In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Director of Communications Callum Price is joined by IEA Director General Lord Hannan and Editorial Director Dr Kristian Niemietz. The panel discusses the Clacton by-election and the rise of joke candidates, the very different ways the populist left and right use the word “establishment,” the debate sparked by J.D. Vance over whether GDP is the right measure of a country’s success, and the Government’s proposals to make platforms promote public service broadcasters online.

Callum, Lord Hannan and Kristian Niemietz begin with Nigel Farage’s resignation as an MP to force a by-election in Clacton, and what the contest reveals about how “anti-establishment” politics means very different things depending on which side is using it. They move on to a defence of economic growth, arguing that GDP scepticism usually rests on a strawman version of economics that no real economist holds, and that growth is what has given people leisure time, labour-saving technology and rising living standards. The conversation ends on the Government’s new Green Paper, which would require social media platforms to prioritise BBC, Channel 4 and Channel 5 content, and what that means for free expression, drawing on John Stuart Mill’s case for free speech and examples of “high status misinformation,” including claims about NHS privatisation and wealth inequality.

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 interview, IEA Director General Lord Hannan speaks with Katherine Rich, Chief Executive of BusinessNZ and a former National Party Member of Parliament in New Zealand. The conversation covers the difference between being pro-market and merely pro-business, New Zealand’s decades-long shift towards deregulation, the rise of populism across Anglosphere politics, the long-term economic and social effects of Covid lockdowns, and the state of free trade in an increasingly protectionist world.

Katherine explains how BusinessNZ, representing around 70,000 businesses, tries to resist the pull towards vested interests and protectionism that so often creeps into business lobbying. She and Lord Hannan compare New Zealand’s proportional voting system, which has produced separate parties for libertarian, conservative and populist voters, with Britain’s first past the post system. They also discuss the lasting damage from lockdowns, including welfare dependency, shoplifting and a coarsening of public life, and Katherine sets out why New Zealand’s export driven economy has had to stay nimble in the face of tariffs and rising protectionism, including a debate on the case for closer trade and travel ties between the UK, New Zealand, Australia and Canada.

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, Director of Communications Callum Price is joined by Director General Lord Hannan and Editorial Director Dr Kristian Niemietz for the weekly round up of the week in economics. The conversation covers three topics: Andy Burnham’s speech on devolution and decentralisation, a new report showing Britain has suffered the biggest fall in household wealth in the rich world, and a report on London’s housebuilding crisis.

On devolution, Hannan and Niemietz discuss why Britain remains one of the most centralised states in Europe, and what would need to change for genuine decentralisation to work, including a Swiss style model where local areas raise and are responsible for their own spending. They then turn to the fall in British household wealth over the past five years, arguing that the decline is largely a correction following the money printing and house price rises seen during the pandemic.

The discussion closes with an examination of London’s housebuilding crisis, drawing on a new report from other think tanks showing housing starts in the capital falling far short of government targets. Hannan and Niemietz set out why this makes London and the country as a whole poorer, and discuss practical fixes including lifting height restrictions near transport links and building on underused sites such as those around Canary Wharf.

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.

Thumbnail image of Andy Burnham by [photographer name], licensed under CC BY 2.0 (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/), cropped from the original.

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, IEA Director of Communications Callum Price speaks with Casey Given, Executive Director of Young Voices, about how classical liberal ideas are communicated in a changing media environment. The conversation covers the shift from the traditional think tank model to new media, the rise of what Young Voices calls “messenger experts”, the widening political divide between young men and women, and the platforms now shaping public debate, from Substack and YouTube to TikTok and podcasts.

Price and Given discuss whether the Hayekian idea of persuading second-hand dealers in ideas still holds in the age of short-form video, and whether individual influencers are taking on work once done by established institutions. They look at the so-called vibe shift following recent elections, the risk of trading one form of collectivism for another, and immigration as an issue classical liberals have often avoided. The discussion also turns to the Washington Post’s editorial repositioning around personal liberties and free markets, wider changes across legacy media in the United States, and how Number 10 and the Government have started bringing new media voices into their briefings. Given closes with practical advice for anyone trying to make the case for liberty today.

