taxpayers alliance uk

Liz Truss's think tank allies said mini-budget was 'fantastic'

https://www.opendemocracy.net › liz-truss-kwasi-kwart...

Sep 29, 2022 — Truss's think tank backers said her mini-budget would get the economy ... None of the think tanks discloses its funders, but the IE

when the UK’s new chancellor, Kwasi Kwarteng, announced a raft of tax cuts for high earners last week in his mini-budget, the response from the markets was damning. The pound fell to its lowest level against the dollar since decimalisation, and the cost of government borrowing jumped sharply.

But the announcements were cheered on by a group of secretive think tanks closely connected to Liz Truss and her advisers. After years of lobbying, a Conservative government had finally adopted their proposals to scrap the top rate of income tax, remove the cap on bankers’ bonuses, shelve a planned rise in corporation tax, and pledge a fresh crackdown on unions.

The Adam Smith Institute, where Truss’s political secretary Sophie Jarvis was head of government affairs, said the plans were “a welcome first step to getting the British economy back on track”.

The mood was particularly buoyant at the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), whose director general Mark Littlewood greeted the announcement by claiming: “This isn’t a trickle-down budget – it’s a boost-up budget."

truss and Kwarteng have faced accusations that their proposals are inspired by ‘trickle-down economics’, a term for a set of policies adopted by the former US president Ronald Reagan that cut taxes for the richest in the belief that wealth would then filter down to the poorest. The theory has been discredited by both the International Monetary Fund and Nobel Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz.

None of the think tanks discloses its funders, but the IEA has received donations from BP and ExxonMobil and, along with the Adam Smith Institute and the Centre for Policy Studies, the tobacco industry. The IEA and the Adam Smith Institute have also received millions of dollars from US funders of climate denial.

Later, speaking at a post-budget briefing, Littlewood was asked by journalists if he was anxious about his policies being put to the test.

“We don't write policy ideas just for them to sit on the shelf – we write them in the hope that one day they're enacted,” he said. But he also admitted that: “If it turns out that these don’t work, I think the IEA has got a lot of hard thinking to do.”

Tim Montgomerie, a former adviser to Boris Johnson, wrote on Twitter that the budget was a “massive moment for the IEA”. “They’ve been advocating these policies for years,” he said. “They incubated Truss and Kwarteng during their early years as MPs. Britain is now their laboratory.”

Truss is particularly close to the IEA, having founded its parliamentary wing FREER in 2011 and hired its former communications director Ruth Porter to run her campaign, later rewarding her by making her deputy chief of staff.

The Taxpayers’ Alliance, which once shared a Westminster office with the IEA, predicted that the budget would boost economic output by £99bn over the next ten years and said it was the “most taxpayer-friendly budget in recent memory.”

The economic projections were produced in collaboration with another think tank, Europe Economics. Andrew Lilco, the organisation’s executive director, was later asked to respond to criticism that the budget would benefit the rich more than the poor in an interview on Sky News. 

“I have no interest in equality. I think it’s an incorrect policy objective. I don’t think it’s morally or economically sound as a policy objective,” he said.

The Centre for Policy Studies, a think tank co-founded by former Conservative PM Margaret Thatcher, also claimed credit for many of the policies announced in Kwarteng’s budget.

Tom Clougherty, its ‘head of tax’, said on the earlier this week that: “I think that frankly both the overall message and the specific announcements contained within [the mini-budget] are fantastic. Exactly what we would have hoped for and what people like us have been calling for for a long time.”

The reaction from the markets and financial institutions has been in stark contrast to the celebratory rhetoric from Truss’s allies.

On Wednesday, the International Monetary Fund issued a stinging rebuke of the government’s tax cuts and called on the prime minister to reconsider them to prevent increasing inequality.

The United Nations fund, which monitors the international monetary system to identify risks and recommend economic policies, said the budget could undermine efforts to tackle already rampant inflation.

With turmoil continuing since Friday, the Bank of England was forced to step in to calm the markets. The same day, the bank announced it would buy £65bn of government bonds over the next fortnight as fears grew that pension funds could be affected.

The former Bank of England governor Mark Carney later accused the government of “undercutting” financial institutions and said its tax-cutting measures were “working at some cross-purposes” with the bank.

Speculation that the central bank will now increase interest rates to nearly 6% has prompted nearly 300 mortgage deals to be pulled by lenders. Millions of existing mortgage holders could now also face huge hikes to their monthly repayments.

