This week, the discussion opens with the US midterms, where the Democrats made historic gains, from newly redrawn seats in Texas to a Senate seat in Kansas. Was the result really about the war in Iran, as some in the administration have claimed, or, with 39 per cent of voters naming the economy as their top issue and 66 per cent saying tariffs have hurt the national economy, a rejection of protectionism and its costs? The conversation examines how a tariff policy meant to reshore industry, close the trade deficit and raise revenue has delivered none of these, and how rising input costs filtered from businesses to voters across the Midwest and the Deep South. They also ask whether Trump’s following was ever a true cult of personality, whether those who went along with his trade policy should face an electoral price, and whether the Republican Party can return to limited government or the Democrats will draw the wrong lessons from their win.

The discussion then turns to the UK–EU summit on 20 November, where a draft deal to scrap post-Brexit checks on food exports would require Britain to follow EU sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) rules. Is the Government trading sovereignty for a smoother border, or taking on regulatory costs across the whole economy that far outweigh the savings at the border? The panel weighs up the youth experience scheme, the return to Erasmus and the question of who pays tuition fees for EU students, and asks why Britain appears to be accepting the EU’s demands without setting out its own.

The discussion closes with Michel Barnier’s warnings against “cherry picking”, whether rejoining the EU is a realistic prospect, and whether keeping the question open is more about uniting left-of-centre voters than any concrete plan to go back in. The panel argues that the real risk is not rejoining but the damage done along the way, and the danger of reopening the culture war that followed the 2016 referendum.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Economic Affairs

Analysis, argument and debate from those who know prosperity follows freedom. Read the writers setting the terms of Britain’s economic debate here daily, published by the Institute of Economic Affairs.

By Institute of Economic Affairs

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Snowdon explains how so-called “voluntary agreements” with industry are backed by the implicit threat of regulation, pointing to the ZEV mandate’s fines on car manufacturers and the food reformulation scheme’s sugar and calorie targets. He discusses the Government’s growing suspicion of the price mechanism, from energy bills to rent controls, and cites IEA polling showing the public wildly overestimates supermarket profit margins. The conversation also compares this system to Nazi Germany’s economic model and the FDR-era United States, before turning to post-Brexit farm subsidies and closing on why consumers, not politicians, ultimately decide what succeeds.

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

The conversation opens with an assessment of the Chancellor’s speech, questioning whether its talk of devolved spending pots and light-touch regulation marks a genuine shift from the previous Treasury approach or simply a change in presentation, and examining what the pledge for “public control” over industries such as water and buses would actually mean in practice given the state of the public finances. Daniel Freeman and Christopher Snowdon then turn to the findings of the ongoing review into youth unemployment, discussing why so many young people are being signed off with mental health conditions, how sickness benefit assessments have changed since the pandemic, and what reform might look like. The episode closes with a look at the 2025 PISA results, in which English pupils held their position against a backdrop of declining outcomes across most of the OECD, while Scottish and Welsh results fell sharply, and what that divergence suggests about curriculum reform and its link, or lack of one, to economic growth.

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.

On austerity, Julian argues that the “savage cuts” of the 2010s are largely a myth: headline public spending continued to grow in real terms through the decade, even as it fell as a share of national income. He makes the case that controlling the deficit after 2008 was necessary to avoid a bigger crisis, while acknowledging that capital spending, including on prisons, was cut further than it should have been. He also connects the tighter borrowing conditions the UK faces today, sometimes called the “idiot premium”, to concerns that the Government is not as serious about the public finances as the coalition was in the early 2010s.

On Brexit, Julian argues the overall economic data shows it was largely a non-event, with UK growth tracking similarly to France and Germany since 2016. He points instead to high energy costs as a better explanation for the UK’s underperformance, and sets out benefits from Brexit including new trade deals, lower tariffs, smarter regulation and reduced budget contributions to the EU. Asked to score austerity and Brexit out of ten for their role in Britain’s growth slowdown, Julian gives both a zero.

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.

Niemietz and Snowdon also examine the causes of Britain’s economic stagnation, and challenge the argument, revived in a recent speech by Andy Burnham, that the slowdown can be traced back to Margaret Thatcher’s reforms in the 1980s. They set out why the 1980s and Major years were, by historical standards, a period of strong growth, and question what a modern “post Thatcherite” settlement actually looks like.

The discussion turns to Donald Trump’s deal securing a share of Venezuela’s oil reserves, the Netherlands’ decision to move its gold reserves from the US to the UK, and what these episodes suggest about the reliability of American alliances. They close by discussing the psychological impact of Trump’s foreign policy on the UK and its allies, the Democratic Party’s choice of presidential candidates, and whether the old guard of Reaganite conservatism looks more appealing by comparison.

