55 tufton
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desmog
7 February, 2025 – UK Edition
It’s not festival season, but anti-climate forces are in the party spirit following the election of their fossil fuelled friend Donald Trump.
And so, on 17 February, the new president’s admirers and acolytes will descend on London for this year’s Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC) conference.
Like its Tufton Street forebears, ARC’s branding and mission appears to be intentionally nebulous. Is it a think tank? Is it an in-person LinkedIn network for new age authoritarians? Is it a good old fashioned lobby group for corporate interests?
We’ve been studying ARC for 18 months, and even we’re not entirely sure.
However, we do know a lot about the people funding ARC: hedge fund boss Paul Marshall, and the Legatum Group investment fund.
Marshall and Legatum are the brains behind GB News – the conservative TV channel that has repeatedly spewed out climate denial, platformed conspiracy theories, and boosted Nigel Farage since it was launched three and a half years ago.
Few have been more influential than Marshall and Legatum on the rise of anti-woke, anti-climate, anti-truth politics in Britain over recent times.
As of this week, we also know who will be speaking at ARC’s 2025 jamboree, aptly labelled “Glastonbury for climate deniers” by Hannah Greer at the Good Law Project.
The glittering lineup includes Tory leader Kemi Badenoch, Trump lackey Vivek Ramaswamy, House of Representatives Speaker Mike Johnson, tech bro Peter Thiel, and – of course – Nigel Farage.
In fact, we have digested the full list – documenting the innumerable ways in which these individuals have supported anti-climate, anti-science ideas.
Unlike at Glastonbury proper, I think I’d rather spend this particular festival stuck in the toilets.
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/dark-money-investigations/global-warming-policy-foundation-net-zero-watch-koch-brothers/
pix
Steve Baker MP, a trustee of the lobby group, has led the opposition to the government's net-zero policies
An influential Tory-linked lobby group leading the backlash against the UK government’s net-zero policy has received hundreds of thousands of dollars from an oil-rich foundation with huge investments in energy firms, openDemocracy can reveal.
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), which also campaigns as Net Zero Watch, has also received more than half a million dollars through a fund linked to the controversial billionaire Koch brothers.
The GWPF has long refused to disclose its donors and claims it will
from anyone with an interest in an energy company.
But tax documents filed with US authorities and uncovered by this website reveal the network of dark money behind it for the first time – including the $30m shares in 22 companies working in coal, oil and gas that are held by one of its donors.
shadow climate secretary Ed Milibandsaid: “US right-wing groups with links to big oil are desperate to stop action against the climate crisis. Now they are trying to extend their reach into UK political debate."
A registered UK charity, the GWPF is one of the most vocal groups in British politics opposing the government’s ‘net zero’ plans and has been at the forefront of recent calls to restart fracking.
The Tufton Street-based group’s trustees include former chancellor Nigel Lawson and Steve Baker, who leads the ‘Net Zero Scrutiny’ group of backbench Tory MPs and was recently criticised for sharing a paper by the group that denied the climate crisis.
Over four years the GWPF’s US arm, the American Friends of the GWPF, received more than $1.3m from US donors. At least $864,884 of this has been channelled to the UK group, with some being held back for expenses.
Of the £1.45m that the GWPF has received in charitable donations since 2017, at least 45% has come from the US.
American ideological groups are trying to interfere in British democracy
The Global Warming Policy Foundation’s US ‘friends’ group did not have to declare the sources of this so-called ‘dark money’ – but openDemocracy has discovered through the filings of other groups that:
- Between 2016 and 2020 the American Friends of the GWPF received $620,259 from the Donors Trust. Described as a “dark money ATM” for the US political Right, the secretive trust has given hundreds of millions of dollars to more than 100 groups working to cast doubt on the scientific consensus behind climate change.