919 desmog uk

...On taking office, he quickly surrounded himself with key allies from his days leading the UK’s pro-Brexit campaign, both in his cabinet and his close staff. All the appointees are part of anetwork of trans-Atlantic thinktanks and campaign groups pushing for environmental deregulation post-Brexit, based in and around offices at the now notorious address of55 Tufton Street.

Matthew Elliott — formerly Chief Executive of Vote Leave, founder of theTaxpayers’ Alliance, and husband ofa former Koch brothers employee and current chief of Republicans Overseas UK — is reportedly advising Johnson’s newly appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, Sajid Javid. One of Elliott’s former employees at the Taxpayers’ Alliance, Chloe Westley, is now working in the Prime Minister’s Office at Number 10. And several other staffers from the network are now advising cabinet members including Secretary of State for International Trade, Liz Truss.

Johnson’s prime ministerial campaign was also funded by two donors with close ties to theGlobal Warming Policy Foundation — the UK’s premier climate science denial campaign group, which is based in 55 Tufton Street — hedgefund managerMichael Hintze and Bristol Port ownerTerence Mordaunt.

Johnson’s loyalty to this network is partly born from the necessity of keeping the electoral threat ofNigel Farage’s Brexit Party at bay. At the last European Union parliament election in May 2019, Farage’s new outfit emerged victorious, sending 29 MEPs to the European Parliament. Of those, the UK public elected10 Brexit Party candidates who have denied or downplayed the climate crisis or who have well-publicised ties to climate science denial groups.

To counter that threat, the Prime Minister is now largely aping the populist party’s positions, including itsantipathy towards climate action.

..

==

omg hub/ with ridley?

https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/08/27/how-dark-money-overseas-flows-boris-johnson-s-government

With Boris Johnson sauntering into Downing Street having recrafted his own script from guffawing jester to grave populist, swathes of right-wing lobbyists have stealthed their way from the fringes of Westminster to the heart of government.

We know this, because we've been watching this slow erosion of democracy for years. In the time since the Brexit referendum, we and others have sought to uncover the connections of those now in the cabinet –  the money and friendly relationships behind the big changes taking place in Britain.

A cursory glance at how their multitudinous ties overlap reveals a network of dark money, shady think tanks and overseas influence that now runs right through Whitehall. Cohesive strategies or motivations are hard to pin down, but the one binding factor between them is a foreign-influenced deregulatory agenda frequently couched within the rhetoric of national freedom and liberty.

While the links between Brexit interests and big business are extensive, much of this money and influence seems to pour through Matthew Elliott, the former Vote Leave chief exec who now finds himself holding the government's purse strings. The Elliott example illustrates how power often stretches far out of public view.

lil sus map]

Vote Leave in the cabinet

The most prominent of the incomers, thanks in part to his dramatisation by Benedict Cumberbatch earlier this year, is Johnson’s new chief of staff Dominic Cummings. His frequently-referenced libertarian ‘anarchic’ proclivities have gifted him a semi-mythic status as an enticing new Whitehall villain.

But perhaps more instructive in terms of understanding the path of this new government are those arrivals via thinktanks and pressure groups whose special interests lie in limiting the role of the same government they are now part of.

Desmog has detailed how several of the new Johnson cabinet are now being advised by ex-staff from what’s known as the Tufton Street network – a group of organisations linked through their use of the same building in Westminster, and ideologically aligned through their lobbying on behalf of business interests.

One notable member of the Tufton Street network is the Taxpayers’ Alliance, a low-tax, anti-regulation pressure group whose campaigning work has provided a training ground for many of those now in government.

The Taxpayer’s Alliance was founded in 2004 by Matthew Elliot, a man who was Cummings’ ex-boss on the Vote Leave campaign and has played a part in a slew of right-wing projects over the past decade, and who is now Sajid Javid’s advisor at the Treasury.

Elliott finds other ex-colleagues now in government too, including the Taxpayers' Alliance’s former campaign manager Chloe Westley who is now Digital Advisor at Number 10, alongside many others from Vote Leave.

Trump towering

Through another of Elliott’s affiliates, Shanker Singham, there are links to the same deregulatory agenda which has swept through the US since Donald Trump came to power in 2016.

An investigation last year by Unearthed, Greenpeace’s investigative unit, revealed how Singham, via the prominent right-wing think thank the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), was willing to offer US agribusiness lobbyists access to prominent British politicianswhilst also authoring research on their behalf. The IEA, it is distinctly unshocking to find, is funded by BP and the tobacco industry.

Start chipping away at the glossy paint and you find that much of the funding for these ‘independent reports’ on trade policy and campaigns for national sovereignty come from hedge funds, big business, and billionaire industrialists like the Koch brothers. Many of these same people are also infamous funders of climate science denial.

