Locked Out of The Room

Westminster reorders the deck chairs as US and China debate the new global order

May 15, 2026

Conservative Reader Meet Up

We are hosting the first Conservative Reader Meet Up at 6.30pm on the 21st May at The Ship & Shovel Pub in Trafalgar Square, London. If you’d like to come along to meet other Readers, share ideas about future content and discuss the issues of the day, do come along.

Towering Columns

In The Times, Roger Boyes describes China’s strategy to become the new ‘rational’ lynchpin of the global order.

The Trump armoury includes investing in national champions — he is not leaving that to China — and a readiness to use force at home (in the form of anti-immigrant enforcement) and abroad. The sequencing of recent US military operations against the Iranian nuclear programme, then toppling Venezuela’s China-friendly dictator Nicolás Maduro and then bombing Iran’s regime should be seen as a Wagnerian hell-and-damnation prelude to the Beijing visit.
It has not, of course, shocked and awed Xi. Rather, he smells bombast (as well as bomb-blast) masking weakness. On a philosophical level it saps the US case for being the legitimate point-man for liberal democracy and undermines western cohesion. Hence the procession of western leaders visiting Xi, all eager to make nice. At least six of these recent visitors — Britain, France, Canada, Germany, Finland and South Korea — are formal allies of the United States. Xi will have drawn the conclusion, with a degree of smugness, that these leaders are on the search not just for lucrative contracts but for proximity to a restrained and rational player at a time of global madness. They help him make a point about China’s great power status and America’s retreat from responsibility.
The “madman theory”, a term notably coined by Nixon when he let it be known to the North Vietnamese that he would do literally anything to stop the war, keeps on being played though often with a cynical twist. Henry Kissinger worked it out early (“a madman who is holding a grenade in his hand has a very great bargaining advantage”) but Trump has used it too often against North Korea and Iran. The threat of “civilisational erasure” against Tehran, with its playful hint of genocide, is what shook Xi the most. China would see an open threat to its own cherished civilisation as existential.

For Engelsberg Ideas, David Cowan says we can learn from the national policy of 19th Century Canada about how to survive Great Power politics.

Britain and its European allies are in a situation altogether different to Victorian Canada. Yet in many ways the predicament is similar. Britain is navigating a course between two large entities, namely the EU and the United States, while trying to establish itself as an independent power. The decline of European industry has shown how vulnerable the West has become in the new age of great-power competition. There are undoubtedly strengths, such as British and French membership of the UN Security Council and their nuclear deterrents, as well as the broader institutional strength of NATO. But European hard power must be restored.
They can only do this by regenerating the manufacturing sector. Failure to do this will force Britain and other European middle-ranking powers into a submissive foreign policy that follows the whims of Washington, Beijing and Moscow. But they can realistically follow Macdonald’s example and rebuild themselves as prosperous and sovereign middle-ranking powers. Macron’s decision to expand the French nuclear umbrella and Merz’s rearmament plan are encouraging signs. But there is so much more incredible potential that can be tapped in London, Paris and beyond. It requires a blend of economic nationalism and political moderation.
The current historical moment demands a renewed National Policy. At the heart of Macdonald’s vision was the realisation that national power depended on productive capacity. Canada was able to build its industrial strength and, in turn, make the sovereignty promised by Confederation into a reality. Canada is also an instructive example of successful nation-building that should inform European elites in national capitals as much as in Brussels. Europe must now guard against the immense power of China as the world’s largest manufacturer as well as rebuild its defences against Russia. Navigating between the squabbles of great powers has been done before by middle-ranking powers. It is an art that must be mastered again.

For The Financial Times, Oren Cass argues that America should say ‘no deal’ to China and resist its quest for global economic dominance.

As US President Donald Trump visits China this week, his administration appears torn between the need to decouple and the desire to strike a grand bargain. This is nothing new from America. During the Biden administration, the Commerce and Treasury departments consistently pressed for a more open economic relationship with China while the National Security Council insisted on greater restrictions. Trump has pursued dramatic escalation in some instances and warm conciliation in others. Tariffs on China briefly reached 145 per cent in early 2025 and the White House sought to block sales of even the outdated AI chips that Biden had approved for export.
Less than a year later, Trump was offering chips that Biden would not and suggesting that the US should welcome 600,000 Chinese university students. Biden’s goal was to persuade, cajole or, if necessary, drag China towards increased globalisation and greater international co-operation. Trump believes that China has been “ripping us off” and that through economic coercion he can get a better deal. But the Chinese Communist Party is not possessed of a deeply held liberalism just waiting to be teased out by a US suitor. It is an illiberal regime that sees no advantage in supporting an open global commons. Likewise, China’s heavily protected, state-controlled economy is not an attractive opportunity just waiting to be tapped by American firms.
In the late 1940s, many who harboured utopian theories of world government were sure that integrating Stalin’s Soviet Union into their plans could work. Those who opposed US involvement in conflicts overseas saw the end of the second world war as the perfect time to withdraw. Neither course would have been wise.

