The Institute of Economic Affairs invites you to attend an IEA Book Launch:




The Rotten State of Britain


(published by Gibson Square Books Ltd)




by Eamonn Butler




Tuesday 17th March 2009


6.30pm – 8.00pm (with brief remarks by the Author at 7.00pm)


2 Lord North Street, Westminster, SW1 (door on Great Peter Street)




Click To Buy –
‘The Rotten State of Britain’






Over-centralized government, a politicized civil service, a feeble Parliament and Cabinet, our rights eroded, bullying police and public officials, international isolation, a mountain of public and private debt, a proud country brought to its knees – that is how Will Hutton summed up the Thatcher/Major years in his 1995 book The State We’re In . But now, all those things are in fact very much worse.




In The Rotten State of Britain , Dr Eamonn Butler draws on a decade of media stories about political sleaze, lying, spin, the stifling of free speech, the erosion of liberties, nannying, debt, overspending, job losses, bankruptcies and public service failures. Like an Impressionist painter, he stands back from the detail to show just what an ugly picture of Britain is emerging – a Britain run by a self-serving political class who now believes in her own lies, and where justice, democracy and rights exist only in name.




Dr Eamonn Butler is author of the IEA’s best-selling Adam Smith – A Primer and introductions to Milton Friedman and F A Hayek. Last year he published a popular primer on markets, The Best Book on the Market . As Director of the Adam Smith Institute, Dr Butler has been a Westminster insider for thirty years – making him just the man to lift the lid on our political and government system and show just how rotten is what lies beneath.