Lobbying, industry funding and dark money in politics are nothing new, but the dramatically-shifting terrain being offered by Brexit and a changing global order have opened up space for powerful foreign interests to make significant inroads in just a few years.

Fighting for more sovereignty is all very well, but you should know whose sovereignty it is you’re fighting for.

https://www.desmog.co.uk/taxpayers-alliance

Background

The TaxPayers’ Alliance (TPA) is a British organisation that campaigns for a low tax society and greater transparency with taxpayer money. It was founded in 2004 by Matthew Elliott, former Chief Executive of Vote Leave, andAndrew Allum, a partner at L.E.K Consulting. Alongside climate science denial think tanks such as The Global Warming Policy Foundation, TPA is part of the network of right wing think tanks which occupy 55 **Tufton Street**.[1],[2], [3], [4]

The TPAclaims to have the support of over 90,000 grassroots activists campaigning for public spending cuts, and was described by Atlas CEO Brad Lips as “a force of nature in a relatively short amount of time.” With close links to frontbench Conservatives and business leaders, a number of TPA policy recommendationshave been taken up, such as reforming stamp duty, cutting beer duty, and cutting public spending. [1], [5],[6]

Stance on Climate Change

2010

The TaxPayers’ Alliance Manifesto, published shortly before the 2010 General Election, includes the following recommendation: [7]

“Abandon the wasteful 2020 renewables targets and the EU Emissions Trading Scheme so that families aren’t hit with big rises in energy bills.”

Funding

See the Taxpayers Alliance financial filings history via Companies House UK.

Key People

Staff & Board

Advisory Council

Business Supporters

According to an archive of the TaxPayers' Alliance website, between November 2004 and December 2005, “just under 150 businessmen and opinion formers signed two TaxPayers' Alliance letters to the Financial Times, and to the Daily Telegraph. The Financial Times letter concluded that Britain “cannot afford not to cut taxes - and to discipline spending growth accordingly”: [8]

Actions

April, 2018

In an article for CapX, an analyst for the TaxPayers’ Alliance dismissed fossil fuel divestment as harmful to the taxpayer and ineffective. [9], [10]

April, 2017

The TaxPayers’ Alliance signed a letter published in *The Telegraph* calling for the removal of renewable energy subsidies by 2020 and the expansion of the shale gas industry, alongside other right wing think tanks also located in 55 Tufton Street. [11]

October, 2016

The TaxPayers’ Alliance attends the Conservative Party Conference, co-hosting a fringe event with American climate science denying pressure groups the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and the Heritage Foundation. [12]

The event was aimed at promoting a new and ‘freer’ trade deal between the UK and US once the UK has left the European Union, and hints at what the groups may lobby the British government for in the future. [12]

August 2011

TaxPayers’ Alliance director Matthew Sinclairpublished the bookLet Them Eat Carbon, claiming that climate policies in the UK are inefficient, and that money for such policies only funds special interests. [13]

Related Organizations

Early versions of the TaxPayers' Alliance website described it as an “'umbrella group' to a number of like minded organisations committed to lower taxes.”In 2008, those groups included Isitfair, Surrey Tax Action Group, Tax Relief, the Association for British Drivers, and Bruges Group. [14]

TaxPayers' Alliance shares an address with a range of think tanks occupying 55 Tufton Street. Resident groups include or have included:

• The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF)
• Civitas
• Business for Britain
• Vote Leave
• The European Foundation
• UK2020
• The New Culture Forum

Contact & Address [4]

TaxPayers' Alliance

55 Tufton St

London 

SW1P 3QL

Tel: 020 7998 1450

Media: 07795 084 113

Social Media

• TaxPayers' Alliance on Facebook
• @**the_tpa** on Twitter
• The TaxPayers' Alliance YouTube channel

Resources

==

see 55 tufton

lil sys graf]

Building Residents

TheGlobal Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), founded by former Conservative Chancellor Lord Nigel Lawson. Several of GWPF's members and funders are affiliated with other groups located at 55 Tufton Street. [1], [3]

Civitas is an educational charity and publisher specializing in health, education, welfare, and economics. Sir Alan Rudge and Lord Nigel Vinson are both trustees – Rudge is an advisor at the GWPF while Vinson has funded the climate denial think-tank. The group has been criticised by Transparify for its “opaque” operations. [4], [5], [6], [3], [7]

