IEA Podcast

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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Callum Price is joined by Director General Lord Hannan and Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz to discuss three of the week’s biggest economic stories. The conversation opens on the Piketty and Stiglitz-backed “roadmap for eradicating poverty beyond growth,” examining whether degrowth is a serious economic proposal or a fashionable pose that falls apart under scrutiny. The episode then turns to Commerce Secretary Peter Kyle’s announcement of a fast-track concierge service for high-growth British firms, and closes with Zack Polanski’s claim that cheap vegetables are a sign of exploitation and supermarket profiteering.Kristian Niemietz sets out why degrowth cannot happen voluntarily and what kind of state would actually be required to impose it. Lord Hannan draws on history — from the post-financial crisis recession to FDR’s destruction of food during the Great Depression — to show that the intuitions driving both degrowth and price controls are as old as they are wrong. On industrial policy, both argue that the government’s concierge scheme is simply a guide around obstacles the government itself created, and that cutting taxes and regulation would do more for growth than any managed scheme.The episode ends with a discussion of prices as signals, why supermarket profit margins tell a very different story to Polanski’s claims, and a striking account of how the Prophet Muhammad — himself a merchant — understood the consequences of price caps over a thousand years before Adam Smith put it into words.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Callum Price speaks with Max Marlow, Director of Public Affairs at the Adam Smith Institute, about Tax Freedom Day 2025, which fell on Saturday 6th June, the latest date ever recorded. They discuss what the figure actually measures, how the tax take now stands at 36.1% of GDP, and why the complexity of the UK tax system is compounding the burden on households and businesses.Max explains the international comparisons, contrasting the UK’s position with lower-tax economies such as Singapore (15th March), Switzerland (21st April) and the United States (16th April), and argues that competition between states and cantons restrains tax growth in ways that centralised systems cannot. The conversation also covers the Cost of Government Day, which falls on 13th July when borrowing is included, the demographic pressures driving welfare and pension spending, and the finding that over 52% of the British population are in some way dependent on the state for income.The discussion closes with Max’s priorities for reform: rationalising the tax code, cutting red tape, pushing ahead with planning reform, and abolishing stamp duty to unlock the property market. He offers cautious optimism that some political figures are beginning to take the scale of the problem seriously, though he warns the trajectory points towards Tax Freedom Day reaching 13th June by 2030 without significant policy change.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, host Callum Price is joined by the IEA’s new Director General Lord Hannan and Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz. The episode covers the OBR’s admission that it underestimated the fiscal damage from the Government’s employer National Insurance rise, the banning of American commentators Hasan Piker and Usman Khan from entering the UK, and Zach Polanski’s podcast discussion with French economist Gabriel Zucman on wealth taxes.Lord Hannan argues that tax rises are always harmful to growth, pointing to the “triple whammy” facing employers from National Insurance hikes, the Employment Rights Bill, and minimum wage increases. The conversation turns to whether the OBR’s mandate should be reformed and whether a competitive market in economic forecasting would produce better results. On free speech, all three agree that banning the American commentators was petty authoritarianism, with Hannan and Niemietz both arguing that consistent application of free speech principles matters more than whether you agree with the speaker. Hannan raises the uncomfortable question of whether the liberal free speech consensus of recent decades was merely a temporary standoff between competing hegemonies.The episode closes with Kristian Niemietz’s response to the Polanski/Zucman exchange on wealth taxes. Niemietz agrees that past wealth taxes have largely failed, but disputes Zucman’s claim that a broader, exemption-free version would succeed, arguing the valuation bureaucracy required would be enormous and the disincentive effects on business owners would be severe. Lord Hannan draws on his time in Brussels during Francois Hollande’s wealth tax to illustrate how quickly such policies drive wealth creators out, and argues that the true motive behind wealth tax proposals is egalitarian rather than fiscal.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this IEA talk, Dr Stephen Davies, Head of Education at the Institute of Economic Affairs, delivers a lecture on the Industrial Revolution, the Great Enrichment, and what the long history of economic growth tells us about how the modern world came to be. The talk covers the extraordinary transformation in living standards since 1800 — from a world where one in four children died before their first birthday and 80–90% of the global population lived in absolute poverty, to one where that figure has fallen to under 10%.Dr Davies examines the Engels Pause (roughly 1790–1850), the period when British GDP grew by 46% while real wages rose only 12%, and traces where the missing wealth went — captured primarily by landlords and asset owners rather than workers. He explains how this reversed after 1850, when real wages surged by 123% as deflation took hold, the Corn Laws were repealed, and the elastic labour supply from the countryside began to dry up. The talk also draws a direct parallel between 19th century rural-to-urban migration in Britain and modern global migration, examines the moralistic and romantic literary critiques of industrialisation against what working-class diaries of the period actually record, and closes with the question of why China — as technologically advanced as Europe in the 14th century — failed to industrialise, and what the Ming Dynasty’s deliberate suppression of innovation reveals about how elites throughout history have blocked economic progress.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Callum Price is joined by Managing Editor Daniel Freeman and Senior Economist Dr Valentin Boboc to discuss three of the week's biggest policy stories. The conversation opens with Tony Blair's 5,000-word essay on what the Government is getting wrong, examining his ten-point plan for what he calls "radical centrism" and how much of it lines up with longstanding IEA positions on planning, energy and business regulation.The second topic is the rise in NEETs above one million for the first time, with the panel looking at the figures behind the headline. Hospitality vacancies down 50%, apprenticeships down 35%, and PIP recipients set to double again by 2031. The discussion covers how a combination of employer national insurance rises, minimum wage increases and the Employment Rights Act has made it significantly more expensive to hire young people in the exact sectors where they typically find work, and why the Government's response of youth hubs and apprenticeship levies has done little to address the underlying problem.The final segment turns to Reform's new tax cut pledge, scrapping income tax on hours worked above 40 per week for those earning under £75,000. Daniel Freeman sets out in detail why the policy is poorly designed, from its exclusion of the self-employed and those with second jobs, to the cliff edge it creates at the £75,000 threshold and how straightforwardly it could be gamed by employers restructuring pay.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Free the Power podcast, IEA Energy Analyst and COO Andy Mayer speaks with David Turver, independent energy expert and author of the Eigenvalues Substack. David has been writing for the IEA on the costs of net zero and has a forthcoming essay examining whether opposition party energy policies could meaningfully address those costs. The conversation focuses on the real and growing financial burden of the Government’s Clean Power 2030 plan, using official figures from the National Energy System Operator, Ofgem, and the Office for Budget Responsibility.David breaks down the two main cost drivers: subsidies and grid integration costs. Subsidies are forecast to rise by around £3 billion a year by 2031, while grid integration costs, covering the capacity market, grid balancing, and transmission network expansion, are set to triple from £8 billion to £25 billion over the same period. That adds roughly £20 billion to the annual cost of running the electricity system, against a backdrop where the UK already had the most expensive industrial electricity prices in the developed world in 2024. David contrasts this with Ed Miliband’s claim that Clean Power 2030 can bring bills down for good, describing it as stretching a point beyond credulity.The discussion then turns to what the opposition parties are actually proposing. David assesses the Conservatives’ pledges to scrap the Renewables Obligation and remove carbon taxes, alongside Reform’s commitment to cancel contracts from Allocation Round 7. He finds both welcome but insufficient, with costs still set to be over £8 billion higher in 2030/31 than today even if a right-of-centre government takes power in 2028. The conversation covers the legal difficulties of unwinding offshore wind contracts, the ageing gas fleet, the risk of supply shortfalls, and what a future government would need to do to bring industrial electricity prices into the lowest quartile of the OECD.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs interview, Managing Editor Daniel Freeman speaks with Dr George Maher, Fellow of the Institute and Faculty of Actuaries, former partner at Tillinghast Towers Perrin, and author of Economic Success and Failure in the Roman Empire. The conversation centres on Dr Maher's new IEA Substack paper, Predicting the Unpredictable, which applies actuarial methods to forecast the results of the 2026 local elections using data from 240 council by-elections held in the preceding twelve months.Dr Maher walks through the core findings of his analysis, explaining how the Conservatives held on to just 31% of their seats, Labour to 22%, while the Lib Dems retained eight in ten. Reform, meanwhile, drew its support roughly equally from Conservative and Labour voters. His model proved directionally accurate and in several cases outperformed prominent MRP polling, though the actual local election results saw both Labour and the Conservatives perform better than the by-election data predicted, with the migration to Reform falling short of expectations. The conversation explores why — with theories ranging from small-c conservative bias when the stakes are higher, to Labour voters pulling back from the brink when faced with genuine council losses.The discussion closes with broader reflections on political fragmentation in Britain, the historical precedents of party realignment from the Whig-Tory era through to Labour's displacement of the Liberals in the 1920s, and whether prediction markets and AI are set to disrupt the actuarial profession.