fertility convergence. It is not new.


The argument that immigration is essential to fix our ageing population works on the assumption that immigrants will not only supplement the working age population, but also increase the fertility rate. But the idea that migrant communities will continue the fertility patterns of their country of origin is not borne out by evidence, which shows that when women find themselves in a different fertility context, they adapt their behaviours accordingly – an effect known as fertility convergence. While the total fertility rate (TFR) of non-UK-born women is higher than UK-born women, that is not the full picture; the fertility of non-UK-born women has been in long-term decline and in 2021 stood at 2.03, below the TFR replacement rate of 2.1. In fact, the TFR rate of non-UK-born women has not reached above 2.1 since 2014.

It's not going well