One of the founders of the ‘Vote Leave’ campaign is set to become the new head of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).
Lord Daniel Hannan will step down as international secretary of the Conservative Party and leave the Conservative whip in the House of Lords to take up the role of director-general at the IEA in June. He will sit as an independent in the House of Lords following the transition.
Hannan succeeds former Conservative cabinet minister Lord David Frost, who stepped down from the position in March for personal reasons after only two months in the role. Frost has since taken on a new position as the IEA’s first senior policy fellow.
Hannan served as a Member of the European Parliament for South East England from 1999 to 2020, and was one of the key figures behind the ‘Vote Leave’ campaign advocating the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union in 2016.
Hannan previously wrote on X: “Everyone says that we have a politician problem, but our politician problem is a manifestation of our electorate problem. As long as voters demand free stuff, MPs will try to give them what they want.”
Commenting on his appointment, Linda Edwards, chair of the IEA, said: “Lord Hannan is one of those rare figures who combines serious intellectual depth with the ability to communicate ideas to a genuinely mass audience—and to do so with energy and conviction that is entirely his own.” She added “He does not merely hold the right views; he has spent his life persuading others to share them. That is exactly what the IEA needs.”
Hannan said: “The IEA set Britain free. When it was founded in 1955, there was a consensus in favour of high spending, industrial management and economic planning.”