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz is joined by Senior Policy Fellow Lord Frost and Managing Editor Daniel Freeman to discuss three stories dominating British economic debate. The conversation covers a Financial Times investigation into London’s slowing growth and falling productivity, the Government’s cost of living announcements including tariff cuts and VAT reductions, and Wes Streeting’s proposal to align capital gains tax with income tax rates — a policy he has chosen to brand a “wealth tax.”On London, the panel picks apart the drivers behind the city’s decline: housing supply restrictions, a 71% marginal tax rate hitting high earners with student loans, the exodus of non-doms, and the post-pandemic shift away from office working. Daniel highlights that American tech firms now describe London’s talent pool as cheap relative to San Francisco, a back-handed compliment that has become the city’s chief selling point. Lord Frost raises the possibility that productive people are leaving while less productive arrivals replace them, and argues for decentralisation over national top-down fixes, pointing to Switzerland as a model for local decision-making on planning and regulation.On the cost of living package, the panel credits the tariff reductions as the one straightforwardly positive measure while dismissing the VAT cuts on children’s cinema tickets and meals as a two-month gimmick that evidence suggests will not be passed on to consumers. The capital gains tax proposals are judged far less damaging than a genuine wealth tax, but the panel warns that raising rates to 45p would deter risk-taking investment, encourage evasion, and pile further complexity onto an already overburdened system — with no offsetting cuts, such as to stamp duty, to justify the trade-off.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs Economics 101 explainer, Dr. Stephen Davies breaks down one of the most profound yet misunderstood concepts in economics: opportunity cost. The episode covers why economists are always talking about costs, what scarcity really means, and why absolutely nothing in life is ever truly free.Dr. Davies explains why time is the most radically scarce resource of all, unable to be reused or spent on two things simultaneously, and how this gives rise to the concept of opportunity cost -- the foregone benefit of the next best alternative use of your time and resources. He illustrates this with a concrete example, comparing the choice between a concert and a night at the cinema, and shows how the real cost of any decision is not just what you pay but what you give up.The episode also tackles the subjectivity of value, explaining why the same concert ticket means something completely different to different people, and why Oscar Wilde’s famous quip about economists knowing the price of everything and the value of nothing fundamentally misses the point. Dr. Davies shows how prices in markets are not cold and empty but rich with information about what people actually value relative to everything else available to them.The episode concludes with the crucial distinction between stated preferences and revealed preferences -- what people say they would like to do versus what they actually choose to do when opportunity cost is taken into account -- and why revealed preferences tell us far more about what people genuinely value.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs interview, IEA Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz speaks with Dr. Rainer Zitelmann, historian, sociologist, and author of New Space Capitalism, about the rise of private space industry and what it reveals about markets, incentives, and the limits of state-led enterprise. They examine how space exploration has shifted from a government monopoly to a competitive private sector, and what the economics of that transition look like.The conversation covers the record of NASA’s government-run programmes, particularly the Space Shuttle, whose per-flight costs vastly exceeded forecasts and which ultimately left the United States reliant on Russian rockets to reach the International Space Station. They discuss how SpaceX’s reusable rockets reduced launch costs by 95%, why the old Cost Plus contracting model incentivised waste rather than efficiency, and how Obama’s political indifference to space turned out to be its unlikely enabler. Zitelmann also takes aim at Mariana Mazzucato’s moonshot framing, arguing she cherry-picks a decade of success and ignores fifty years of failure.The interview then turns to the frontier questions: asteroid mining, property rights in space, the Outer Space Treaty’s legal grey areas, and whether private ownership on Mars is not just desirable but necessary for survival. Zitelmann argues that socialism failed everywhere on Earth and would fail even faster in the hostile conditions of outer space, and sets out his proposal for how space property rights could be structured on the model of the American West.📖 Buy New Space Capitalism by Dr. Rainer Zitelmann: https://www.amazon.co.uk/New-Space-Capitalism-Entrepreneurial-Stars-ebook/dp/B0GN9Q8C7H📄 Read Dr. Zitelmann’s IEA paper, Exploring the Space Economy: https://iea.org.uk/publications/exploring-the-space-economy/ This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, host Callum Price is joined by Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz and Senior Economist Dr Valentin Boboc. The episode examines the political turmoil in Westminster, the Government’s King’s Speech, and what both mean for the UK economy. The discussion centres on the bond market, fiscal credibility, and why political chaos matters far more when public debt is already stretched.Dr Boboc and Kristian Niemietz dig into the UK’s deteriorating fiscal position, with around 8% of all public spending now going on debt interest alone. They assess why bond markets are nervous about whoever ends up leading the Government, arguing that the real problem is not the chaos itself but the absence of any credible plan on spending, growth, or taxation. The King’s Speech is assessed in detail, including the Government’s “Regulating for Growth” bill, the nationalisation of British Steel, and what Kristian describes as Chris Snowdon’s “capitalist command economy” thesis: a state that does not want to own industry directly but increasingly dictates what private companies produce and how.The conversation closes with a look at a Labour backbench growth paper that Kristian describes as the closest thing to a centre-left supply-side agenda he has read in the British context. He and Dr Boboc explore why rationing key inputs like land, energy and childcare drives up costs and then triggers expensive spending programmes to compensate, and what genuine fiscal consolidation through growth might actually look like.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs briefing, Dr Kristian Niemietz is joined by IEA Head of Lifestyle Economics Dr Christopher Snowdon to examine a question with no easy answer: what kind of economy does Britain actually have? Neither neoliberal nor socialist, Chris makes the case that the UK has drifted into what he calls a “capitalist command economy” — one where industries remain largely in private hands but are increasingly directed, targeted, and fined by the state.Chris and Kristian work through the evidence: boiler companies fined for not selling enough heat pumps, car manufacturers penalised for selling too many petrol vehicles, supermarkets being required to track and reduce the calories their customers buy, Gatwick Airport granted a new runway only on condition it controls how its passengers travel. They trace the roots of this model through price controls, rent regulation, minimum wage creep, and the Government’s habit of outsourcing its policy goals to business while escaping the blame when things go wrong.The conversation closes with the question of whether this model is stable. Drawing on Mises’s concept of interventionism as an inherently unstable system, Kristian asks whether the capitalist command economy simply creates the conditions for a more conventional socialist government — or something else entirely. Chris argues the real problem is that Britain lacks even a word for what it has become, and that naming it is the first step to challenging it.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Lord Frost is joined by Kristian Niemietz, Editorial Director, and Dr Valentin Boboc, Senior Economist, to work through three of the week’s most pressing economic questions. The episode opens with a debate sparked by a Daily Telegraph piece from former IEA chair Neil Record, who argues that Britain may not have a housing shortage in the conventional sense. Niemietz and Boboc push back, examining how demand grows faster than supply as a country gets richer, why the rental market tells a far bleaker story than headline ownership figures suggest, and how over £70,000 of regulatory costs have been added per housing unit in recent years alone.The conversation then turns to the Planning and Infrastructure Act and its restrictions on vexatious judicial reviews, using the recent case of a solar farm as the first real-world test. The panel assesses whether cutting the artificial waiting period from 14 months to two months represents a genuine turning point for infrastructure delivery in Britain, or whether NIMBYs will simply adapt and find new avenues for delay.The final segment examines a warning from Conservative MP Neil O’Brien that Treasury forecasts for capital tax revenues may be built on shaky foundations. With the Government leaning heavily on stamp duty, capital gains tax, and inheritance tax to plug a fiscal gap, Boboc and Niemietz argue the tax base is too narrow, too volatile, and too geographically concentrated to deliver the roughly £30 billion the Treasury is counting on by 2030.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this bonus episode of the Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, host Callum Price is joined by Director General Lord Frost and Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz to answer listener and viewer questions. Released to mark the podcast recently passing its 200th episode milestone, the panel tackles a wide range of topics submitted by the audience, from public spending and austerity to inflation, climate policy, housing and migration.The discussion opens with the challenge of winning public support for a smaller state, with Lord Frost arguing the current tax and spend model is close to exhausting itself and that the ideas need to be ready for when it does. The panel go on to address Milton Friedman’s monetary theory and how it applies to recent inflation, before turning to climate policy, where they make the case that adaptation through market incentives is preferable to emergency state-led intervention. The housing section examines why supply constraints drive price volatility, why migration has complicated the political case for building, and why expectations of ever-rising house prices are a consequence of policy rather than culture. The episode closes with questions on the Norway model, the Reform versus Greens policy comparison, whether small staters should work in the public sector, and Stephen Davies’ Great Realignment thesis.The panel also reflect on passing 200 episodes of the weekly podcast and what the IEA’s role is in shaping the economic debate at a moment when the dominant political settlement looks increasingly fragile.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: Greta Thunberg, Stockholm, 30 April 2024. Photo by Frankie Fouganthin, licensed under CC BY 4.0. via Wikimedia Commons.Thumbnail image: Margaret Thatcher. Photo provided by Chris Collins of the Margaret Thatcher Foundation, licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

