Dr Eamonn Butler is Director and co-founder of Britain’s leading free-market policy think tank, the Adam Smith Institute, and a leading author and broadcaster on economics and social issues. Westminster insiders look forward each week to his wry online commentary on politics and politicians.

Eamonn and Madsen Pirie receiving the National Free Enterprise Award (Photo: Amanda Pyatt)

Eamonn is the winner, with his colleague Dr Madsen Pirie, of the 2010 National Free Enterprise Award, for the greatest contribution to furthering the market economy. In 2012 he was awarded an honorary D Litt from Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh in recognition of his outstanding contribution over several decades to the advancement of public policy and economics. Eamonn is Vice-President of the Mont Pelerin Society, an international association of distinguished economists and entrepreneurs, founded in 1947 by the Nobel Prize winner F A Hayek.

Eamonn Butler (centre) with the Principal & Vice Chancellor of Heriot Watt University, Professor Steve Chapman (l) and head of the Edinburgh Business School at Heriot Watt University, Professor Keith Lumsden.

Eamonn is author of books on a wide range of subjects, from economics through psychology to politics. These include easy-read introductions to the economists Milton Friedman, F A Hayek and Adam Smith, and a short explanation of how markets work, called (modestly) The Best Book on the Market, which he wrote to be “so simple that even politicians can understand it.”