- The Donors Trust has received millions from the Koch brothers, who inherited their father’s oil empire and spent hundreds of millions of dollars funding the climate denial movement before David Koch’s death in 2019. More recently, it received nearly $4.8m from America First Works, a non-profit closely tied to Donald Trump that contributed millions to his failed 2020 reelection bid as well as to campaigns to restrict mail voting. The GWPF told openDemocracy that the Donors Trust was simply a “middleman, matching donors to those seeking funding” and that it was “able to vet [donors with which it was matched] in line with our funding policy”.
- TheGWPF also received $210,525 in 2018 and 2020 from the Sarah Scaife Foundation – set up by the billionaire libertarian heir to an oil and banking dynasty. The US-based foundation has $30m worth of shares in 22 energy companies including $9m in Exxon and $5.7m in Chevron, according to its financial filings. It has bankrolled numerous conservative causes, including the right-wing Daily Caller news site and the Heritage Foundation think tank.
“It is disturbing that the Global Warming Policy Foundation is acting as a channel through which American ideological groups are trying to interfere in British democracy,” said Bob Ward, policy and communications director at the LSE Grantham Research Institute on Climate Change and the Environment.
Founded by Lawson and university lecturer Benny Peiser in 2009, the GWPF has long been accused of promoting climate denialism.
Last week, Peiser
the unfounded claim that Putin has “colluded with the green movementin Europe and all over the world”.
The GWPF – which Greenpeace UK said has “spent the last twenty years campaigning to preserve our addiction to fossil fuels” – has become increasingly prominent in recent years.
The group was forced to set up a new non-charitable organisation for its political lobbying in 2014 after the Charity Commission found its stance on climate change breached charity rules.
Labour MP Graham Stringer sits on its board of trustees, while two of Global Warming Policy Foundation’s staff recently became advisers to Tory MP Craig Mackinlay. Another trustee, Terence Mourdant, is a long-standing Tory donor who gave £25,000 to Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign.
Steve Baker, who joined the GWPF last year and has called on Boris Johnson to resign over partygate, is a long time admirer of US libertarians. He has previously received expenses-paid trips to conferences organised by US conservative groups that have been accused of opposing environmental action.
‘Net Zero Watch’
In October last year, the UK government announced its strategy for reducing carbon emissions to net zero by 2050.
The same month, the GWPF’s campaigning arm – the similarly-named Global Warming Policy Forum – rebranded itself as Net Zero Watch, a name it continues to use alongside the original moniker.
In a statement announcing the change, Peiser claimed that in a “net zero future you will be poorer and colder” and “that a political backlash is long overdue” in response to the policy.
Net Zero Watch has repeatedly claimed that the cost of living crisis is the result of net-zero policies.In a report published in March, it said that renewable energy is responsible for the crisis and called for the government to reintroduce coal power plants and restart fracking.
Climate policy researchers said that the group is spreading “misinformation and propaganda” about net zero rather than providing analysis.
Net Zero Watch has found allies in Parliament among a group of 20 Tory MPs and Peers, who formed the Net Zero Scrutiny Group, a cadre of backbench Conservative MPs modelled on the European Research Group that has emerged as a staunch critic of Boris Johnson’s net-zero plans.
Net Zero Scrutiny Group members include former work and pensions secretary Esther McVey; Robert Halfon, a former schools minister; and Tory peer Peter Lilley, who is a former trustee of the GWPF.
Craig Mackinlay and Steve Baker, the MPs leading the group, are regularly quoted on press releases from Net Zero Watch and have repeated some of its lines on the economic cost of net zero word-for-word.
In February, Harry Wilkinson, currently head of policy at Net Zero Watch, and Ruth Lea, a former GWPF trustee, began working for Mackinlay as parliamentary advisers. Wilkinson has previously tweeted that “The ‘climate crisis’ is a religious belief, nothing to do with science.”
The GWPF shares its Tufton Street address with a number of anonymously funded think tanks who have become increasingly vocal in their opposition to climate change mitigation policies.
Earlier this year, Nigel Farage announced he was forming a new campaign for a referendum on net zero.
Farage’s financial backers include the private equity billionaire Jeremy Hosking who openDemocracy recently revealed has huge financial interests in fossil fuels.