This week on the IEA Podcast, Lord Frost, Dr Kristian Niemietz and host Callum Price dig into the Bank of England’s decision to hold rates at 3.75% — and whether the Governor should still have his job after the near 10% inflation disaster of 2021-22. With three wildly different scenarios on the table and the spectre of rates hitting 5.5%, the question is whether the Bank is still too soft on inflation and too cosy with a Government that desperately needs good news.Then the team turns to wealth taxes. Kristian has published a new IEA paper demolishing the case for them — and the arguments are sharper than you might expect. Britain already raises more from wealth-related taxes than almost any OECD country. Wealth inequality has been broadly flat since 1990. And even the most optimistic wealth tax proposal would raise, at best, 1% of GDP — nowhere near enough to fund the endless list of promises its advocates attach to it. The real question is why this idea has consumed so much of the national conversation when it solves almost nothing.Finally, the Government’s plan to effectively ban traditional tumble dryers in favour of slower, less effective heat pump models. Is this net zero policy, EU alignment by stealth, or simply Ed Miliband picking your appliances for you? The team argues it is a perfect microcosm of everything wrong with British economic policy — a rich country solution imposed on a country that simply cannot afford it. Subscribe to the IEA on YouTube and on Substack at iea.org.uk for more.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Callum Price is joined by Kristian Niemietz, IEA Editorial Director, and Arun Advani, Director of the Centre for Analysis of Taxation and a former Wealth Tax Commissioner. The discussion centres on the IEA’s new paper, “Fool’s Gold: The Case Against the Wealth Tax,” covering why the idea has gone from niche curiosity to political obsession, what the evidence actually says, and why both guests conclude a wealth tax is, at best, a bad idea within the normal range of bad policy ideas.The conversation examines the core problems with a wealth tax in practice: the valuation difficulties, the risk of capital and people leaving the country, and the fundamental contradiction at the heart of the wealth tax campaign, which simultaneously promises to cut taxes on working people, fund the NHS, finance the climate transition, and reduce inequality. Advani draws on the Wealth Tax Commission’s findings, including the estimate that a 1% tax on wealth above £10 million could raise around £10 to £12 billion, but notes that behavioural responses mean the real figure would be considerably lower. Niemietz argues the real cost of the wealth tax debate is its opportunity cost: every hour spent on a policy that will not work is an hour not spent on things that would.The final section turns to what should be done instead. Niemietz points to the genuine drivers of falling wealth inequality in the post-war period: wider pension saving and rising home ownership. He argues that liberalising planning rules and building more homes, at the scale Britain managed in the 1930s, would do more to spread wealth than any tax on it. Advani adds that fixing the existing, poorly designed taxes on capital income and transfers would be a more productive use of political energy than building an entirely new tax from scratch.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