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 interview, IEA Managing Editor Daniel Freeman speaks with Dr Victoria Bateman, economic historian and author of Economica: A Global History of Women, Wealth and Power. Bateman has taught economics at both Cambridge and Oxford, and her earlier books include The Sex Factor and Markets and Growth in Early Modern Europe. The conversation traces the economic role of women from the Palaeolithic to the present day, and sets out Bateman’s central argument: that across history, the most successful civilisations have been those where women were freest to take part in the economy, and that civilisational collapses have tended to follow a rolling back of women’s rights.

Bateman explains how economic historians find evidence of women’s work before written records, drawing on burials and human remains, and points to the finding that around 40% of big game hunters in the Stone Age Americas were women. The discussion moves through the five economic hotspots of the Bronze Age, the contrast between ancient Athens and Rome, and the case of Hortensia, the Roman woman who challenged a tax levied on women without political representation. Bateman argues that women’s relative freedom tracked economic prosperity in each period, and that the erosion of those freedoms helped drain the lifeblood from economies such as Rome.

The second half turns to Britain and the origins of modern economic growth. Bateman sets out the Northwest European marriage pattern, under which women married in their mid-twenties rather than as children, earned their own wages and built independent households, and explains how this supported higher wages, later fertility and the conditions for the Industrial Revolution. The conversation also covers the backlash against working women in the late 19th century, the shift from brawn to brains in the 20th, and what the historical record suggests about women, freedom and economic growth today. Economica is a Financial Times Best Book of 2025, and there is a link to order a copy in the description.

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, Director of Communications Callum Price is joined by Director General Lord Hannan and Editorial Director Dr Kristian Niemietz to discuss whether Britain has become ungovernable, the state of public spending since the lockdowns, and the prospect of a seventh prime minister in ten years. They also mark ten years since the Brexit referendum and turn to the politics of the summer heatwave.

The conversation looks at why successive governments struggle to control spending, with health and social security now accounting for around two thirds of the total, and why questions about the civil service, judicial activism and the constitutional reforms of the Blair years have moved to the centre of think tank debate. Lord Hannan and Dr Niemietz assess why the Brexit result remains contested a decade on, the deregulation opportunities that went unused, and the culture war that followed the vote. The discussion closes on climate policy, air conditioning and the case for adaptation rather than restriction.

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 Head of Lifestyle Economics Dr Christopher Snowdon speaks with Rohan Pike, a former Australian Federal Police officer and ex-Australian Border Force official who spent his final years in public service working on illicit tobacco. The conversation looks at the Laffer Curve as a real world example, using Australia’s tobacco duty, where revenue has fallen from $16 billion to $4 billion even as tax rates climbed. They discuss how taxation pushed past the point where higher rates raise less money, and what that means for smokers, the public purse and crime.

Pike sets out how the illicit market has grown to around 80% of all tobacco sold in Australia, with the illicit vape market above 95%. He explains how tax of roughly $1.53 per cigarette, about £17 a packet before sales tax, opened a gap that organised crime moved to fill, with black market packets selling for a fraction of the legal price. The discussion covers the violence that has followed, including murders and hundreds of fire bombings, the rise of a multi-billion dollar criminal syndicate, and why enforcement at the border can only ever stop a small share of what comes through.

The second half turns to Britain. Snowdon and Pike argue that the UK is only a few years behind Australia, pointing to high tobacco duty, the tax escalator, the planned vape tax and official figures that they say understate the size of the illicit trade. Pike argues that the answer is not tougher enforcement alone but lower excise, consistent enforcement and an honest approach to harm reduction, contrasting Australia’s stance on vaping with the position taken in the UK and New Zealand. He closes with a warning for the Treasury and for ministers that the same path leads to the same result.

