Daniel Hannan

British writer, journalist and politician who was a Conservative Member of the European Parliament for South East England from 1999 to 2020, became a member of the House of Lords in 2021, and was announced as Director General and Ralph Harris Fellow of the Institute of Economic Affairs from June 2026. He is known for his free-market and Eurosceptic writing, including work for The Sunday Telegraph, and for his role in the Brexit campaign.

Free-Market Politics Must Be Rebuilt From First Principles

Daniel Hannan, the new director of the Institute of Economic Affairs, argues that Britain’s problem is not just bad policy but a lost understanding of the case for markets, trade and limited government. In a Hoover Institution conversation with Andrew Roberts, Hannan says free-market ideas must be rebuilt from first principles, especially among younger voters, because their core claims are counter-intuitive and no longer carried by political habit. His wider case links economic illiteracy to protectionism, legal and bureaucratic overreach, culture-war imports and a politics that denies scarcity and trade-offs.

Hoover InstitutionMay 8, 202622 min read