Modern Monetary Theory has taken the internet by storm. From viral Twitter threads to bestselling books, MMT promises that governments can spend freely without the usual constraints — that money can be printed to fund hospitals, green energy, and public services without consequence. But is any of it true? In this episode, Christopher Snowdon sits down with economist and author Emmanuel Marjorie, who spent years studying MMT from the inside, to find out.Emmanuel lays out the most charitable case for MMT — the steelman version its own proponents rarely articulate this clearly — before systematically dismantling it. From the theory's flawed inflation model to the accounting mistake at its very foundation, the conversation exposes why a theory that sounds intuitive to millions of people online falls apart under even basic scrutiny. As Emmanuel reveals, MMT was not disproved by its critics — it was undermined by an error its founders never acknowledged.If you have ever wondered why governments do not simply print more money to solve their problems, or why you pay tax if the state can create currency at will, this is the episode for you. Emmanuel's new book, If You Can Just Print Money, Why Do I Pay Taxes?, is out now (https://emaggiori.com/mmt/) 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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs interview, Dr Christopher Snowdon speaks with Roger Bate, Fellow at the International Centre for Law and Economics and former IEA Fellow, about the failures of the World Health Organisation during COVID and the case for fundamental reform — or outright replacement. They discuss the International Health Reform Panel, a new group co-chaired by former WHO insider David Bell and former UN Assistant Secretary General Ramesh Tacker, which is pushing for a first-principles reassessment of what a global health body should actually do.Roger sets out how the WHO’s funding model has shifted dramatically over its 80-year history, with over 80% of its budget now coming from voluntary donors including the Gates Foundation, Bloomberg Philanthropies and the European Commission rather than nation states. He argues this has left the organisation aligned to donor priorities rather than public health needs, contributing to its failures on COVID — from dismissing the airborne nature of the virus to going along with Chinese-style lockdowns while abandoning its own pandemic playbooks. The conversation also covers the ongoing pandemic treaty negotiations, the WHO’s damaging stance on tobacco harm reduction and vaping, and the question of who should lead the organisation next.Roger and Christopher discuss whether the WHO can be reformed from within or whether a replacement organisation is needed, the role of billionaire philanthropy in distorting global health science, and why budgets for tuberculosis, malaria and HIV are being squeezed to fund pandemic preparedness plans modelled on the very response that failed. Roger argues the most momentous event since the Second World War has gone almost entirely without honest evaluation — and that without one, the next pandemic will repeat every mistake of the last.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, host Callum Price is joined by Managing Editor Daniel Freeman and Energy Analyst Andy Mayer to discuss the latest UK unemployment data, the impact of artificial intelligence on the labour market, and the Government’s recent energy market reforms.The episode opens with the latest jobs figures, which showed unemployment falling to 4.9% — but with the bulk of that drop driven by people leaving the workforce altogether rather than finding work. The panel examine the role of the Employment Rights Act, rising employer National Insurance contributions, and the equalisation of the minimum wage for younger workers, arguing these policies have made hiring significantly more expensive and are contributing to rising economic inactivity, particularly among 18 to 24 year olds. The panel also touch on the Unite Union staff strike against their own union and the broader implications of expanded trade union access rights. A new Centre for American Progress report on AI and the UK labour market is then assessed, finding little disruption to employment so far, with the counterintuitive example of programming jobs actually rising since the rollout of tools like ChatGPT.Andy Mayer then walks through Ed Miliband’s proposal to reform the renewables obligation system, which would shift older wind farm contracts from market-linked pricing to the contracts for difference model. Mayer argues that while the reform may produce more price stability, it is unlikely to deliver lower bills and risks undermining the price mechanism in the electricity market, leaving Britain with a consistently expensive energy system. The panel close by discussing what a sensible alternative energy mix might look like, with nuclear identified as the only viable firm, low-carbon power source.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this episode of the IEA Podcast, Callum Price is joined by Editorial Director Dr Kristian Niemietz to launch a new series on the IEA Insider Substack: Millennial Liberalism. The series, inspired by the IEA’s 1985 anthology The New Right Enlightenment, brings together young classical liberals to share how they came to their ideas in a generation overwhelmingly hostile to free markets. Kristian explains why liberals of any era have interesting origin stories worth telling, while their left-wing peers rarely do, because being left-wing at a young age has become the default rather than a deliberate choice.The conversation digs into the polling that defines the moment. More than one in three young Britons hold a positive view of communism, two-thirds back BLM, and around half favour reparations for the transatlantic slave trade. Kristian argues this is not boomer slop from the right wing press but the sincere answers of millions of young people, and he dispels the comforting myth that this generation will grow out of it. The data shows older millennials in their early 40s already think indistinguishably from teenagers, meaning the traditional rightward drift with age has effectively stalled.Callum and Kristian also explore why the old left-right map no longer fits, with progressives driving cancel culture and the British right increasingly defined by NIMBYism and a refusal to build anything. They discuss what unites today’s young classical liberals with the boomer-era thinkers who came before them, the intellectual sources they still draw on from the Chicago and Austrian schools to Robert Nozick, and what gives Kristian hope that liberalism can survive as one credible option among many, even if it never becomes the majority view.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Callum Price is joined by Director General Lord Frost and Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz to discuss the week in economics. The episode covers findings from the IEA’s landmark public opinion report on British attitudes to economic growth, a new poll from the New Statesman on the gender gap in political attitudes among young people, an IPR report on NHS reform, and the SNP’s proposal to cap prices on essential food items.The panel examines the IEA polling which found that most Britons believe the UK is wealthier than comparable economies such as the United States, Australia and Singapore, when in fact it lags behind most of them significantly. The discussion moves to the generational and gender divides in political opinion, with Kristian noting that Britain is something of an outlier internationally, where young people across the board have moved left rather than following patterns seen in France or Germany. On the NHS, the panel critiques the IPR’s report arguing against a move to an insurance-based funding model, questioning whether it engages seriously with why some health systems outperform others and what role market mechanisms and incentives play.The final segment takes on the SNP’s pre-election pledge to introduce price caps on staple foods including bread, milk and eggs. Kristian sets out why price controls distort the signals that coordinate supply and demand, and Lord Frost and Callum explore the practical consequences, including reduced supply, gaming of the system by producers, and the likelihood of follow-up interventionist legislation to paper over the failures of the original 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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this episode of Free the Power, the IEA’s occasional series looking at free market solutions to problems in climate and energy policy, IEA energy analyst and COO Andy Mayer speaks with Catherine McBride, CEO of the Great British Business Council and lead author of the report Premeditated Industrial Destruction. They discuss how three quarters of UK energy is not electricity but oil, gas and coal, and why decades of green regulation have quietly hollowed out Britain’s industrial base. The conversation takes in the collapse of the chemicals sector, the carbon border adjustment mechanism, flawed emissions accounting, and why the UK’s claimed 50% emissions cuts shrink to 19% once imports are factored in.Catherine and Andy examine the specific industries that have been lost or are disappearing, from aluminium smelting and titanium dioxide production to ceramics and cement, and why highly productive industries are being replaced by low-productivity service jobs. They debate the role of the emissions trading scheme, the windfall tax on North Sea producers, and how the Government’s planning and licensing regime has made the UK uniquely hostile to domestic energy extraction compared to Norway and the US.The episode closes with Catherine’s three priorities for any future government: lifting the windfall tax and other levies on North Sea producers, scrapping the licensing restrictions that prevent new wells, and reversing the net zero framework that she argues has made no measurable difference to global emissions while destroying competitive industries. She also highlights the critical minerals sitting in old coal mine tailings across the UK and the safety risks of the proposed carbon capture pipeline through the Peak District.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