TaxPayers’ Alliance is a pressure group and think tank formed in 2004 by Matthew Elliottto campaign for a low tax society. In 2016 the TaxPayers’ Alliance, along with U.S. climate science denying pressure groups the Competitive Enterprise Institute (CEI) and the Heritage Foundation, held a free trade event at the Conservative Party Conference. The group was, as of November 2015, a member of the **Cooler Heads Coalition**, a climate denial organization run by the CEI. The Taxpayers' Alliance belongs to an international coalition of anti-tax, free-market campaign groups called the World Taxpayers Associations. Other members include the Australian Taxpayers' Alliance, Americans for Tax Reform, the Austrian Economics Center and the Canadian Taxpayers' Federation. [8], [9], [10], [35]

Business for Britain is a pro-Brexit campaign group and was an occupant of 55 Tufton Street until October 2015.Matthew Elliott of the TaxPayers’ Alliance founded the group, Matt Ridley of the GWPF launched Business for Britain North East, and Lord Vinson acted as an advisor to the group. [11], [12],[13], [37]

Vote Leave was the official pro-Brexit campaign group. The group was originally a resident of 55 Tufton Street but moved to a bigger office several months before the referendum. Members included Nigel Lawson, Matthew Elliott, Graham Stringer (also a GWPF trustee), Matt Ridley, along with prominent Conservative Party politicians Andrea Leadsom, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove. GWPF and Tory donor Michael Hintze also donated to Vote Leave. [2], [14], [15], [16], [17], [18]

The European Foundation is a high-profile Eurosceptic think tank chaired by Conservative MP Bill Cash. The group published a report in 2009 around the time of the Copenhagen climate summit entitled “100 reasons why global warming is natural” which argues there is no proof that human influence has anything to do with climate change. Members of the group’s advisory board includeMatthew Elliott, Richard Smith, owner of 55 Tufton Street, the former UKIP MEP Roger Helmer, and Conservative MPs David Davis, Oliver Letwin, Bernard Jenkin, John Whittingdale, Graham Brady and Iain Duncan-Smith. Owen Paterson, former environment secretary and Chairman of UK2020, another organisation based at 55 Tufton Street, is also on the advisory board. [19], [20], [21], [22]

UK2020 is a right-wing think tank which has been called the British version of the American Tea Party and was set up by Owen Paterson in 2014. Among the policy recommendations the group calls for is “a robust, common sense energy policy that would encourage the market to choose affordable technologies to reduce emissions.” These technologies include shale gas and small modular nuclear reactors. Matt Ridley of the GWPF is a policy advisor for UK2020 and Tim Montgomerie, founder of the ConservativeHome website and a former senior fellow at the Legatum Institute, is their political adviser. [23], [24], [2], [36]

The New Culture Forum is a right wing think tank working to change cultural debates they believe are dominated by “the left”. According to the ConservativeHome blog, Matthew Elliott serves as an advisor at the forum, while Michael Gove, UK environment secretary, has spoken at its events. Its founder and director is Peter Whittle, former UKIP leader in the London Assembly and Culture and Communities Spokesperson for the party. [25], [26], [27]...

==

bit lost see clintel

https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/09/06/climate-science-deniers-planning-coordinated-european-misinformation-campaign-leaked-documents-reveal

A coalition of climate science denial groups is gearing up for a European media blitz later this month, in an apparent bid to derail efforts to set an EU-wide “net zero” emissions target, documents obtained by DeSmog show.

Plans for a self-styled “European Declaration” include press conferences in Brussels, Rome and Oslo and a letter to be sent to leaders of EU and UN institutions, scheduled for mid-September.

The letter claims to have “400 independent Climate Scientists and Professionals” signed up so far.

Some notable signatories are part of a trans-Atlantic network of thinktanks pushing for environmental deregulation post-Brexit, and have a history of climate science denial. A number of former employees of the network’s member organisations are now staffers in Boris Johnson’s cabinet  Brulle, Professor of Sociology at Drexel University and an expert on climate science denial, told DeSmog the campaign looked like a panicked response to recent high-profile efforts to highlight the climate crisis:

“The rise of the Extinction Rebellion movement, and the immense popularity and influence of Greta Thunberg, are having a significant impact on media coverage of climate change and concern about this issue. I would suspect that the aim of the campaign is to blunt the impact of these climate advocacy efforts.”

“The talking points are stale and patently scientific nonsense. That isn't critical. The point would be to keep the ‘contested’ nature of climate change alive.”

Geoffrey Supran, a Research Associate at Harvard University who gave evidence to the European Parliament in March on oil giant ExxonMobil’s historic promotion of climate science denial, said he thought the move was an attempt to distract from the various upcoming efforts to increase action on climate change globally, such as the UN Climate Action Summit at the end of the month:

“These people are the rhetorical equivalent to the kid in the classroom screaming ‘Look at me! Look at me!’ They're desperate for attention.”

