I cannot tell you how delighted I am to be appointed the IEA’s new Executive Director and Ralph Harris Fellow (a position I will take up in December). The IEA has been a source of inspiration and enlightenment throughout my career, so it is a huge privilege to be asked to lead it into a new era. There is, truly, no job in the world I would rather do.
I will be joining the IEA with more than seventeen years of think tank experience. During that time, I have held senior positions at free market non-profits on both sides of the Atlantic and have worked in just about every area of think tank activity. I think it was that background, my commitment to the IEA’s classical liberal principles, and my deeply-held belief in its mission that persuaded the Board of Trustees that I was the right man for the job. Naturally, I plan to repay their faith in spades.
I am, of course, an optimist about the capacity of free individuals and enterprise to change the world for the better. That belief in people and progress is at the heart of the classical liberal worldview and is what sets us apart from our opponents on both the left and the right. But even an optimist cannot ignore the fact the intellectual tide seems to have turned against us.
We are told an ageing population must mean ever-higher tax and spend. That only an activist state can deliver economic growth and environmental sustainability. That free markets are engines not of dynamism and progress, but of risk and insecurity. These ideas are wrong but powerful. And they aren’t just held on the left; increasingly, they are the consensus of the ‘sensible’ centre.
Britain needs the IEA to once again lead an intellectual counter-revolution. Our goal must be to genuinely advance classical liberal thinking – and to show beyond doubt that markets can solve the big problems that we as a society are set to face in the years and decades ahead. That means producing top-quality, ground-breaking research, communicating it effectively, and patiently advancing public understanding of economics.
I am joining the IEA because I am confident that we can succeed in that mission and do again in the 21st century what our predecessors did in the 20th: change the prevailing climate of ideas and so shift the course of politics and society in a more liberal, free market direction.
You will be hearing more from me in the months ahead. Some of you already know me, of course. But I look forward to seeing you all in the not-too-distant future – and learning more about your hopes for the IEA's (and Britain's) future. For now, let me just say thank you for everything you have already done to support our cause. We have much more to do.
