IEA Podcast

Is the British state broken?

From the chaotic early response to covid-19, to record-long NHS waiting lists and a broken planning system, the British state appears unable to solve many political problems.

In this week's IEA Podcast, Director of Public Policy and Communications Matthew Lesh sits down with Professor Alexander Evans OBE to discuss whether the British state is broken. Alexander is a Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics, and former Strategy Director at the Cabinet Office.

Why Is Britain's Infrastructure So Expensive?

There is mounting speculation this week that the government intends to abandon the Birmingham to Manchester leg of HS2 over skyrocketing costs. The link, meant to reach from London to Manchester via Birmingham, could now cost well over £100 billion. This is the latest in a long string of eye-wateringly expensive infrastructure projects.

In this week's IEA Podcast, IEA Director of Public Policy and Communications Matthew Lesh sits down with Head of Policy at Britain Remade Sam Dumitriu. Sam Dumitriu is the Head of Policy at Britain Remade, a campaign group. Before joining, he worked at a range of Westminster think tanks, including the Adam Smith Institute and the Entrepreneurs Network, covering topics including immigration, technology, and education. He also has a Substack called ‘Notes on Growth’.

This week, the Institute of Economic Affairs published a new paper by Sir John Redwood, The New Great Inflation: How Western Central Banks Got It Wrong…and What They Should Do About It.

In this video, IEA Head of Political Economy Kristian Niemetz spoke to Rt Hon Sir John Redwood. A Distinguished Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford he has been a Cabinet Minister and Shadow Cabinet Minister, the chairman of a public listed industrial group, the co-founder of an investment management business and written many newspaper articles. He has published widely on economics and politics including ‘Popular Capitalism’, a book on wider ownership, ‘We Don’t Believe You’, a book on populist movements, and ‘Our Currency, Our Country’, on keeping the pound. He is MP for Wokingham.

To read the full paper, visit https://iea.org.uk/publications/the-new-great-inflation-how-western-central-banks-got-it-wrong-and-what-they-should-do-about-it/

How did women make the West rich? Why do governments and societies seek to police women's bodies?

In this week's episode of Breaking Barriers, IEA Communications Officer and Linda Whetstone Scholar Reem Ibrahim sat down with Victoria Bateman, a British feminist economist and academic, specialising in economic history. She is a fellow in economics at Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge. Victoria is also the author of The Sex Factor: How Women Made the West Rich, and Naked Feminism: Breaking the Cult of Female Modesty.

What's wrong with digital markets regulation? What new powers will the CMA have? In this week's IEA Podcast, Director of Public Policy and Communications Matthew Lesh sits down with Senior Scholar for Competition Policy at the ICLE Lazar Radic. They discussed their new paper Digital Overload: How the Digital Markets, Competition and Consumers Bill’s sweeping new powers threaten Britain’s economy, which they co-authored along with Dirk Auer from the ICLE. To read the full paper, visit https://iea.org.uk/publications/digital-overload-how-the-digital-markets-competition-and-consumers-bills-sweeping-new-powers-threaten-britains-economy/

Belief in big government is almost uncontroversial on the political left. But is the state really the best means to achieve leftist ends?

On this episode, Communications Officer Harrison Griffiths speaks with George Mason University Professor Peter Boetkke to discuss the work of Don Lavoie. In his books National Economic Planning: What is Left? and Rivalry and Central Planning, Lavoie made the left-wing case for individual liberty and free markets.

National Economic Planning: What is Left?

https://www.mercatus.org/hayekprogram/research/books/rivalry-and-central-planning

Rivalry and Central Planning

https://www.mercatus.org/hayekprogram/research/books/national-economic-planning#:~:text=National%20Economic%20Planning%3A%20What%20Is%20Left%3F%20is%20as%20comprehensive%20as,policymakers%20of%20every%20political%20persuasion.

Can European free movement survive?

In this week's IEA Podcast, Director of Public Policy and Communications Matthew Lesh speaks to Dr Emmanuel Comte to discuss whether freedom of movement in Europe is sustainable. Dr Comte is a historian and expert on European migration, specialising in free movement. He is a Senior Research Fellow at the Hellenic Foundation for European and Foreign Policy and a lecturer at the Vienna School of International Studies. Emmanuel also authored The History of the European Migration Regime, published by Routledge in 2018.

Sweden's large welfare state leads some to argue that the country is a case study of successful socialism...but that's not quite the full story.

Communications Officer Harrison Griffiths and Head of Political Economy Kristian Niemietz discuss 'The Mirage of Swedish Socialism', new research by Johan Norberg which charts Sweden's surprisingly complex economic history. 'The Mirage of Swedish Socialism' was published as part of the Fraser Institute's 'Realities of Socialism' project. Find out more here: https://www.fraserinstitute.org/studies/realities-of-socialism

Is there a Gender Pay Gap? Do the statistics really tell us the whole story?

Why are childcare costs so high? In this week's episode of Breaking Barriers, IEA Communications Officer and Linda Whetstone Scholar Reem Ibrahim sits down with the Deputy Comment Editor at the Telegraph Annabel Denham to debunk the Gender Pay Gap, and discuss possible solutions to cut childcare costs.

This is an audiobook version of the Institute of Economic Affairs publication 'Bangers and Cash: Cutting red tape to put Britain at the centre of the cultivated meat revolution', written by Matthew Lesh, Head of Public Policy at the IEA. 

The full publication can be read at: https://ieapublication.podbean.com/e/bangers-and-cash-cutting-red-tape-to-put-britain-at-the-centre-of-the-cultivated-meat-revolution-by-matthew-lesh/

This audiobook was read by Cormac Diamond.