The GWPF disputed that the Sarah Scaife Foundation has an interest in oil companies, telling openDemocracy: “The wealth that ultimately created the Scaife Foundation was created at the end of the nineteenth century and the start of the twentieth. It would be ludicrous to suggest that three generations on, it represents an oil company interest.”
Steve Baker MP said: "I understand the GWPF has already given a response to these allegations, which appear to be ridiculous.
It is an extraordinary fact that the same newspapers and commentators who would usually be the first to protest any kind of poverty are wasting the public's time with these attempts to distract from the real issues at hand. It would be better if the political world focused their attention on how our current energy strategy has driven up energy prices and contributed to the terrible cost-of-living crisis that so many are experiencing.”
businessman credited with helping spark the 1970s North Sea oil boom has moved into offices at 55 Tufton Street in Westminster, where the UK’s principal climate science denial organisation and many pro-Brexit campaign groups are based, DeSmog has learned.
John “Algy” Cluff, whose company Cluff Mineral Resources specialises in “support activities” for oil and gas extraction, as well as gold mining in West Africa, joins an influential hub of free market think tanks and lobby groups housed in the building.
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After Boris Johnson's first cabinet reshuffle as Prime Mininster, it looks possible it could be the latter.
And that matters, because those running the show may not be coming from exactly the place that those who voted to 'take back control' might expect.
Many of the SPADs that now find themselves holding all sorts of strings came from a set of lobby groups based in and around offices in Westminster's Tufton Street. These groups have campaigned to roll-back or discard the UK's environmental regulations as the country seeks trade deals with the world's major polluters. Many of the groups are also tied to funders of climate science denial and take money from Big Oil.
Representative democracy that is not.
And what of the most important climate portfolio this year, the Presidency of the annual UN climate talks (known as 'COP26') set to be held in Glasgow in November?
Having sacked former Energy Minister Claire O'Neill for not having enough diplomatic experience for such an important job, Boris decided that actually the job isn't that big afterall and can be done part-time.
With that in mind, he gave the role to former International Development Secretary and new Business/Energy/Industrial Strategy Secretary Alok Sharma.
Sharma has taken mulitple donations from Ukranian energy tycoon and major Tory donor Alexander Temerko - the latest registered as recently as last month. He's also fan of airport expansion and has a patchy voting record on climate measures, meaning his appointment was subject to raised eyebrows in some climate campaigning quarters.
Sharma says he's "looking forward to a busy year ahead". He has nine months to not only get the show on the road, but get all the electic vehicles pointing in the right direction, ready to hurtle along the track. God speed.
Find out more about Alok Sharma: The minister with nine months to prepare UK for COP26
The final major change to the UK's crack environmental team saw Boris boot climate champion Theresa Villiers out of office early in the morning, to replace her with farmers' favourite George Eustice as Environment Secretary by afternoon.
Eustice is from a farming family and has been variously described as a "key ally, "good countryman", and "first-class" by landed gentry types keen on rural pursuits. He has rarely voted for pro-environment measures, however, causing more than a little outrcy in green quarters.
He also once took part in an antler throwing competition during a trip to Latvia. Mercifully, there is a video.
