Over the past couple of years, I have written a lot about how socialists always enthusiastically endorse socialist projects as long as they are popular, and then disown them as soon as they fall out of favour, now claiming that those projects were never “really” socialist to begin with.

In recent weeks, we saw what looked like a dramatic role reversal. Faced with the downfall of the short-lived Truss-Kwarteng government, it was disgruntled free-market liberals who suddenly started to sound suspiciously like socialists: the ideas were good – they were just terribly executed! Trussonomics has not “failed” – it just hasn’t been properly tried!

Have “Trussista-Kwartengistas” become the Corbynistas of the Right?

A lot of our opponents are making such comparisons. In my post-mortem of Trussonomics, I ultimately reject this comparison, because it is a fundamentally false equivalence. There are gigantic qualitative differences in how liberals and socialists deal with real-world evidence, and own up to their mistakes.

I also wrote a piece on how the “eco-hooliganism” of groups like Just Stop Oil, Insulate Britain and Extinction Rebellion has become a completely normalised daily feature of life. The article turned out to be a bit more topical than I was hoping it would be, because this week, Just Stop Oil activists targeted the offices of our think tank friends at 55 Tufton Street, spraying gallons of paint all over the facade.

(The IEA itself was not directly impacted, presumably because these groups do not realise that even though we are often lumped together with the Tufton Street think tanks, we are not actually based there. Let’s keep it that way!)

Unpleasant and illiberal though this new eco-militancy is, it is nonetheless a cause célèbre. The eco-hooligans can count on the endorsement of the Guardian, and political figures such as former opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn. It is here to stay, and for better or worse, those of us on the free-market liberal side have to try to understand where this millenarian fanaticism comes from – if only to combat it more effectively.

Kristian Niemietz
IEA Head of Political Economy

The central problem, according to Ainsworth and McKenzie, is that universities are remunerated on the basis of how many students they can enrol, rather than on the basis of graduate outcomes. This incentivises the expansion of mass-market, low-quality courses that fail to prepare students for the workforce. 

The paper proposes an alternative funding model in which the university’s income is contingent on future earnings, thus marrying the long-term interests of students with those of the university. This will make universities more responsive to student demands, while forcing them to consider the suitability of the courses they offer and the students they enrol. The proposal could also save the taxpayer £60 - £220bn over twenty years.

EPICENTER EXPANSION

Our network of free market think tanks keeps expanding! Earlier this week, EPICENTER welcomed leading free market organisations of Germany and Slovakia to its network. Prometheus and INESS have been successfully changing the hearts and minds of Germans and Slovakians for over a decade.

With ten member think tanks and over a dozen partners, EPICENTER is ready to help tackle the challenges that Europe faces by providing non-partisan economic analysis and promoting the benefits of free markets and free societies across the continent.

To follow the work of our member think tanks, make sure to sign up to the EPICENTER newsletter here.

This month, IEA Energy Analyst Andy Mayer spoke on a panel with Bjørn Lomborg, author of the Sceptical Environmentalist and False Alarm, on the topic of energy security, at the second policy forum of the Global Liberty Institute in Switzerland.  

After Bjorn set the scene with an exposition on real climate risks versus assumptions, Andy gave a UK perspective, highlighting the failure of successive British governments to consider the risks of an energy policy rooted in an ideological approach to Net Zero, and one that ignores the trade-offs with security and affordability.

He noted the danger of setting legally binding targets, and explained how the current crisis demonstrates what governments will do when these objectives collide. He also discussed the importance of carbon pricing, the economic value of doing it to internalise the externality of emissions, and the need to ensure such prices were consistent.

The day before the UK government reversed its fracking policy and reimposed a ban, Andy highlighted that it might take the energy crisis becoming much worse before many European governments get a grip and work towards a more pragmatic transition, that uses fossil fuels to pay for R&D into better climate solutions.

CALLING ALL STUDENTS!



Monetary policy essay price... Applications remain open for the monetary policy essay prize, organised by the IEA, the Institute of International Monetary Policy Research and the Vinson Centre at the University of Buckingham.

This year's question is: Are the central banks to blame for the current inflation episode?

To be in with a chance of winning up to £500, you must submit your answer by 6 January 2023. Further details on how to enter can be found here.



On Wednesday, we're hosting a Teacher Seminar at our Westminster office. The event will include presentations from IEA researchers on issues related to the academic syllabus. The focus will be on the history of economic thought, whether forecasting makes sense, and the history of the government debt crisis.

The event will take place on 2 November 2022 from 10am–3.30pm. You can find more information on how to sign up here.