Britain wants growth. 87% of the public support it, cutting across age, income, and political affiliation. But there is a catch: most people do not believe they will ever actually see the benefits. While nine in ten expect big corporations and the wealthy to gain from a growing economy, barely half think it will improve their own lives. That gap between wanting growth and trusting it explains almost everything about British politics right now.Matthew Lesch, public policy fellow and country manager at Freshwater Strategy, joins the IEA podcast to walk through a major new polling project of 3,000 people and a series of focus groups. The findings are striking. Two thirds of Britons think the country is heading in the wrong direction. Most believe their living standards are lower than their parents’. And when asked where the UK would rank if it were a US state by income per capita, the average guess was seventh. The real answer is 51st.What does the public actually want? Lower energy bills, tax cuts for workers, more housing, and public services that work. Not ideology, not abstract GDP targets, just tangible improvements to daily life. Lesch breaks down the six political tribes driving opinion, explains why Reform and Green Party voters have more in common than anyone expects, and sets out what it would actually take to build a public mandate for pro-growth reform in Britain 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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, host Callum Price is joined by Director General Lord Frost and Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz. The episode covers the Home Office’s decision to revoke Kanye West’s travel authorisation, the Green Party’s push for rent controls ahead of local elections, and new evidence on the employment effects of the minimum wage.On the free speech and visa question, the panel examines whether the government was right to bar Kanye West from entering the UK, whether non-citizens should enjoy the same speech protections as British nationals, and how visa denial powers tend to be applied inconsistently along political lines. Kristian argues the same standard applied at the border should mirror what would be permissible to say domestically, while Lord Frost contends governments retain a legitimate interest in controlling who enters the country, provided it is done within clearly defined rules.The conversation then turns to rent controls, where Kristian sets out why near-unanimous economist consensus against them exists, distinguishing between first and second generation controls and explaining why both produce misallocation and supply problems. The panel also discusses Ryan Bourne’s recent Times column on the minimum wage, arguing that political pressure has pushed it far beyond the level at which negative employment effects can be avoided, and that the policies most often defended as helping low-paid workers tend in practice to harm them most.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

What really causes recessions? Tyler Goodspeed, former chair of the White House Council of Economic Advisers and author of Recession: The Real Reasons Economies Shrink and What We Can Do About It, joins Daniel Freeman to challenge everything we think we know about economic downturns. Drawing on over 300 years of economic history across Britain and America, Goodspeed demolishes the idea that recessions are the inevitable consequence of booms — arguing instead that economic expansions do not die of old age. They get murdered.From the 2008 financial crisis to the dotcom bust of 2001, Goodspeed reframes some of the most consequential economic events in modern history. Was 2008 really caused by reckless mortgage lending and greedy bankers? Or was a record-breaking energy price shock the real trigger? Was 2001 the dotcom crash — or was it September 11th that tipped the US economy into recession? And what does 300 years of data actually tell us about speculative bubbles, creative destruction, and the moral stories we tell ourselves when economies collapse?The conversation also turns to Britain’s chronic underperformance since 2008, and why the UK remains at least 30% poorer than the United States. Goodspeed argues this is not the unavoidable aftermath of a financial crisis — it is the direct result of policy choices on taxation, land use, energy costs and financial regulation. For policymakers who claim to want growth, his message is clear: the first rule, as with medicine, is do no harm.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.Recession is available now in bookshops on both sides of the Atlantic. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

Is the triple lock on the state pension sustainable? What does the future of free speech in Britain actually look like? And when does safety regulation cross the line into doing more harm than good? Kristian Niemietz, Lord Frost, and host Callum Price tackle three of the most contested policy questions in British public life right now.The panel examines the case for and against the triple lock, exploring what a fairer, more sustainable pension system might look like and how the retirement age should relate to rising life expectancy. They also dig into the Adam Smith Institute’s proposed free speech bill, asking whether Britain’s long-standing reputation as a bastion of free expression still holds up when you look at the laws actually on the statute book.Finally, the group debates the real-world costs of building safety regulation, and whether politicians and the media are willing to have an honest conversation about trade-offs. It is easier said than done, but without that conversation, good policy becomes almost impossible to make.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, chair Callum Price hosts the 33rd Hayek Lecture, introduced by Lord Frost, IEA Director General. Harvard Professor of Economics Edward Glaeser delivers the lecture entitled “Does Britain Need a Second London?”, examining the relationship between urban density, housing supply and economic growth. Kristian Niemietz, IEA Editorial Director, joins the panel discussion alongside Lord Frost to respond to the lecture and discuss its implications for Britain.Glaeser sets out the economic case for cities, arguing that density drives productivity, innovation and upward mobility. He examines Britain’s chronic failure to build housing and infrastructure, tracing it to planning restrictions that have constrained London’s growth and throttled the capacity of other cities to develop. Drawing on data from across the United States, he argues that high house prices are a supply problem, not a demand problem, and that the places which build the most are consistently the most affordable. He also challenges the case for rent control, new state-built cities and large-scale rail investment, arguing instead for deregulation, brownfield densification and mass production in housebuilding.The panel discussion ranges across Britain’s 18 years of near-stagnant per capita growth, the counterintuitive finding that planning restrictions worsened under Thatcher, the limits of government competence in directing economic development, and Lord Frost’s observation that government policy effectively killed Birmingham as a productive city in the post-war decades. The conversation closes with the argument that Britain is not physically full — it simply believes it is, and that changing that psychology is essential to changing the country’s economic prospects.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