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https://www.desmog.co.uk/55-tufton-street
The Westminster building located at 55 Tufton Streetis home to a small but influential network of right-wing think tanks including the UK climate denial group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation. [1]
The building itself is owned by Richard Smith, a businessman who owns an aerospace company called HR Smith Group, and a former trustee of the pro-Brexit Politics and Economics Research Trust founded by former Vote Leave and Taxpayers' Alliance CEO Matthew Elliott. The building was bought in 2009 by Specmat, one of Smith’s technology manufacturing companies. While he keeps a low profile, Smith is perhaps best known for flying former Prime Minister David Cameron to his home in Shobdon, Herefordshire, in 2007. Smith is associated with several of the organisations at 55 Tufton Street and also donated money to the Vote Leave campaign (once located at the same Tufton Street address). [2], [38]
Stance on Climate Change
The building is home to several groups which spread misinformation about climate science and work to reduce protections for the environment. [2]
Key People
- Lord Nigel Lawson – Chairman, Global Warming Policy Foundation
- Sir Alan Rudge – Trustee, Civitas; Advisor, Global Warming Policy Foundation
- Lord Nigel Vinson – Trustee, Civitas
- Matthew Elliott– Founder, TaxPayers’ Alliance; former CEO, Vote Leave; Advisor, The New Culture Forum
- Matt Ridley – Advisor, Global Warming Policy Foundation
- Owen Paterson – Member, The European Foundation
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]
55 Tufton Street Contact & Address
55 Tufton Street
Westminster
SW1P 3QL
Related Organizations
57 Tufton Street
The building next door to 55 Tufton street also houses several other like-minded think tanks, including: [28]
Centre for Policy Studies is another free market think tank. Lord Vinson is the co-founder of the organisation and former director. [29],[30]
Initiative for Free Trade (IFT) is a pro-Brexit, free trade think tank launched in September 2017 by Boris Johnson and Liam Fox inside the Foreign Office. The group’s president is Eurosceptic MEP Daniel Hannan, who has downplayed the threat of climate change, believing humanity can adapt to any impacts “with a fractional sum of money”. [31]
11 Tufton Street
Public First is a PR firm which helps its clients “understand and influence public opinion through research and targeted communications campaigns”, crafting “policy ideas that Governments can realistically apply to difficult issues”, according to its website. [39]
The company was founded by James Frayne, a Conservative political strategist who has held roles at other PR companies such as Westbourne Communications and Portland Communications, having also worked as campaign director at the Tufton-based Taxpayers' Alliance and as director of policy and strategy at the right-leaning thinktank Policy Exchange. [40], [41], [42], [43]
Natascha Engel, former Labour MP known for her strong pro-fracking stance, became a partner at the firm in July 2019, leading the company's “infrastructure and regulation” division. [44]
2 Lord North Street
Around the corner from Tufton Street is Lord North Street, which is home to the Institute of Economic Affairs. [32]
Institute of Economic Affairs is free-market think-tank and “educational charity” founded in 1955 by the late Sir Anthony Fisher and Lord Harris with the mission “to improve understanding of the fundamental institutions of a free society by analysing and expounding the role of markets in solving economic and social problems.” Trustees linked to 55 Tufton Street include Lord Vinson, Neil Record, and Michael Hintze. [33], [34]
Resources
- “Mapped: The Cosy Climate-Euro Sceptic Bubble Pushing for Brexit and Less Climate Action,” DeSmog UK, June 13, 2016. Archived December 7, 2018. Archive.fo URL: http://archive.fo/S4h4b
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https://www.desmog.co.uk/2019/09/04/bbc-changes-editorial-guidelines-improve-scrutiny-unbiased-thinktanks
no lnx
BBC Updates Editorial Guidelines to Improve Scrutiny of Thinktank Pundits
Read time: 3 mins
By Mat Hope • Wednesday, September 4, 2019 - 11:20
The BBC has altered its editorial guidelines after persistent calls for the organisation to improve transparency around the commentators to which it gives a platform.
The broadcaster has now added “think tanks” to a list of groups that it says presenters and producers should “not automatically assume … are unbiased”.“Appropriate information about their affiliations, funding and particular viewpoints should be made available to the audience, when relevant to the context,” the guidelines say.
The change could have significant ramifications for representatives of anti-regulation, pro-Brexit think tanks and campaign groups based in and around offices at55 Tufton Street, including the UK's principal climate science denial campaign group the Global Warming Policy Foundation, on which DeSmog has extensively reported.
This follows pressure from journalists including the Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr. She has long fought for the funding and ideology of groups including Vote Leave, Leave.EU, the Institute of Economic Affairs, Taxpayers’ Alliance, and other Tufton Streetgroups to be made clear when they appear on the BBC’s programmes.