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 event marks the launch of the Institute of Economic Affairs’ new book, The Great Stagnation: Why Britain Stopped Growing. The panel is chaired by Daniel Freeman, Managing Editor and Deputy Editorial Director at the IEA, with opening remarks from Lord Daniel Hannan, Director General of the IEA, and Andrew Griffith MP, Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer. The panellists are Tom Clougherty, independent policy advisor and former Executive Director of the IEA; Julian Jessop, Economics Fellow at the IEA; Julia Williams, co-founder of the Centre for British Progress; and Kristian Niemietz, Editorial Director at the IEA. Together they examine why UK growth per head has flatlined over the past two decades, and what might be done about it.

Andrew Griffith opens by setting out the scale of the problem, from record government borrowing to interest payments that now exceed the combined defence and NHS budgets, before making the case for lower taxes, deregulation and reform of employment law and judicial review. The panel then turns to the causes of the slowdown. Tom Clougherty argues that post financial crisis regulation choked off business investment and looks at how repeated spikes in marginal tax rates on capital have held back recovery, while Julian Jessop makes the case that neither austerity nor Brexit can explain Britain’s poor performance.

Julia Williams raises the risk that Britain is unprepared for the economic disruption of artificial intelligence, given how much of the economy depends on service sector jobs. Kristian Niemietz sets out his “defence of stupid growth”, arguing that the UK simply does not build enough homes, roads or energy capacity to sustain growth, whatever else it gets right. The discussion closes with audience questions covering tax on high earners, comparisons with Sweden and the Nordic countries, South Korea and the United States, and the effect of an ageing population on Britain’s growth 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.

The conversation turns to the effect of minimum wage increases and higher employer National Insurance on youth unemployment, which has risen sharply since 2022. They also discuss the expansion of university education, arguing that too many young people are funnelled into degrees rather than apprenticeships or technical education, and consider the Government’s proposed mansion tax, including the prospect of tax inspectors assessing property values above £2 million. The discussion also covers why the UK’s tax burden, now around 40% of GDP, is at its highest level since 1947.

The episode closes with a look at Iceland’s referendum on reopening negotiations to join the EU, weighing up what Iceland stands to gain or lose on fisheries, agriculture and trade if it were to give up its current arrangement within the European Economic Area.

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

Len explains why the minimum wage is more complicated than a simple “does unemployment spike or not” question, covering its effect on youth unemployment and NEETs, wage compression further up the pay scale, and how the minimum wage now effectively sets pay for around a quarter of private sector workers. He also looks at how the growth of employment mandates, from the Equality Act to unfair dismissal rules, has pushed up the cost of hiring, and argues that many of these costs end up being paid by workers themselves through lower wages rather than by employers.

The conversation also covers the rapid rise of occupational licensing in Britain, which now covers 22% of the workforce, up from 13% in 2011, with examples including social work and undertaking. Len rates employment regulation as one of the more significant barriers to UK economic growth. If you would like to read Len’s chapter on labour market regulation, it is available in digital format now, with the full book, The Great Stagnation: Why Britain Stopped Growing, out in paperback on 2 September.

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 panel opens with new earnings figures showing public sector pay rising faster than private sector pay, and examines how the Employment Rights Act has added hidden costs for employers that are being absorbed through slower wage growth rather than paid openly. They discuss why the number of people on the Government payroll has grown substantially over the past decade despite falling public sector productivity, and debate whether a smaller, leaner state might actually work harder. The conversation then turns to net zero, looking at new research on the costs it adds to household energy bills, before moving to a lighter discussion of gambling sponsorship in football, the economics of banning adverts for so-called sin industries, and what snooker’s history with tobacco sponsorship reveals about unintended consequences.

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.

Tom sets out a hierarchy of taxes from least to most damaging to growth, explaining why well-structured property taxes are the least harmful while stamp duty is, per pound raised, the most destructive tax in the system. He discusses why Britain raises more in property taxes than any other developed country while doing so in one of the most economically damaging ways possible, and makes the case for broadening the VAT base to fund cuts elsewhere. The discussion also covers the political reasons why the least damaging taxes tend to be the most unpopular, why governments have grown reluctant to make difficult trade-offs, and what a genuinely pro-growth tax system might look like, including a move towards a flatter income tax and lower taxes on investment.

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.

James traces the rise and fall of welfare reform since Iain Duncan Smith’s changes in the 2010s, and argues the system has drifted back out of control since. He sets out why he believes sanctions and “tough love” are essential to any serious reform, criticises the effect of a rising minimum wage on youth employment, and discusses what he calls middle class guilt as a driver of welfare failure. The discussion also covers school choice and the case for expanding the private and free school sector, before turning to James’s work memorialising the victims of communism, including the newly unveiled Tank Man statue.

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.