Hayek’s Law, Legislation and Liberty is one of the most important works of political philosophy of the 20th century -- but it’s also one of the most difficult to read. Written over 15 years while its author battled illness, moved between continents, and collected a Nobel Prize, the book is uneven, repetitive, and densely philosophical in places. In this interview, Dr Eamonn Butler, director of the Adam Smith Institute, explains why he wrote a guide to make Hayek’s ideas accessible to a modern audience.At the heart of Law, Legislation and Liberty is Hayek’s theory of cultural evolution: the idea that our most important institutions -- justice, morality, language, markets -- were not designed by anyone, but emerged gradually over millennia. Butler explains why Hayek believed this process produces a kind of accumulated wisdom that no government planner can replicate, and why attempts to redesign society from scratch -- from the French Revolution to Soviet Russia -- have so consistently ended in failure, repression, and corruption.The interview also covers Hayek’s famous critique of social justice, his views on the proper limits of democracy, the difference between “law” and “legislation,” and what the most important lesson of the book is for policymakers today. Dr Butler’s guide to Law, Legislation and Liberty is published by the IEA and is available now -- link in the description. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Daniel Freeman, Managing Editor at the IEA, speaks with Dr. Gregory Clark, Professor of Economics at the University of Southern Denmark and author of A Farewell to Alms (2008) and The Son Also Rises (2014). The conversation explores why economic growth was almost non-existent before 1800 and what set Britain on the path to the Industrial Revolution, focusing on the relationship between social mobility, fertility patterns and the gradual transformation of human behaviour over centuries.Dr. Clark sets out his argument that pre-industrial England was characterised by a consistent fertility advantage among the upper and middle classes, with wealthier families producing significantly more surviving children than poorer ones. He explains how this demographic pressure drove the slow downward spread of commercially useful traits through the population over many generations, contributing to declining interest rates, rising literacy, and falling rates of violence long before industrialisation took hold. The discussion also covers why other societies with comparably sound institutions, including ancient Rome, Babylonia and Qing Dynasty China, never made the same transition, and what role European marriage patterns, particularly the tendency to marry later and for love rather than family arrangement, may have played in shaping the distribution of abilities within society.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Callum Price is joined by Kristian Niemietz, IEA Editorial Director, and Lord Frost, IEA Director General. They discuss the OECD’s latest growth forecasts, which place the UK as the hardest hit economy in the G20, the Government’s response to the energy price shock, and what — if anything — should be done about rising inflation.The conversation then turns to the Government’s new towns plan, narrowed from 12 to 7 proposed sites. Kristian and Lord Frost debate whether these amount to genuine new towns or simply extensions of existing conurbations, whether the history of new towns offers any useful lessons, and whether the current planning system is capable of delivering the housing numbers the country needs.The final segment examines a piece in The Critic by Steve Loftus arguing that AI will be so transformative that capitalism itself will need to be replaced. Kristian and Lord Frost push back, questioning whether AI is truly different in principle from previous technological revolutions, what the productivity figures actually show so far, and what Hayek’s insights about tacit knowledge mean for the limits of machine intelligence.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.0:00 Introduction 1:56 OECD Growth Forecasts & The UK’s Energy Crisis 11:20 New Towns: Central Planning or Pragmatic Housing Policy? 24:18 Will AI Replace Capitalism? This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

Are we living through the biggest financial bubble in history — and does anyone in power know it? In this IEA event, Rt Hon Steve Baker FRSA and Max Rangeley present a joint case that decades of deficit spending, money creation and artificially low interest rates have inflated an asset bubble unprecedented in its scale and scope. Drawing on data from the OBR, the Bank of England and the OECD, Baker sets out the broad strategic context: from Nixon closing the gold window in 1971 and the collapse in the purchasing power of money, to the tripling of the UK money supply between 1997 and 2010, and the Government effectively printing its way through Covid.Rangeley then takes the argument further, showing how each recession since the late 1980s has been met with lower interest rates and larger debt bubbles — from the dot-com crash to the 2008 financial crisis to the present day, where total global debt has surpassed $300 trillion. Using original data on corporate productivity, zombie companies and asset valuations, he argues that this cheap credit has not driven investment and innovation but instead entrenched stagnation, priced young people out of housing, and suppressed birth rates across the developed world.Baker closes with a warning and a call to action. When this bubble bursts, he argues, it must not be misdiagnosed as a failure of free markets — it is the product of a centrally planned monetary system propping up a welfare state that cannot fund itself through taxation alone. The speakers urge economists, journalists and policymakers to undergo a paradigm shift in economic thinking before it is too late, and make the case that the choice ahead is not inevitable decline but one between collapse and renewal.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, host Callum Price is joined by Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz and, making his first appearance on the podcast, Senior Economist Dr Valentin Boboc. Together they discuss a busy week in British economic policy. The episode opens with Rachel Reeves' Mace lecture, in which the Chancellor set out her theory of growth and the case for an "active and strategic state." The panel assess what she got right on diagnosis, where the contradictions lie, and what the same-day announcement of 50% steel tariffs reveals about the direction of travel.The conversation then turns to the Green Party leader’s economic speech, which the panel characterise as “karaoke anti-Thatcherism” — a consistent set of arguments, consistently wrong. Topics covered include the claim that private housebuilding cannot solve the housing crisis, the energy supply problem, and the proposal for a wealth tax projected to raise around £15 billion, which Dr. Bok notes is roughly four or five days of current government spending. Kristian also examines the historical record of wealth taxes and why a narrowly targeted version is unlikely to raise the sums being claimed. The episode also addresses the government’s approach to youth unemployment, where measures including the National Insurance rise and the Employment Rights Bill are seen to be working against the very problem a new youth employment hub is supposed to fix.The final segment covers a piece on supermarket planning restrictions, exploring how the town centre first policy has driven up costs, squeezed out independent retailers and forced supermarkets into buildings never designed for the purpose. The panel argue that the real issue is not supermarket-specific but reflects a broader failure of land use and planning policy — one with consequences across housing, energy, infrastructure and the cost of living.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.Photo: Chris McAndrew / UK Parliament This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

Governments across Europe have convinced themselves they can pick winners, drive innovation and save the planet — all at the same time. But what happens when the bill comes due? Kristian Niemietz is joined by Professor Kristin Sandstrom and Professor Magnus Henriksen, authors of a new IEA report on green industrial policy in the EU, to find out.From Northvolt — the European Union’s flagship battery manufacturer that became Sweden’s largest bankruptcy since the 1930s — to the broader failure of the Green Deal to deliver on its promises, the case studies are damning. The professors argue that the problem with industrial policy is not just picking winners, but creating losers: distorting markets, misallocating capital and leaving local communities to foot the bill.Climate policy has become the Trojan horse for a new era of big government intervention — and the economics profession has largely failed to push back. This interview cuts through the green rhetoric and asks what a genuine exit strategy from the Green New Deal would actually look like.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.The professors' book, A Green Entrepreneurial State?, is open access and available here: https://link.springer.com/book/10.1007/978-3-032-15512-2 This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

Join Andy Mayer, IEA Chief Operating Officer, with Sean Ridley, energy and environment analyst at the Centre for Policy Studies and co-author of Power to the Markets, for a comprehensive breakdown of why Britain’s energy market has stopped functioning as a market at all. This episode of Free the Power explores how decades of subsidies, government targets, and intervention have eroded price signals to the point where costs are locked in for generations, and consumers are left footing the bill.Ridley traces the journey from the 2008 Climate Change Act through to Ed Miliband’s Clean Power 2030 plan, explaining how a drive to decarbonise the grid has produced a system built around capacity rather than price. The discussion unpacks the Contracts for Difference model, the Renewables Obligation, and the regulated asset base model for Sizewell C, revealing how each layer of policy has compounded costs for households. As one industry executive told a parliamentary committee, even if wholesale prices halved, bills would still rise due to the upward pressure of accumulated policy decisions.The conversation also examines Great British Energy, the government’s flagship national energy champion, questioning whether an £8 billion capitalisation can realistically compete with the likes of EDF or Orsted, and whether it risks becoming a return to 1970s-style nationalised industry. Ridley argues that Power Purchase Agreements, better price signals, and a genuine market role for small modular reactors offer a credible alternative path to cheap, reliable energy without the government picking winners.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