Revealing the change to the guidelines on Twitter, Cadwalladr called the move “a very small ray of sunshine in an ongoing national shitshow”. In an email to Cadwalladr from a BBC press officer, she was told the changes had been made in part due to a meeting she had with the organisation’s Director General, Tony Hall.
Carole Cadwalladr
?
@carolecadwalla
OMG!!!
A v small ray of sunshine in ongoing national shitshow..but @BBC has introduced a new policy on think tanks! That includes info on "funding"!!
*faints*
Look! And it only took all of us going on & on for years (& a strategic ambush of the director general at a public event)
Cadwalladr told DeSmog:
‘It’s a really important move that a lot of people have been calling out for a very long time. These corporate lobbyists have been pushing policies on behalf of unknown clients and have been given a free platform to disseminate their misinformation across pretty much all UK broadcasters.”
“I really hope other news organisations will now follow the BBC’s lead and that we will finally see the end of this paid-for propaganda masquerading as ‘independent’ free speech’”.
[Read more: Mapped: A Who's Who of Brexit and Climate Science Denial]
Adam Ramsay, Co-Editor of openDemocracy UK, who has also long argued that experts should be forced to disclose who funds them if they want to participate in high-profile broadcasts, called the change “a small victory for everyone who has investigated these lobby groups masquerading as think tanks”. But he urged caution until there had been some examples of the guidelines being implemented. He told DeSmog:
“It’s only a small victory until we see how journalists apply the policy. Will the IEA be introduced as ‘and now, the representatives of British American Tobacco are here to put the tobacco industry view?’ Or will they still in reality be paraded as experts, with a mumbled introduction informing viewers that other views are available?”
Dustin Gilbreath, Communications Manager for watchdog Transparify, which ranks think tanks on their transparency, welcomed the move, and hoped it would encourage groups to be more open. He told DeSmog:
“In the United Kingdom, the lion's share of reputable think tanks have embraced financial transparency as the standard. Only a limited few large think tanks continue to take money from hidden hands behind closed doors.”
“We hope that the BBC's actions will encourage those think tanks that remain opaque in the UK to reconsider their financial transparency.”
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The change could have significant ramifications for representatives of anti-regulation, pro-Brexit think tanks and campaign groups based in and around offices at 55 Tufton Street, including the UK's principal climate science denial campaign group the Global Warming Policy Foundation, on which DeSmog has extensively reported.
This follows pressure from journalists including the Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr. She has long fought for the funding and ideology of groups including Vote Leave, Leave.EU, the Institute of Economic Affairs, Taxpayers’ Alliance, and other Tufton Street groups to be made clear when they appear on the BBC’s programmes.
Revealing the change to the guidelines on Twitter, Cadwalladr called the move “a very small ray of sunshine in an ongoing national shitshow”. In an email to Cadwalladr from a BBC press officer, she was told the changes had been made in part due to a meeting she had with the organisation’s Director General, Tony Hall.
https://littlesis.org/org/228862/55_Tufton_Street
Specmat Manufacturer of electronic components
Other Affiliations
Showing 1-10 of 15 :: see all
Civitas British educational charity and publisher specializing in health, education, welfare, and economics
Global Vision Campaign group that believes Britain needs to negotiate a looser relationship with the EU
• Former Occupant (?→Oct 7 '15)
Global Warming Policy Foundation A climate science denying think tank based in London
Big Brother Watch A British civil liberties and privacy pressure group
• Occupant
Africa Research Institute UK research institute that encourages debate and challenges “received wisdom” in and about Africa
• Occupant
The European Foundation A UK campaigning organisation and leading Eurosceptic think tank
The New Culture Forum Right wing think tank working to change cultural debates they believe are dominated by "the left"
• Occupant
Centre for Policy Studies Free-market UK think tank
TaxPayers' Alliance A British pressure group and think tank formed in 2004 to campaign for a low tax society.
Business for Britain UK campaign organisation calling for Britain to leave the EU