In 1945, Antony Fisher visited the neoliberal economist Friedrich Hayek at the London School of Economics. Fisher, an old Etonian who worked in the City, shared the Austrian’s belief that the nascent postwar welfare state would eventually lead to totalitarianism. Fisher wanted Hayek’s advice. Should he go into politics? No, the professor said, something like a thinktank would have far more “decisive influence in the great battle of ideas”.
Fisher went on to found the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the outfit widely credited, among other things, with incubating Liz Truss’s disastrous premiership. Fisher later moved to the US, where he set up the Atlas Network, an umbrella organisation that now covers more than 450 thinktanks, including influential groups such as the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Many are charities. Few name their donors.
