IEA Podcast

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Maeve Halligan is joined by Lord Hannan of Kingsclere, Director General of the IEA, and Robert Armstrong, Director of the Institute for Free Trade.

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This week, the discussion opens with the US midterms, where the Democrats made historic gains, from newly redrawn seats in Texas to a Senate seat in Kansas. Was the result really about the war in Iran, as some in the administration have claimed, or, with 39 per cent of voters naming the economy as their top issue and 66 per cent saying tariffs have hurt the national economy, a rejection of protectionism and its costs? The conversation examines how a tariff policy meant to reshore industry, close the trade deficit and raise revenue has delivered none of these, and how rising input costs filtered from businesses to voters across the Midwest and the Deep South. They also ask whether Trump’s following was ever a true cult of personality, whether those who went along with his trade policy should face an electoral price, and whether the Republican Party can return to limited government or the Democrats will draw the wrong lessons from their win.The discussion then turns to the UK–EU summit on 20 November, where a draft deal to scrap post-Brexit checks on food exports would require Britain to follow EU sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) rules. Is the Government trading sovereignty for a smoother border, or taking on regulatory costs across the whole economy that far outweigh the savings at the border? The panel weighs up the youth experience scheme, the return to Erasmus and the question of who pays tuition fees for EU students, and asks why Britain appears to be accepting the EU’s demands without setting out its own.The discussion closes with Michel Barnier’s warnings against “cherry picking”, whether rejoining the EU is a realistic prospect, and whether keeping the question open is more about uniting left-of-centre voters than any concrete plan to go back in. The panel argues that the real risk is not rejoining but the damage done along the way, and the danger of reopening the culture war that followed the 2016 referendum.The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.Subscribe, like and share!

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In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Maeve Halligan is joined by Lord Hannan, Director General, and Dr Valentin Boboc, Chief Economist at the IEA.

This week, the discussion opens with a closer look at Chancellor John Healey’s Budget: 98 small measures, each with little impact, paid for with more borrowing. Is the new £100 winter heating payment for households in council tax Bands A to D a sensible support, or a costly and untargeted handout? Why is the Government using more intervention to fix high energy costs it helped create? Drawing on Perón’s Argentina and Ceaușescu’s Romania, we ask whether Britain is becoming an electorate that rewards visible handouts even as they leave it poorer. Can it still change course, as the IEA’s Alternative Budget proposed, or will the markets force a correction?

The discussion then turns to the Budget’s new surcharge on rental income, and to tribunals that now decide the “market rent”. In one case, a landlord who tried to raise the rent by £50 a month was ordered to cut it to £200 below the original level. Alongside new powers to take over empty properties, does this mark a retreat from Britain’s long commitment to property rights and free contract? We also look at how minimum wage rises have pushed youth unemployment to its highest level since 2011.

The discussion closes with Dr Boboc’s prediction that this will be the largest tax-raising Budget in history, with frozen income tax thresholds alone bringing in over £30 billion this year.

The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.Subscribe, like and share!

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Lord Hannan is joined by Dr Christopher Snowdon, Head of Lifestyle Economics, and Dr Kristian Niemietz, Editorial Director at the IEA.

This week, the discussion opens with whether Britain should have built a sovereign wealth fund from North Sea oil revenue, as Chancellor John Healey has suggested, pointing to Norway as the model we failed to follow. Is that comparison fair, or was Britain’s falling debt-to-GDP ratio in the 1980s itself a form of saving, just one that never got dressed up as a national fund? With the national debt now around £3 trillion, the fourth-largest in the world in absolute terms, how far could the IEA’s own Alternative Budget, built on a welfare freeze and a shift from income and savings taxes to consumption taxes, actually take us back toward surplus? And with the Budget approaching, will the Chancellor deliver meaningful reform, or a string of small, politically-driven announcements that change little?

The discussion then turns to France, where the panel debates whether the riots reflect a genuine fiscal crisis, a deficit above 5% of GDP and rising borrowing costs, built on decades of unaffordable pension and welfare spending, and whether Britain’s own creeping youth unemployment and social tensions put it on a similar trajectory. They also examine how far radicalisation and alienation in Britain stem from schools and the wider culture rather than immigration itself.

