Here is the latest nomination in our series highlighting people David Cameron should consider appointing to the House of Lords, since any Conservative administration formed after the general election would be able to call upon the support of the lowest number of Conservative peers in history.
If you would like to nominate someone, please email Jonathan Isaby with your suggestion, including key arguments for the nomination as well as biographical information. The sources of nominations will be treated confidentially where requested.
No. 56: Toby Baxendale
Steve Baker writes:
"Toby Baxendale is an Entrepreneur, Economist, Magistrate, Ironman Triathlete, Philanthropist and Family Man.
Being brought up by a single mother in a West London housing association flat, no-one could brand Toby Baxendale a “Tory Toff”. He has made the most of every opportunity: he now owns and runs a successful food wholesale business that turns over in excess of £100 million per year and the range of his personal achievements is staggering.
He is not a man to sit back and pontificate as things around us decay. He rolls up his sleeves and empowers people to make progress. He has set up, with the help of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, the Distinguished Hayek Visiting Fellowship at the London School of Economics. He is a strong advocate for Austrian School economic thinking, making personal academic contributions to measures of the money supply and business cycle theory.
To promote Manchester Liberalism and provide a home for Austrian School economics in the UK, Toby founded The Cobden Centre, "for honest money and social progress". Toby now chairs an impressive team of academics, businessmen and bankers drawn from the UK, Europe and the USA, which promotes concrete alternatives to the flawed economics popular today.
He is an ambassador for microfinance organisation, the Opportunity Trust, and he supports a new charity, GB Job Clubs, chairing the advisory board of their microfinance initiative, the Jericho Programme. Toby works hard to break down barriers to opportunity and to encourage and enable aspiration.
Toby serves the community directly by sitting as a magistrate, an experience which informs his instinct for meaningful social reform. His status as an Ironman triathlete speaks for itself and he is a dedicated husband to a highly successful wife and father to three children.
Toby Baxendale is engaging and thoughtful with a strong character and deep insights based on classical philosophy: he is a contemporary Renaissance Man. Toby has many friends in the Conservative Party and I believe his ennoblement would make available to a Conservative Government a man of considerable talent with a passion for social progress and economic reform."
> Previous nomination: Michael Spencer