“As always, they presumably hope to muddy the waters of public and political discourse on the climate crisis. To feed the echo chamber of sympathetic right-wing media and blogs, and to prey on naive and unsuspecting journalists who may be tempted to exercise false balance in their climate coverage.”

Coordinated effort

The campaign is being spearheaded by a new Netherlands-based climate science denial group called the Climate Intelligence Foundation (CLINTEL), launched in April with funding from Niek Sandmann, a multimillionaire real estate developer.

The group’s co-founder Guus Berkhout, an engineering professor who began his career at Shell and set up the Delphi Consortium in the 1980s to develop new exploration methods for the oil and gas industry, told DeSmog that interest in the campaign had been “overwhelming”.

Berkhout said there were plans to hold press conferences in European capitals and that the effort was being “expanded to a World Climate Declaration”. He declined to offer further details or comment.

In addition to CLINTEL, the international organising group includes some well-known figures from the climate misinformation world, including:

• Professor Richard Lindzen, former Distinguished Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute (USA)
• Viv Forbes, Chairman of the Carbon Sense Coalition (Australia)
• Professor Fritz Vahrenholt, Speaker at the European Institute for Climate and Energy (Germany)
• Professor Jeffrey Foss, Contributor to the Frontier Centre for Public Policy (Canada)
• Jim O’Brien, Chair and Co-founder of the Irish Climate Science Forum (Ireland)
• Terence Dunleavy, Founding Chairman of the International Climate Science Coalition (New Zealand)

In an email seen by DeSmog, Berkhout explains that “signatures are being collected from persons who give a valuable contribution to the climate debate and are recognised as such”. He goes on to boast that there are “already a lot of great names on the list”.

Of the 400 signatories, only a handful have a background in climate science, with the majority being writers, engineers and geologists with no direct expertise in the field.

In addition to the Cato Institute's Richard Lindzen,the list features numerous figures from US-based libertarian groups, including Patrick Michaels of the Competitive Enterprise Institute, and Charles Battig and Willie Soon from the Heartland Institute, which provides a total of 12 signatures alone. All three organisations are members of the Atlas Network, a Koch-funded international umbrella body of free-market groups.

UK affiliates of the network include the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) and the Taxpayers’ Alliance. A number of former employees of these groups are now working in Boris Johnson’s government.

Taxpayers’ Alliance founder Matthew Elliot**t** is reportedly advising new Chancellor Sajid Javid, whose Conservative leadership campaign he ran, while former employee Chloe Westley has joined Boris Johnson’s Number 10 team. International Trade Secretary Liz Truss has appointed two special advisors from the IEA and ASI.

UK support

The UK’s principal climate science denial group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation(GWPF), founded by former Chancellor Nigel Lawson in the run-up to the 2009 Copenhagen climate summit, is also well-represented in the campaign.

At least four members of its Academic Advisory Council feature in the letter’s signatories, and other contributors to the GWPF have also backed the “declaration”.

One is Northumbria University Professor Valentina Zharkova, who gave a lecture to the group last year claiming that climate change is caused by natural solar cycles. A paper Zharkova co-authored in June on the same subject was criticised for containing “basic errors” and an investigation into how it came to be published was launched by the scientific journal that printed it.

CLINTEL also has close ties to the GWPF. Berkhout wrote an essay for the UK group last year insisting that climate change was purely a natural phenomenon. And in February, the GWPF published an article by its Dutch counterpart that said: “Yes, the Earth is warming up. But that is business as usual. Earth’s history tells us that climate change has always happened.”

The following month GWPF director Benny Peiser spoke at a gathering in Amsterdam where CLINTEL announced its upcoming launch.

At that event, Berkhout: “in this whole audience, apart from the organisation and a few brave ones, I don't see young people. So the first thing we are going to do is talk with the young people.” CLINTEL currently has a youth wing called “Young Clintel”.

The GWPF did not respond to a request for comment.

Other UK signatories include directors and former directors of lesser-known oil and gas companies, as well as five Fellows of the Geological Society, a professional body representing Earth scientists.

In addition to the EU “net zero” emissions target under consideration, planned “climate strike” protests and the upcoming UN Climate Action Summit, the media offensive may also, given its European focus, be timed to coincide with a crunch government meeting in Germany on how the country will meet its 2030 emissions target, set to take place on 20 September.

German signatories to the letter include a spokesperson for the European Institute for Climate and Energy (EIKE), which a Der Spiegel investigation earlier this year found had been working closely with the insurgent, far-right Alternative for Germany party to campaign against action on climate change.