The discussion closes with Dr Snowdon’s regular nanny state story: a Manchester rent tribunal that didn’t just block a landlord’s modest, inflation-linked rent increase but ordered the rent reduced below its original level, an early example, the panel argues, of the unintended consequences of the Renters’ Rights Act. They end by invoking Bastiat’s distinction between the seen and unseen consequences of policy.

The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.

The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.

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In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Maeve Halligan is joined by Dr Valentin Boboc, Chief Economist, and Dr Christopher Snowdon, Head of Lifestyle Economics at the IEA.This week, the International Monetary Fund’s upgraded growth forecast for Britain is up for discussion, from its warning of a slowdown in 2027 to its advice that the Chancellor resist big giveaways just two weeks before the Budget.How much weight should we give to economic forecasts that are often wrong by more than the upgrade itself? With energy bills set to rise again, what can actually be done about the cost of living, and why has Britain chosen not to make more of its own North Sea oil and gas? Can the Government stick to its fiscal rules without borrowing more, and would giving local leaders more power over income tax lead to genuine tax competition?The discussion then turns to Manchester City, found guilty by an independent commission of disguising more than £830 million in owner funding as sponsorship, asking whether football’s spending rules are fit for purpose, why heavy investment from wealthy owners has been good for fans, and what the new independent football regulator could mean for the Premier League. The discussion closes with the mandatory addition of folic acid to flour from December, from why supplements alone cannot prevent neural tube defects such as spina bifida to why a lifestyle economist who opposes most nanny state measures is backing this one.The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.

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In this IEA interview, Daniel Freeman, Managing Editor and Deputy Editorial Director at the IEA, speaks to historian, veteran foreign correspondent and author Adam LeBor about the second edition of his book Tower of Basel: The Shadowy History of the Secret Bank that Runs the World. The conversation explores the Bank for International Settlements (BIS), perhaps the most important bank most people have never heard of. LeBor explains how the BIS was founded in 1930 by Hjalmar Schacht of the Reichsbank and Montagu Norman of the Bank of England to handle German reparations after the First World War, and how its protection under an international treaty means Swiss law does not apply within its Basel headquarters.LeBor describes how, during the Second World War, the supposedly neutral BIS was run by an American banker, Thomas McKittrick, while it accepted looted Nazi gold and provided foreign exchange that allowed Germany to buy vital war materials such as Portuguese tungsten. He sets out how the bank served as a secret channel between the Allies and the Nazis, with McKittrick passing information to the American spymaster Allen Dulles, and why it survived calls from the US Treasury for its closure. The interview also covers the transfer of Czechoslovak gold to the Reichsbank, the presence of IG Farben chief Hermann Schmitz on the BIS board, the bank’s decades of groundwork for the euro and the European Central Bank, and why its warnings about unsustainable debt before the 2008 financial crisis went unheeded. The discussion closes with the BIS today, as a bank for central banks, a leading research institution and a meeting place for central bankers, and with the central bank digital currencies its research has made possible. LeBor sets out the risks he sees in CBDCs, from faster bank runs and the threat to civil liberties to the possibility that wholesale systems could let sanctioned states sidestep SWIFT, and argues that while the BIS has become far more open since the first edition, it should still reveal more about who attends its meetings and what they discuss.The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems. The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.

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In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Dr Christopher Snowdon, Head of Lifestyle Economics, is joined by Kristian Niemietz, Editorial Director and Head of Political Economy, and Daniel Freeman, Managing Editor and Deputy Editorial Director at the IEA.This week, Kemi Badenoch’s speech to Conservative Party conference is up for discussion, from her pledge to exempt the family home from inheritance tax and raise the tax-free allowance on other assets to £1 million, to her plan to scrap the £100,000 cap on free childcare.Would a total exemption on the family home encourage wealthy people to pour their savings into ever bigger houses, and what can Spain’s wealth tax tell us about how people respond? With the country borrowing around £150 billion a year, is this really the most growth-friendly tax cut on offer, and why not relax childcare ratios instead? The discussion then turns to the latest riots in France, asking why calls for more public spending persist in a country where the state accounts for over half of GDP, and whether some riots are less about politics than spectacle. The discussion closes with Wales’s Well-being of Future Generations Act, from the former Future Generations Commissioner’s role in cancelling road projects to why vague but legally binding goals make it so hard to build anything in Britain.The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.

