In a disastrous managerial move reminiscent of Chelsea FC, right wing think tank the Institute for Economic Affairs have replaced outgoing head honcho David ‘Frosty’ Frost with possibly the only other Tory peer more wacky – brain of Brexit Daniel Hannan!
Hannan, famously wrong about everything, is to take up the cudgels at the think tank this summer after Brexit bodger Frost stepped down after just three months in charge. It means that Hannan has resigned from the Conservative Party as the IEA is a charity and its directors must be non-party-political.
The IEA is a right wing, climate change-sceptic think tank responsible for many of the financial ideas which tanked Liz Truss’s short-lived government. Last year, the website DeSmog published an investigation showing that the IEA, which with charitable status enjoys the significant tax benefits it brings, received more than £640,000 from fossil fuel companies and Rupert Murdoch combined in the years up to 2005.
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Cheering his appointment in the Daily Telegraph, Hannan writes: “The IEA is one of the few bodies that seeks to teach economics across the board, including in schools. Not ‘neoliberal economics; just economics, including the idea that there is no such thing as a free lunch. Grasping that precept alone would cure us, as a nation, of around three quarters of our delusions.
“Because the IEA is a charity, I shall be leaving the Conservatives, and my party glands will be cauterised in a painful operation. Not that I was ever much of a party man, as regular readers know. I always had a horror of front-bench office, and the chief position I hold is as president of the Brighton Kemptown Conservative Association, an honorary role which involves opening the AGM.”
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A loss to the Brighton Kemptown Conservative Association, then, but a gain for the IEA in a man who not only got every single prediction about Brexit wrong – he forecast it would be such a huge success that other nations would be queuing up to follow Britain out of the door – but earlier this year was bemoaning the decision by Harold Wilson’s government to introduce decimalisation of UK’s currency in 1967, a move which took effect in February 1971.
Rats in a Sack pointed out at the time that it was a trifle odd that Hannan was so nostalgic for shillings, florins and thrupenny bits, given that he was born in September 1971, six months after decimalisation, and didn’t move to Britain until he was sent to boarding school in the Cotswolds at the age of eight, meaning that he never actually used the pre-decimal currency. Still, it’ll give the IEA a new project to pursue!
Frosty’s early departure, meanwhile, means he is now free to return to party politics – sparking speculation he could join Reform in the week ahead, given Nigel Farage’s deadline of the May 7 local elections for defecting Tories to sign up to his mob. Could Frosty be the first Reform face on the red benches?
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