Inheritance tax is one of Britain’s most hated taxes -- but is the outrage justified? Kristian Niemietz sits down with Rory Meakin, Research Fellow at the Taxpayers’ Alliance and author of a new IEA paper on inheritance tax, to examine what this tax actually does, how much it raises, and whether it makes any economic sense. From the farmer protests that pushed the issue back into the headlines, to the surprising fact that Britain sits in the global top five for inheritance tax rates, this conversation cuts through the politics to look at the hard numbers.Rory and Kristian explore the serious practical problems with inheritance tax -- from the near-impossible task of valuing a privately owned family business, to the compliance costs that fall squarely on grieving families rather than the state. They also tackle the ideological debate head-on, revealing that the case for a 100% inheritance tax has been made not just by left-wing commentators, but by figures like James Buchanan, the Nobel Prize-winning father of public choice economics -- and they explain why that argument ultimately fails in the British context.The conclusion is striking: inheritance tax doesn’t raise much revenue, likely damages savings and investment, and is the least popular tax in Britain -- yet the current system is more punitive than most comparable countries, particularly when it comes to passing wealth to your own children. Rory sets out what a reformed system could look like, including raising the threshold to £2 million -- which would remove 95% of estates from the tax altogether -- and explains why, even if full abolition is off the table, there are straightforward ways to make this tax far less damaging.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this episode of the IEA Podcast, Lord Frost is joined by Kristian Niemietz and Andy Mayer to discuss the growing “Dubai phenomenon” — why increasing numbers of Brits are leaving the UK to build a better life abroad, and why politicians like Ed Davey are wrong to criticise them for it. The panel argues that rather than attacking those who leave, Britain should be asking why it can no longer offer the living standards, low crime, and economic opportunity that draws people to places like Dubai in the first place.The conversation turns to energy policy, where Andy Mayer welcomes the Government’s moves to implement the Fingleton Review on nuclear energy, making the case that a nuclear-led decarbonisation strategy would cost around £400 billion less than the current renewables-heavy approach. The panel challenge the Committee on Climate Change’s claim that net zero will cost Britain almost nothing, arguing the assumptions behind it are implausible and that nuclear power — with a 90% capacity factor versus solar’s 10-12% — is simply a far more reliable and affordable path to decarbonisation.Finally, the panel examines a troubling free speech case in Germany, where an IEA author was accused of posting a Nazi symbol for sharing a satirical image comparing Putin to Hitler. Kristian and Andy argue this reflects a broader erosion of free speech culture across the West — where laws designed for a pre-internet world are being weaponised in bad faith to silence political opponents, and where the only real safeguard is a strong cultural commitment to free expression that is increasingly absent.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

Callum Price is joined by Dr Lawrence Newport, co-founder of Looking for Growth, a grassroots movement pushing for meaningful economic reform across the UK. Lawrence explains how the movement was born out of frustration with the Government’s first budget, which he argues was indistinguishable from years of previous Treasury thinking, typified by managed decline and a lack of ambition from the political class.The conversation covers the deep structural problems holding Britain back, from the inability to build infrastructure at reasonable cost and speed, to a legal and planning system that actively subsidises frivolous objections. Lawrence draws on concrete examples, including the Thames Valley Crossing, HS2, and the extraordinary case of a 30-year charity kite festival being shut down over a rare flower, to illustrate how quangos and an ever-expanding regulatory regime are strangling the country’s capacity to get things done.The pair also discuss the student loans crisis and the campaign to release Longitudinal Educational Outcomes data so that parents and students can make genuinely informed decisions about university. Lawrence argues that universities have engaged in deeply misleading practices for years, and that publishing this data in full would shatter a number of sacred assumptions about the value of a degree, ultimately benefiting students, taxpayers, and universities alike in the long run.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

On the 250th anniversary of its publication, we revisit one of the most consequential books ever written: Adam Smith’s The Wealth of Nations. Published on 9th March 1776 — the same year as the American Declaration of Independence — Smith’s masterwork laid the intellectual foundations for modern economics, free trade, and the idea that individual freedom, properly channelled through law and competition, can transform entire nations from poverty to prosperity.Daniel Freeman is joined by Dr Mark Skousen, presidential fellow at Chapman University and author of The Making of Modern Economics and the new IEA paper The Genius of Adam Smith. Together they explore why Smith, a Scottish moral philosopher with no economics department to his name, produced ideas that still define debates about wealth, inequality, and the role of government today. From the invisible hand to the system of natural liberty, Skousen unpacks why Smith’s three grand principles — justice, freedom, and competition — remain as radical and relevant as ever.They also take stock of the state of the Adam Smith model in 2026, asking whether his vision of peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice is advancing or retreating in the face of rising protectionism, trade wars, and renewed enthusiasm for state intervention. With Smith’s ideas increasingly under pressure from all sides of the political spectrum, this conversation is a timely reminder of what is at stake — and why, 250 years on, the debate Smith started is far from over.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

Australia made global headlines when it introduced a social media ban for under-16s, but does the evidence actually support such a drastic step? In this episode, Callum Price is joined by IEA Public Policy Fellow Matthew Lesh to examine the claims driving the push to restrict young people’s access to social media platforms. They explore what the research really says about social media and children’s mental health, drawing on the work of leading academic sceptics who find the link far weaker than campaigners often claim.The episode takes a close look at Australia’s ban in practice, finding that millions of accounts have been deleted whilst VPN usage has surged and teenagers are simply finding workarounds. Matthew argues that bans of this kind create a false sense of security for parents, undermine open conversations between families about online safety, and strip young people of the very safe, age-appropriate accounts that platforms have developed. The discussion also turns to the UK’s own consultation on a potential under-16s ban, including the alarming prospect of extending restrictions to AI chatbots.Matthew and Callum argue that well-intentioned as these policies may be, they risk doing more harm than good. Rather than reaching for prohibition, the answer lies in parental responsibility, digital education, and making better use of the child safety frameworks that already exist under the Online Safety Act. With the Government now openly consulting on measures that could dwarf what Australia has done, the stakes for British children’s access to the open internet have never been higher.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, IEA Director of Communications Callum Price is joined by Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz and Director General Lord Frost to discuss the Spring Statement, the Middle East crisis and its economic repercussions, and shifting British attitudes towards national identity and the NHS.The trio assess Rachel Reeves’s Spring Statement, which delivered little in the way of new policy direction. They examine the OBR’s report and note a modest but meaningful shift in tone from official forecasters, who are increasingly acknowledging the distortionary effects of high taxation and the link between employment rights legislation and rising unemployment. With the tax burden at a historic high and youth unemployment worsening, the panel argues the conditions are ripening for a more serious public debate about economic reform. They also discuss the geopolitical fallout from the Middle East crisis, warning that Britain’s energy policy, its cancellation of North Sea licences, and its strained relationships with key energy suppliers leave the country exposed to a significant price shock.The conversation concludes with a look at a Pew Research survey on national pride, which finds British respondents unusually likely to cite things they are not proud of. The panel explores the collapse in NHS satisfaction, noting that only 12% of people now cite the health service as a source of national pride, a dramatic reversal from its near-unanimous approval during the pandemic. They discuss what this signals for the appetite for reform and whether a return to economic growth could restore the national mood more broadly.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs interview, IEA Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz speaks with Jesús Armas, Venezuelan opposition activist and former IEA intern, about his imprisonment by the Maduro regime following the disputed July 2024 presidential election. Jesús describes being kidnapped by regime security forces, held in clandestine detention, subjected to torture, and kept in isolation for months, as well as the broader collapse of Venezuelan civil society under Chavismo.The conversation examines how Venezuela descended from a state with at least nominal civil liberties into a full dictatorship, drawing parallels with Soviet-era show trials and Hayek’s Road to Serfdom. Jesús explains how the opposition won the 2024 election with 70% of the vote, collected the tallies to prove it, and were then systematically persecuted for doing so. He also discusses the current political situation under Delcy Rodriguez, the prospects for democratic transition, Venezuela’s economic collapse including salaries below $1 a month, the destruction of the oil industry through nationalisation, and why 9 million Venezuelans have fled the country.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

