Advisory Council.

Advisory Council Members


Robin Edwards (Chairman) is a Chartered Accountant and Fund Manager who for fifteen years managed one of Europe’s largest global macro funds. He is involved as a director and shareholder in a number of businesses spanning real estate, climate financing, and funds management.

Robin is chairman of Latis Homes Limited which is committed to building low carbon, lifetime homes designed and built to promote sustainable living. Latis’ focus is on increasing the speed and quality of home construction whilst also reducing energy demand and providing quality housing and lifestyles well beyond those found in conventional UK high-volume housing.

He is also a partner at Carbon Plus Capital, a private investment manager who develops and invests in international forest-based carbon offset projects. Since 2010, the company has been working with investors to ensure a conversation-based, socially-responsible style of investment, with an ultimate focus on climate change mitigation.

Robin practised as a Chartered Accountant with Arthur Andersen LLC in London and as a management consultant in Australia prior to entering into the fund management sector. He currently acts as a Trustee of several charities such as Create Streets Foundation.

Lord Jamie Borwick is an elected hereditary peer in the House of Lords where he sits on the Conservative benches. Prior entering public office, he had an extensive career in business as the Chief Executive of Manganese Bronze Holdings Plc between 1987 and 2001, the manufacturer of London black cabs. Borwick was also the founder and owner of Modec, an electric truck producer in Coventry which operated between 2004 and 2011, along with Route2Mobility Ltd, which funded wheelchairs and scooters for disabled people, until October 2010.

He is currently the Chairman of Countryside Properties (Bicester) Ltd along with the Federated Trust Corporation Ltd, and serves as the director of Mayfield Market Towns Ltd. Along with this, he serves as Director of Penso Ltd, a leading engineering design and developments business which offers complete turnkey solutions for the manufacture of production parts, systems, and vehicles.

Borwick also plays an active role as trustee of numerous charitable organisations, such as the British Lung Foundation, The Federated Foundation, and the Ewing Foundation. Further, he is currently a director and trustee of the Science Museum along with the Royal Brompton and Harefield Charity.

Douglas Carswell is the President and CEO of the Mississippi Center for Public Policy, an American think tank working to advance the ideas of limited government and free markets. In his first two years at MCPP, he helped secure the largest tax cut in Mississippi history, with the state income tax slashed to a flat 4 percent, and a universal occupational licensing law, making it easier for people to find work in Mississippi.

From 2005 to 2017, Douglas served first Harwich, then Clacton, as a Member of Parliament. He was twice voted a Spectator Parliamentarian of the Year. Douglas pioneered the use of digital campaigning to win elections and has produced online content watched by hundreds of thousands. He has authored several books and influential policy papers and is regularly published in the Times, Financial Times, Telegraph and New York Times. Douglas founded ‘The Good Governance Project’ to help improve to improve the way the UK is governed by reengineering what government does and how public administration in Britain functions and has served as a non-executive director at the UK Department of International Trade since 2020.

Alex Deane Alex Deane is a Senior Managing Director in the Strategic Communications practice at FTI Consulting. He is part of the Public Affairs practice, and its Corporate Communications practice in EMEA. A Cambridge graduate, Alex practiced as a barrister for several years and served as the founding Director of Big Brother Watch. An active member of the Conservative party since 1995, Alex served as Chief of Staff to David Cameron and Tim Collins during their respective periods as Shadow Secretaries of State for Education in opposition. In 2007, he was asked to serve as an adviser to the Liberal Party’s campaign for re-election at the federal polls under John Howard.

For six years, Alex was an elected Common Councilman in the City of London, the famous “Square Mile”, home of Britain’s financial centre, serving on the main decision-making body, the Policy and Resources Committee. Alex often appears in the media as a political commentator; he is a Sky News regular and a BBC Dateline London panellist.