For The Critic, Christopher Snowden describes how our command and control capitalism is throttling the economy.

This is not just a story of bad laws and unintended consequences. It is not about the suffocating levels of regulation in every area of economic life, although much could be said about that. This is something different and, I think, new for this country. An activist state is systematically coercing the private sector in the pursuit of a range of social engineering goals, all of which are implicitly assumed to be more important than the economy. It is a form of central planning, albeit with a patchwork of different plans rather than one overarching goal. Some of them have explicit targets. Net Zero by 2050 is the best known of them, but there is also the plan to go “smokefree” by 2030, to “phase out” petrol and diesel cars by the same year, and to decarbonise the electricity grid by 2035.
To meet such targets, recent governments have tightened their grip on the private sector. At the softer end of the scale, they require businesses to make commitments to political goals before they can produce anything. The Procurement Act (2023) contains various “social value” requirements that oblige firms bidding for public contracts to demonstrate progress on Net Zero, diversity, apprenticeships and so on. Developers are forced to add solar panels to all new builds and make a certain proportion of their houses “affordable” (who is buying the rest?). The planning conditions for the new runway at Gatwick include the stipulation that at least 54 per cent of passengers must use public transport to get to and from the airport, a strangely specific demand for something that a builder cannot control.
At the harder end, the government makes threats and delivers punishment beatings. In a fully socialist system, state-owned motor companies would simply stop producing the internal combustion engine in 2035 and politicians would take the blame. In Britain’s command economy, the Zero Emission Vehicle Mandate requires manufacturers to sell a certain number of electric cars. The mandatory number rises each year and companies face fines of up to £15,000 for each petrol or diesel vehicle above their quota. Similarly, when he decided that there would be no new gas boilers in Britain by 2035, Johnson introduced fines for companies which failed to sell enough heat pumps. Again, there was a target: 600,000 new heat pumps a year by 2028.

In The Telegraph, Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says that our nimble approach on nuclear fusion shows we do not need to re-join the EU.

In short, the UK has created a fusion ecosystem in concert with the Americans that is now reaching critical take-off. It is becoming a fusion superpower in its own right. Would this have happened under the inertia of EU membership and faced with endless squabbling over the division of spoils?
Fusion is not a minor matter or a technological luxury. The global energy and economic system will be changed forever the day that the first megawatt from a fusion reactor hits the grid at a competitive cost. The rewards will be immense. It is unfashionable to credit Boris Johnson or Sir Keir Starmer for anything in our petulant society but both deserve a few hurrahs for this at least.
There may be many compelling reasons for the UK to tie its fate closer to the EU – or, indeed, to rejoin – but please stop telling me that higher economic growth is one of them. Listening to insular Labour backbenchers bleating piously about a Europe that exists only in their heads is worse than enduring the hideous noise of fingernails on a blackboard.

For The Times, Paul Goodman says that we must get tougher on our enemies at home in a new insecure age.

Ministers have promised to scale up the government’s specialist disruptions unit to detect, expose and counter extremist influence across the UK. But a more systematic approach is required, modelled on the education reforms introduced by the Conservatives, developed by Labour, continued by the Coalition and preserved in essentials to this day. Just as Ofsted was put in place to monitor school standards, so a new counterextremism regime should be established based on inspections, fines and enhanced rights to sue.
The universities and the arts were identified as problem areas in a Downing Street seminar last week. Are Jewish students being harassed while university authorities turn a blind eye? Widen the Office for Students’ inspections remit, fine the institutions concerned and, if necessary, hold vice-chancellors and principals personally liable. Are artists subject to silent boycotts by venues? Let a new ombudsman investigate.
The Best Value regime, which requires local authorities to seek continuous improvement, should include councils’ response to antisemitism. An “extremism duty”, modelled on the “Prevent duty”, is required for prisons where Islamist gangs, in some cases, rule the roost. Above all, the Charity Commission needs new powers to suspend trustees and shut down charities, with funding barred from specific states, organisations, groups and individuals approved by parliament. An inspections regime wouldn’t be a cure-all. Nothing can substitute for effective border control, swifter prosecutions and deportations where necessary. The government promises to keep foreign preachers of hate out of Britain. It should also act against those who are already here: the time has come for some speakers in mosques to be prosecuted for stirring up religious hatred and incitement.

For The Telegraph, Sherelle Jacobs argues the country is beginning to rebel against big budget welfare socialism.

Blaenau Gwent – the poster child of benefit-addicted Britain – has started to rebel against its fate. This should send a powerful message to Labour. With the welfare bill set to exceed tax income by the end of the decade, benefit dependency is the single greatest challenge facing the country. Yet Keir Starmer looks set to leave office without even attempting to grapple with it. The reason that no senior Labour politician is willing to put their head above the parapet is that the party’s MPs are convinced that they have a moral obligation to protect the benefits of the vulnerable. But the shifting mood in places like Blaenau Gwent suggests that this view is sentimental and out of touch.
It is true that the people of Blaenau Gwent do not particularly blame or resent those among them living on benefits. But there is a growing understanding that welfare socialism is horrifically damaging to the very people it aims to help.
Places like Blaenau Gwent are often labelled the shame of Britain. But spending time there this week as the Labour leadership psychodrama unfolded, it struck me that it is Westminster that has become the stain on the nation. If there’s one thing people need to understand through the current chaos, it is that Britain itself isn’t broken; it is being failed by an embarrassing excuse for a political class.