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 of Communications Callum Price is joined by Editorial Director Dr Kristian Niemietz and Senior Economist Dr Valentin Boboc. They discuss the Government’s proposed ban on social media for under-16s, the news that Elon Musk has become the world’s first trillionaire, and economist Thomas Piketty’s latest proposals for degrowth and a global cap on wealth.

On the social media ban, the panel weighs up whether the policy can actually be enforced, pointing to Australia’s experience and the ease with which children use VPNs to get around age checks. They consider the case for and against leaving the decision to parents, the coordination problem this creates for families, and the oddity of a digital curfew for 17 year olds at the same time as the Government wants 16 year olds to be able to vote. They also place the policy in a wider pattern of governments reaching for bans that poll well but prove difficult in practice, drawing on Christopher Snowdon’s new book on evidence-based policy.

The conversation then turns to Elon Musk and what his trillion-dollar fortune says about how markets reward people, covering consumer surplus, company valuations, and why the size of a fortune does not track hours worked. Finally, the panel examines Thomas Piketty’s call for a per capita GDP cap of around €60,000, a forced shift from material to immaterial sectors, and the global institutions he proposes to run it. They question how such a system could be enforced, what it would mean for ordinary living standards, and the use of taxpayer funding for degrowth research.

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 briefing, IEA Director of Communications Callum Price speaks with Dr Christopher Snowdon, the IEA’s Head of Lifestyle Economics, about his new book Inside the Sausage Factory: The Illusion of Evidence-Based Policy Making. The conversation looks at four public health measures from the 2010s, plain packaging for tobacco, minimum pricing for alcohol, the sugary drinks tax and the crackdown on fixed-odds betting terminals, and asks whether the evidence used to justify them actually held up.

Snowdon explains that each policy tended to rest on a similar package of evidence: modelling showing how the measure would work in theory, an example from another country that had tried something similar, and an expert review that gave it a stamp of approval. He argues that much of this evidence was weak or asked the wrong question. Plain packs were obviously less attractive, but that did not mean people would give up smoking. Modelling predicted large falls in alcohol deaths and in obesity that never materialised once minimum pricing and the sugar tax came in. In his view the evidence was rarely what decided the outcome.

The second half turns to what really drove these policies through. Snowdon makes the case that pressure, not evidence, was the deciding factor, with professional and often state-funded campaign groups generating media coverage while almost nobody organised against the measures. He draws on public choice theory to explain why millions of affected consumers stayed silent, why politicians took the path of least resistance, and why ministers from George Osborne to Rishi Sunak reached for these policies to build a legacy or shift the headlines. He closes on the recent move by the Government to restrict social media for under-sixteens, argues that opinion polls are a poor basis for lawmaking, and suggests defunding state-backed pressure groups as a place to start.

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 interview, IEA Managing Editor Daniel Freeman speaks with Martin Vander Weyer, business editor of The Spectator, author and former investment banker, about his chapter “Why We Lost Faith in Capitalism” from the new IEA book On Morality, Human Behaviour and Economics, available now in bookshops and on Amazon. The conversation traces British attitudes to business and trade from the Industrial Revolution to the present day.

They discuss why the British establishment looked down on trade for so long while outsiders such as Quaker families and immigrant banking dynasties built much of the country’s industry, why Britain never produced the public business heroes that America did, and how the Thatcher years briefly made enterprise admired before the mood turned again. Vander Weyer argues that financial capitalism has repeatedly damaged its own reputation, through executive pay rows, the mis-selling of personal pensions, the dot-com bubble and the 2008 crisis and bailouts. The discussion also covers the shortage of growth capital for British firms, the difference between what banks and investors should fund, private equity and venture capital, the effect of AI on jobs and careers, and why he sees entrepreneurship as the route out.

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.