Our Team

Global Vision is chaired by Lord Norman Blackwell. The Director is Dr Ruth Lea and Ian Milne acts as Consultant. Their biographies are set out below.

Lord Norman Blackwell

Chairman: Lord Norman Blackwell

Norman Blackwell was Head of the Prime Minister's Policy Unit at 10 Downing Street from 1995 to 1997, and also served in the Policy Unit from 1985-86. He was created a life peer in 1997, and currently sits on the House of Lords Select Committee on the European Union. A former partner of McKinsey & Company until 1995, he now has a range of business interests. He is also Chairman of the Centre for Policy Studies. He holds a Doctorate in Finance and Economics and a Master's Degree in Business Administration from the Wharton Business School, University of Pennsylvania.

Ruth Lea

Director: Ruth Lea

Ruth Lea is currently Director of Global Vision and Non-Executive Director and Economic Adviser to Arbuthnot Banking Group. She is the author of many papers on economic matters and writes regularly for the press. Ruth was Director of the Centre for Policy Studies from 2004-2007. She was also Head of the Policy Unit at the Institute of Directors (IoD) between 1995 and 2003, before which she was the Economics Editor at ITN, Chief Economist at Mitsubishi Bank and Chief UK Economist at Lehman Brothers. She also spent 16 years in the Civil Service in the Treasury, the Department of Trade and Industry and the Central Statistical Office. She has served on the Council of the Royal Economic Society, the National Consumer Council, the Nurses' Pay Review Body, the ONS Statistics Advisory Committee, the ESRC Research Priorities Board and the Retail Prices Advisory Committee.

Ian Milne

Consultant: Ian Milne

Ian Milne has been the Director of the cross-party think-tank Global Britain since 1999. He was the founder-editor (in 1993) of The European Journal, and the co-founder (in 1995) and first editor of eurofacts. He is the translator of Europe's Road to War, by Paul-Marie Coûteaux, (published by The June Press), and the author of numerous pamphlets, articles and book reviews, mainly about the relationship between the UK and the European Union. His most recent publications are A Cost Too Far? (Civitas, July 2004), an analysis of the net economic costs and benefits for the UK of EU membership, and Backing the Wrong Horse (Centre for Policy Studies, December 2004), a review of the UK's trading arrangements and options for the future. He is chairman of companies involved in publishing and book distribution. He graduated in engineering from Cambridge University and has a forty-year career in industry and merchant banking in the UK, France and Belgium.