set of random individuals. It imposes on us a duty to keep intact the freedoms that we were lucky enough to inherit from our parents and pass them on securely to the next generation." He advocates an affinity of "English-speaking nations" which share "Anglosphere characteristics". After British Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn suggested that the Elgin Marbles be returned to Athens, Hannan criticised Corbyn for "national masochism", writing in ConservativeHome that this confirms the view that Corbyn will "always and everywhere back another country against his own". Hannan similarly criticised former Downing Street press secretary Alastair Campbell for "cheering for the other side" after Campbell retweeted positions of Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar on social media while Campbell, writing in The New European, suggested that Hannan was "claiming a monopoly on patriotism." Journalist Philip Collins, in Prospect Magazine, writes "Hannan has the constant tra-la-la effusiveness of a man forever on his way home from choral evensong at an Oxford college. There is a sense from all of them of living out a caricature. None of them thinks they have signed up for the narrow version of nationalism written in blood." Electoral reform Hannan argues in his writings and in the media (for example, during an appearance on Question Time on BBC television on 28 May 2009) for ballot initiatives (whereby electors can directly enact legislation as happens in Switzerland), a power of recall (whereby a sitting Member of Parliament can be forced to submit to re-election if enough of the local electorate support this), fixed term parliaments, local and national referendums, open primaries and the abolition of party lists. He is also an advocate of Single Transferable Vote as a replacement for the UK's First Past The Post system of voting. Economic policy Hannan wrote in March 2011, criticizing anti-austerity protesters, stating they "have decided to indulge their penchant for empty, futile, self-righteous indignation". He remarked, "After 'No Cuts!' the marchers' favourite slogan was 'Fairness!' All right, then...How about being fair to our children, whom we have freighted with a debt unprecedented in peacetime?" A supporter of the 'leave' campaign in the 2016 Brexit vote, Hannan writes regularly about the United Kingdom's future international trade relationship once it leaves the EU. In September 2017, he became the founding president of the Institute for Free Trade (IFT), a free-market think tank based in London. Following the creation of the UK Government's Department