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In this Institute of Economic Affairs interview, IEA Director General Lord Hannan of Kingsclere speaks to David Nott, President and CEO of Reason Foundation, about the philosophy behind Reason magazine and the case for individual liberty today. They discuss what distinguishes Reason's motto of "free minds and free markets", and why the magazine takes on difficult issues such as drug policy that other classical liberals often avoid.David explains his "pendulum" view of history, in which authoritarian periods give way to liberalising waves, and how Reason now reaches around 15 million views a month through short-form video. The conversation also covers the rule of law, the relationship between democracy and freedom, lessons from the pandemic, and how Covid sparked a wave of school choice reform in the United States, before closing with Lord Hannan's customary question: what would a libertarian do as emperor for a day?The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.

Economic Affairs is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Maeve Halligan is joined by Kristian Niemietz, Editorial Director and Head of Political Economy, and Daniel Freeman, Managing Editor and Deputy Editorial Director at the IEA.

This week, Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s first speech to Labour Party conference is up for discussion, from his plans to change the triple lock to pay for a National Care Service, to his push for public ownership of water and energy, a new council housebuilding programme and electoral reform.

Has Burnham finally bitten the bullet on the triple lock, and can savings that only arrive by the end of the decade really pay for a care service costing billions from day one? Could anyone make a convincing case for a “new NHS” for social care, and would it mainly end up protecting inheritances at the expense of working taxpayers? The discussion then turns to Burnham’s version of post-war history, asking why the “golden age” of the 1950s and 60s saw Britain fall behind almost every other developed economy, and whether nationalisation would do anything about sewage in our rivers. The discussion closes with the Government’s housing plans, from the myth of empty homes to the claim that Right to Buy caused the housing shortage, and whether proportional representation would make politics any less divisive.

The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.

The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, IEA Director General Lord Hannan is joined by Kristian Niemietz, Editorial Director and Head of Political Economy, and Christopher Snowdon, Head of Lifestyle Economics.

This week, the proposal to replace the state pension with a system of compulsory private saving is up for discussion. Also on the agenda are the debate over the “strange death of libertarianism” and a House of Lords committee’s call to ban gambling advertising.

Could a funded pension system on the Australian or Chilean model ever survive the politics of “scrapping the state pension”? Reformers from Peter Lilley to Chile’s architects tried to reassure voters that existing entitlements were safe. The discussion then turns to Daniel McCarthy’s argument that libertarianism has run out of steam, weighing up whether free marketeers have really won the battles of the past, what has happened to the word “libertarian”, and why the fusionist alliance between free marketeers and conservatives is holding in Britain even as it breaks down in America. The discussion closes with the Lords’ case for banning gambling adverts despite the absence of any evidence of harm, and what the precautionary principle means for evidence-based policymaking.

The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support for any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.

The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, host Lord Hannan is joined by Christopher Snowdon, IEA Head of Lifestyle Economics, and Kristian Niemietz, IEA Head of Political Economy, for their regular economics and politics round-up. This episode covers the Bank of England’s decision to hold interest rates amid rising inflation, the case for and against scrapping inheritance tax and stamp duty, new government rules dictating what schools can serve for lunch, and the resurgence of Just Stop Oil protests against a backdrop of shifting public opinion on net zero.

On interest rates, the panel debate whether the Bank is right to hold steady given inflation driven largely by oil and petrol prices, and whether expectations of future rises are justified. They then turn to tax, weighing up the practical costs of inheritance tax collection against the principle of taxing unearned wealth, before broadly agreeing that stamp duty is one of the more damaging taxes to scrap first. On school food, they question the evidence behind new rules limiting pastry, breadcrumbs and processed meat, and argue the policy should be a matter for individual schools rather than national government. The conversation closes with a look at why Just Stop Oil and Extinction Rebellion protests have returned, and why net zero, once an unchallenged cross-party consensus, is now facing a growing electoral backlash as energy costs rise.

The Institute of Economic Affairs is a registered educational charity. It does not endorse or give support to any political party in the UK or elsewhere. Our mission is to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems. The views represented here are those of the speakers alone, not those of the Institute, its Managing Trustees, Academic Advisory Council members or senior staff.