The latest event in the Entrepreneurial Minds series brought together entrepreneur and mentor Simon Krystman in conversation with Lord Kamall for a wide-ranging discussion on entrepreneurship, innovation and the realities of building businesses. Designed to give aspiring founders and those interested in enterprise an honest insight into entrepreneurial journeys, the event explored the motivations, risks and lessons that shape successful ventures. Through an informal interview format followed by audience questions, attendees heard first-hand reflections on decision-making, resilience and the importance of learning through both success and failure.Krystman reflected on his unconventional route into entrepreneurship, challenging the assumption that entrepreneurs are simply “born” with innate talent. Drawing on early experiences founding a technology business in the 1990s, he described the risks of leaving secure employment with little preparation, the setbacks encountered when initial ideas proved unworkable, and the rapid pivot that ultimately enabled growth. The discussion highlighted practical themes including idea validation, customer demand, scaling challenges and the distinction between enjoying entrepreneurial creation versus managing large organisations.The conversation broadened into wider policy and social questions, including regulation, access to investment, community entrepreneurship and the cultural attitudes that shape innovation ecosystems. Audience discussion touched on philanthropy, local enterprise initiatives and comparisons between British and American approaches to risk and failure. Krystman emphasised mentorship and evidence-based validation as critical tools for founders, arguing that understanding customer need, rather than pursuing investment alone, remains the central determinant of entrepreneurial success.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

Lord Frost and energy analyst Andy Mayer join host Callum Price to dissect Reform UK’s latest economic pitch, weighing up Richard Tice’s proposals for a Great Repeal Act and a sovereign wealth fund built from public sector pension pots. While the panel finds much to welcome in Reform’s supply-side instincts, including scrapping the net zero legal target and reopening the North Sea, they warn that the plan contains a fundamental contradiction: you cannot credibly promise to burn red tape whilst simultaneously reaching for tariffs, protectionism, and “Buy British” mandates.The conversation turns to energy bills, where Andy Mayer delivers a forensic takedown of the Government’s claim that falling prices represent genuine progress. He argues that shifting green levies from household bills onto general taxation is an accounting trick, not a saving, and that forcing vast amounts of renewables onto an already strained grid is making energy both more expensive and less reliable. The panel agrees that without a serious commitment to nuclear power and a halt to the clean power drive, the UK risks sleepwalking into an energy crisis of its own making.The episode closes with a pointed debate on the Conservative Party’s push to ban social media for under-16s, with both guests pulling no punches. They argue that exploiting bereaved parents at a press conference to push poorly evidenced legislation is cynical and reckless, that hard cases make bad law, and that banning children from the internet does nothing to address the real causes of poor mental health. The broader concern, as Lord Frost puts it, is a political class that simply does not trust ordinary people to think for themselves.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

Your student debt keeps growing even as you pay it off. Sound familiar? Callum Price breaks down why the student loan system is failing students, taxpayers, and universities alike, and why tinkering with interest rates will never be enough. The real problem is that universities are paid to recruit students, not educate them, creating a system with completely misaligned incentives.The solution requires genuine structural reform: make universities financially responsible for the degrees they offer. If universities had to fund degrees themselves, they would have a real incentive to ensure graduates land well-paying jobs. Lift the tuition fee cap, allow proper market competition, and let third-party funders into the space.But fixing universities alone is not enough. The Government’s Employment Rights Act, National Insurance hikes, and minimum wage increases are making it harder and more expensive for businesses to hire young people. Until that changes, even the best-educated graduates will struggle to find the jobs that make their degrees worthwhile.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

Lord Frost, IEA Director General, joins energy analyst Kathryn Porter, author of the IEA’s landmark new report “Just Stop Oil?”, for a wide-ranging discussion on why oil and gas remain indispensable to modern life. Porter argues that the entire premise of the “just stop oil” movement is born from privilege, ignoring the fundamental role hydrocarbons play in medicine, agriculture, and technology. From hospitals built on petrochemicals to Sri Lanka’s fertiliser disaster, the case against abandoning fossil fuels is forensically made.The conversation shifts to Britain’s North Sea, where both speakers argue the Government is actively sabotaging a domestic resource. Porter warns that without domestic extraction, Britain will simply pay Norway to sell its own oil and gas back to it, while importing higher-carbon hydrocarbons from elsewhere at a net fiscal loss. Frost reflects on why this “collective madness” has gripped Western governments simultaneously, and what forces may finally be turning the tide.Rounding off the discussion, Porter outlines a looming gas supply crisis, the fragility of energy interconnectors with Europe, and why energy nationalism is not just predictable but legally and politically inevitable. Both speakers see signs of a shifting debate, with the IEA’s own research receiving greater media traction than ever before. The supertanker, they suggest, may finally be beginning to turn.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe

In this Institute of Economic Affairs podcast, Director of Communications Callum Price is joined by IEA Director General Lord Frost and Editorial Director Kristian Niemietz to discuss the week’s major economic and political developments. The conversation opens with Robert Jenrick’s debut economic policy speech as Reform’s Treasury spokesperson, examining whether it marks a serious shift towards credible fiscal conservatism or a watered-down pitch to reassure the bond markets.The panel then turns to two conflicting data releases: rising unemployment, with the rate hitting 5.2% and youth unemployment now above the European average, against a stronger-than-expected January public sector surplus of £30 billion. Lord Frost and Niemietz debate what these figures reveal about the impact of the Employment Rights Bill and the Government’s broader economic approach, including the possibility of a U-turn on the youth minimum wage. The discussion also covers whether Britain has quietly surrendered its long-standing advantage of a flexible, low-unemployment labour market.The episode closes on a data integrity scandal: child poverty figures have been found to be based on significantly under-reported benefit income, with a gap of up to £44 billion between what people said they received and what the DWP actually paid out. Niemietz argues this is a long-standing and predictable problem with self-reported income data, and that relative poverty measures are a fundamentally flawed basis for policy anyway.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. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit insider.iea.org.uk/subscribe