Linda Edwards is the Chairman of the IEA Board of Trustees, having spent time previously serving on the Board since June 2019 and the Board of Advisors since 2016. Linda undertook her undergraduate studies in economics at Trinity University in Texas, followed by a Juris Doctor at The University of Texas School of Law. She subsequently practised mergers and acquisitions at Latham & Watkins, the world’s second-biggest law firm. Linda went on to live in London, Dubai, Paris, and Hong Kong. Since 2018, she has been a Board Member of the Atlas Network, which was established by IEA Founder, Antony Fisher, and serves as a Trustee of the Reason Foundation.

Lord Howard Flight was appointed to the House of Lords by David Cameron, at the end of 2010. He was the Member of Parliament for Arundel from 1997 to 2005, during which time he served as Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury, and was a member of the Conservative Shadow Cabinet.

In the Lords, he is part of the Conservative working Peers’ teams covering Europe, Treasury Affairs, Financial Regulation and Pensions. He was a member of the Lords’ EU Economic and Financial Affairs Committee until the General Election and is now a member of the Delegated Powers and Regulatory Reform Committee.

Currently, Howard is Chairman of Flight & Partners, Aurora (Investment Trust) and Downing Four; Director of Investec Asset Management, and of Metro Bank, the new UK challenger bank; a Commissioner (Board Member) of the Guernsey Financial Services Commission, Director of Skil Ports & Logistics and Consultant to Duff & Phelps. He is also Chairman of the EISA (Enterprise Investment Scheme Association) and Consultant to TISA (The Investment and Savings Association).

Tom Harris Tom Harris is a Managing Director of the Investment Companies Team at Jefferies International in London. He served as a trustee of the Nigel Vinson Charitable Trust which generously endowed an educational partnership between the IEA and Buckingham University through the Vinson Centre for the Study of the Economic and Constitutional Foundations of a Free Society at Buckingham. Tom was the Conservative Party’s candidate for Richmond Park in the 2001 General Election. In addition to serving on the board of the IEA, Tom is a trustee for the Civitas Institute for the Study of Civil Society.

John Longworth is Co-founder and Chairman of the Independent Business Network. He was Director-General of the British Chamber of Commerce from 2011-2016. He Co-Chaired the Leave Means Leave campaign and was a Member of the European Parliament for Yorkshire and the Humber in 2019. Over the course of his career, John has done business on every continent and has had Executive Board positions at Asda Group and Tesco.

John is also an experienced non-executive board director who has worked as an advisor at board level across a number of organisations, including as a panel member of the Competition Commission, a Council Member of the World Chambers Federation, a Board member of the U.K. India Business Council, an Advisory Board member of Economists for Free Trade, and as Chairman of the Paris based CIES Trade and International Product Standards Committee.

Christian May is an Associate Partner at Hawthorn Advisors and Senior Counsel at 5654 & Company. He is an experienced journalist and corporate affairs professional. From 2015 to 2020 he was the Editor-in-Chief of City A.M., London’s daily business newspaper with a readership of just under 300,000 professionals. Christian was previously Head of Communications and Campaigns at the Institute of Directors, the UK’s largest organisation for business leaders. He was responsible for the IoD’s public profile, campaigns, and media activity, and took a leading role in shaping policy on areas including EU reform, immigration, infrastructure, innovation, and tax reform. Christian holds a degree in Politics from the University of Exeter and a Master’s degree in Journalism from London’s City University. Prior to his move into journalism was included in PR Week’s 2015 list of the 100 most influential PR professionals. He is a Freeman of the City of London, a Fellow of the British American Project and an advisory board member of the International Business and Diplomatic Exchange.

Alison Rankin Frost is a PR and communications specialist, founding partner in an investment business, and an experienced non-executive board director who has worked as an advisor at board level across a number of organisations. Alison is a Governor Emeritus of the London School of Economics, a Patron of the Royal Shakespeare Company, and a Non-Executive Board Director of British Showjumping. She is one of just over 200 Chartered Public Relations Professionals (CIPR) in the UK.