Wonky Thinking

On his Substack, Rian Whitton lays out how we have been doing industrial strategy wrong and that we cannot just focus on supply-side reforms, but need to ensure that we build up British businesses that are able to be effective partners for industrial renewal. This means policies that effectively target and support critical industries and retain domestic capability.

British industrial policy fails partly because it tries to promise everything to everyone. Decarbonisation gets mixed with regional redistribution, which gets mixed with job creation, which gets mixed with desires to be an innovation superpower in the most speculative technologies, with quantum computing being a clear example. What never gets defined is what size the industrial economy should be, how much growth can be expected, or what share of employment and output manufacturing should represent. We have a panoply of desires with no clear mission.
Instead, small amounts of money are spread thinly across the country, with little willingness to make difficult decisions about where industry should actually be concentrated. Because Britain’s housing market is so constrained, policymakers rarely even consider large-scale internal migration towards productive industrial regions. Instead, struggling areas receive scattered subsidies with no broader strategy behind them.
The UK also misses another key component of industrial policy. It only works in the context of a wider political economy. In Taiwan, China, Japan, Germany and Sweden, industrial policy is directed through a partnership, implied or otherwise, between the government and powerful domestic industrial conglomerates. In many cases, the industrial elite of those countries have power and political influence far exceeding that of British billionaires. The Wallenbergs of Sweden, the myriad industrial foundations in Germany, the keiretsu and the chaebols all continue to wield significant influence.
Industrial policy is often seen as an alternative to markets and the power of the wealthy. The truth is that successful industrial policy is historically a compromise between the wealthy and their societies; you are given government support, protection and priority, and in return, you invest domestically and think beyond immediate shareholder returns. To some, this is a grubby relationship, but we already accept it on a small scale, whether it’s Anthony Bamford’s donations or the government supporting Jim Ratcliffe.
Britain no longer has many large, domestically owned industrial firms capable of competing globally. Our car industry is now almost entirely foreign-owned. This may help headline productivity figures, but foreign firms generally prioritise their home markets and domestic supply chains. So to summarise, much of our industrial policy is flawed. However, it is also worth noting that supply-side reform has already been enacted, and the more ambitious elements of it are politically contentious.

New research by the Energy Institute at Haas by Lucas Davis has found that the shale gas revolution has saved the US economy nearly $5 billion since 2007 through providing cheaper energy and reducing dependence on more expensive imports. The paper demonstrates the importance to the economy of securing domestically produced supply of energy.

It may seem like a distant memory now, but back in the mid 2000s, U.S. natural gas production had been flat for a decade, and the U.S. was importing liquefied natural gas (LNG), with plans to import much more. As of February 2007, for example, there were four additional U.S. LNG import terminals under construction and another 10 U.S. LNG import terminals had received approval from FERC.
Then shale gas happened. Advances in hydraulic fracturing and horizontal drilling opened up vast new areas to development and dramatically increased U.S. natural gas production. Figure 1 plots monthly U.S. natural gas production. Since Daniel Yergin and Robert Ineson wrote about “America’s Natural Gas Revolution” in the Wall Street Journal in November 2009, U.S. natural gas production has approximately doubled, driven overwhelmingly by shale gas. Along the way, the United States went from being a net importer of natural gas to the world’s largest exporter. The United States has been the world’s largest LNG exporter since 2022, and in 2025, the United States exported 9 billion Mcf of natural gas.
This paper calculates how much shale gas has saved U.S. natural gas consumers. We first compare natural gas prices in the United States, Europe, and Japan. Prices diverged sharply in 2007, just as shale gas was accelerating. The paper then uses these price differ ences, together with information about U.S. natural gas consumption, to calculate various measures of savings. The paper finds that U.S. natural gas consumers have saved $4.5-$5.3 trillion since 2007, equivalent to $237-$276 billion annually.3 Incorporating demand elasticity the savings are $164-$189 billion annually. These large savings reflect that the U.S. natural gas market is very large.
U.S. natural gas consumers now use 30 billion Mcf of natural gas annually. Combine this high level of consumption with price differences that have averaged $9-$11 per Mcf, and it makes sense that the savings from shale gas would be very large. The paper then examines the pattern of savings across sectors and geography. Natural gas consumers include electric power, industrial, residential, and commercial. We find that 38% of savings went to electric power customers, with 30%, 19%, and 13% for industrial, residential, and commercial customers, respectively. In terms of geography, Texas has saved more than any other state, and Louisiana has saved the most per capita.

Podcasts of the Week

On The Critic Show this week, Graham Stewart, Henry Hill and Tom Jones debate whether “Britain is done” through a combination of unsustainable welfare spending and a lack of an alternative vision.