How to sell the free market

Forget about France's Emmanuel Macron, says Matthew Lynn. If you want to know how to sell the free market, look to Germany's Christian Lindner.

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Christian Lindner: making business seem heroic again
(Image credit: Copyright (c) 2016 Rex Features. No use without permission.)

Young, charismatic, liberal, with a sense of humour, and rising political support. No, this is not yet another article about Emmanuel Macron, France's new president. It's about Christian Lindner, the 39-year-old leader of Germany's Free Democrats (FDP). Alongside Macron, Linder is fast emerging as the most interesting young politician in Europe. A liberal in the old-fashioned sense of the word, he has started to work out how to sell free-market ideas in the 21st-century.

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Matthew Lynn

Matthew Lynn is a columnist for Bloomberg, and writes weekly commentary syndicated in papers such as the Daily Telegraph, Die Welt, the Sydney Morning Herald, the South China Morning Post and the Miami Herald. He is also an associate editor of Spectator Business, and a regular contributor to The Spectator. Before that, he worked for the business section of the Sunday Times for ten years. 

He has written books on finance and financial topics, including Bust: Greece, The Euro and The Sovereign Debt Crisis and The Long Depression: The Slump of 2008 to 2031. Matthew is also the author of the Death Force series of military thrillers and the founder of Lume Books, an independent publisher.