Currently, she acts as Director of The Bedford Hotel, a unique boutique hotel opening in Belfast’s city centre in 2025, and is a Trustee of The Monday Night Club. She was also a former President of the International Association of Business Communicators (IABC) in the UK.

Neil Record is a Life Vice President and Chairman emeritus of the IEA Board of Managing Trustees. Neil is also Chairman emeritus of Record Currency Management, a listed specialist currency asset manager that he founded in 1983, which currently manages over $54 billion in client currency. Neil was educated at Balliol College, Oxford, and University College London, from where he holds an MSc in Economics (with distinction). His first job was as an economist at the Bank of England which was subsequently followed by a stint in industry.

Record wrote the first book on specialist currency management within an investment context: Currency Overlay (John Wiley & Sons, 2003), has lectured on Investment Management at Cambridge University and was a visiting fellow at Nuffield College, Oxford. He is also author or co-author on numerous papers across currency management, the Euro and the pensions business, and was awarded as finalist in the Wolfson Economics Prize in 2012, writing on the currency consequences of a possible Eurozone break-up. Neil is a regular Telegraph newspaper columnist analysing economic issues.

Alexander Temerko is a prominent British industrialist and politician, currently acting as a director of Aquind Ltd which plans to build the AQUIND Interconnector power transmission line to link the British and French electric power grids.

Alexander holds degrees in engineering and law from the Moscow Institute of Electronic Machine Building and the Institute of Public Administration. He began his professional life as chief engineer of capital construction at the State Committee of the USSR on Environmental Protection, and was subsequently appointed as director of the Forestry Ministry’s Environmental Protection Branch. A supporter of the democratic movement, following the collapse of the USSR in 1991 Alexander Temerko was appointed junior minister to Boris Yeltsin’s cabinet. Between 1995 and 2000 he headed a united corporation that produced armaments for the Russian military. In 2000, Alexander was appointed deputy chairman to the board of directors of Yukos Oil Company. By 2005 Alexander had moved to the UK where, in 2008, he became director and deputy chairman of Newcastle-based OGN Group. OGN delivers a full range of oil and gas platforms for operations in the North Sea and is active in the development of wind farms, assembling foundations for offshore turbines.

Alexander became a British citizen in 2011 and has been a prominent member of the UK Conservative Party since 2012, being a member of the party’s Leader’s Group and vice-chairman of the Cities of London & Westminster Conservative Association. A history enthusiast, he is founder and chairman of a Geneva-based charity that works to preserve world cultural heritage. He also serves as an energy adviser to the Confederation of British Industry and is a member of the Institute of Directors. Temerko regularly contributes to major UK and international media on economic and political affairs.

Lord Nigel Vinson is a former Chairman of the IEA and a distinguished entrepreneur, having founded his first business at the age of 21, and successfully taking it public with over 1,000 employees when he was just 37. He has had a long-standing commitment to public service as both Director of the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Appeal and Chairman of the Rural Development Commission, where he served for a decade. With a distinguished career, Lord Vinson also held positions as a Main Board Director at Barclays Bank, Deputy Chairman of the Electra Investment Trust, and Chairman of Fleming Income & Growth. Currently, he is a long-standing patron of the Freedom Association, Trustee of the Chillingham Wild Cattle Association and Trustee of CIVITAS. In recognition of his dedication to public service, Nigel Vinson was appointed to the House of Lords in 1985 and served until his retirement in 2021.

Lord Vinson’s passionate belief in the moral principles of capitalism has been the driving force behind his advocacy for free markets and the empowerment of the less privileged in society leading to his foundation of the Centre for Policy Studies in 1974. Moreover, his generous endowment of the IEA’s partnership with the University of Buckingham has allowed the IEA to expand its influence and make a meaningful difference in educating and inspiring the next generation of leaders through the Vinson Centre at the University of Buckingham. University of Buckingham. This partnership further strengthens our commitment to fostering a deeper understanding of free-market economics and its impact on society.