A network of lobbyists, politicians and campaign groups is pushing the UK towards a hard-Brexit, with the aim of axing environmental protection in the name of free-marketย ideology.
Powerful vested interests are at play, with a network of decision-makers and companies that profit from climate inaction overlapping with a cabal of climate science deniers eager to limit global action to cutย emissions.
Over the past four years, DeSmog has been tracking this network. Weโve now mapped over 2,000 connections between its actors operating at the highest levels of political and corporate life in the UK, US andย Europe.
The new interactive mapย shows:
- How frontrunners for the Tory leadership including Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and Dominic Raab are tied to a network of thinktanks and lobbyists pushing disinformation on the climate crisis, while promoting policies that could harm the environment in the name of a no-dealย Brexit;
- How a network of free-market thinktanks and organisations based at offices in and around 55 Tufton Street are tied to major US funders of climate science denial including the Koch brothers and Robert Mercer, who also bankrolled Donaldย Trump;
- How this network is influencing UK politics at the highest level, and pushing for a hard or no-dealย Brexit.
Read more about the Tufton Street network in DeSmog’s Disinformationย Database
The map has been organised into clusters to help identify how the network fits together. Each node is an organisation and each line is a relationship, which can be clicked on to reveal details. Explore the relationships between the actors by zooming in and out on eachย section.
- Global Warming Policy Foundation andย associates
- Tufton Streetย network
- Ties to US funders and Donaldย Trump
- Government and Conservativeย Party
- Pro-Brexitย media
- British and European populistย parties
- Fossil fuel companies and the PRย industry
Map by Chloeย Farand
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DeSmog isn’t behind a paywall, we don’t do advertising, and we don’t take corporate sponsorhip. That means we rely on you, dear readers, to help fund our work. If you care about investigative journalism on the climate crisis, please become a patron today.
Global Warming Policy Foundation andย associates
The Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) is the UKโs main climate science denial campaign group. It gives a platform to fringe climate science deniers, and gets credibility within the political world through its high-profile Westminsterย connections.
Its influence outside the right-wing fringe of UK politics and the media has significantly diminished in recent years, but it remains the climate science denial wing of a wider network pushing for greater deregulation and opposing action on climate change based around 55 Tufton Street.
The GWPF was established in November 2009 by Lord Nigel Lawson, Margaretย Thatcherโs Chancellor of the Exchequer. Lawson remains the UKโs most visible climate science denier. It is run by a small team, none of whom have expertise in climateย science.
Its Director, Benny Peiser, was previously a senior lecturer in social anthropology and sport sociology at Liverpool John Moores University. Andrew Montford, best known for his climate science denial blog Bishop Hill, is Deputy Director. John Constable, who also ran the anti-renewable energy campaign group the Renewable Energy Foundation, is the GWPFโs Energy Editor, while former BBC journalist David Whitehouse is Science Editor. The GWPF also employs Harry Wilkinson as a juniorย researcher.
The GWPF relies on a small pool of self-described experts to write its reports. Most prominent among these are Judith Curry, a former Georgia Tech professor, Ross McKitrick, an associate professor of economics at the University of Guelph, and Viscount Matt Ridley.
Ridley is a Conservative hereditary peer who was chairman of Northern Rock when the bank crashed and was rescued by the government in 2007. He promotes himself as an evolution expert. His Blagdon Estate hosts a coalย mine.
Ridleyโs brother-in-law is North Shropshire MP and former Environment Secretary Owen Paterson, who gave the GWPFโs annual lecture in 2014 (later discovered to have been written by Ridley).
Labour peer Lord Bernard Donoughue has also been on the GWPFโs board since its inception in 2007, and took over from Lawson as chair in January 2019. Donoughue, a former Minister for Farming and the Food Industry, has numerous investments, including in seven funds that hold shares in fossil fuelย companies.
Former Tory MP Peter Lilley is another GWPF advisor sitting in the House of Lords. Lilley has a record of consistently voting against policy measures to tackle climate change, including in 2008 when he was one of only five MPs to vote against the UKโs Climate Changeย Act.
Lilley was been a non-executive board member of Tethys Petroleum, a Cayman Island-based oil and gas company with drilling operations in Kazakhstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. In 2018, Lilley was involved in a Channel 4 sting over politicians being offered cash to advise on Brexit. Lilley denied the allegations and reported Channel 4 to Ofcom over theย programme.
Labour MP Graham Stringer is also a GWPF trustee. Stringer was a leading voice in Labour Leave, the partyโs main pro-Brexitย group.
Read more about the Global Warming Policy Foundation in DeSmog’s Disinformationย Database
The GWPF does not declare who funds it, but a few donors have been exposed โ all of whom are major Conservative party and pro-Brexitย donors.
Australian hedge fund manager Michael Hintze has been dubbed the โgodfather of Tory donorsโ, and was revealed to be a GWPF donor in 2012. He also donated ยฃ225,000 to the Leave campaign in the Brexitย referendum.
City currency manager Neil Record is likewise a major Tory donor and GWPF supporter. He donated over ยฃ450,000 to the Conservative Party, including ยฃ32,000 to Tory leadership hopeful Matt Hancock between 2010 and 2017. In 2014, he confirmed he donated to the GWPF but declined to disclose theย amount.
Lord Nigel Vinson, a former Barclays Bank director, was also confirmed as a GWPF donor. He donated at least ยฃ50,000 to the GWPF through his charity, the Nigel Vinson Charitable Trust, according to accounts submitted to the Charity Commission. He has also donated to the Renewable Energy Foundation and Institute for Policy Research โ an organisation that supports many of the Tufton Street networkโsย organisations.
Another major donor, the Atkin foundation, pulled its GWPF funding in 2018. The foundation did not explain its decision not to renew the ยฃ20,000 donation it had made to the GWPF each year between 2012 andย 2016.
Edward Atkin made his money through selling his baby-feeding business Avent for ยฃ300 million in 2005. He sits on the GWPFโs board, and has also donated around ยฃ230,000 to the Conservative party, according to Electoral Commissionย data.
Tufton Streetย network
Offices in and around 55 Tufton Street are home to the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF) and many of the UKโs leading pro-Brexit campaign groups andย thinktanks.
The offices act as a hub for thinktanks, campaign groups, and specialist media outlets that push arguments for a hard or no-dealย Brexit.
All of these groups portray themselves as experts in free-market libertarianism pushing for market deregulation post-Brexit, which could lead to โgaping holesโ in environmental regulation, according to a parliamentaryย report.
In July 2018, the GWPF and eight other groups based in offices in and around Tufton Street were accused by whistleblower Shahmir Sanni in court documents of mounting a coordinated campaign to push for a hardย Brexit.
The Taxpayersโ Alliance, founded by Matthew Elliott, who would become chief executive of Vote Leave, is based in the office. Vote Leave itself was also originally a resident of 55 Tufton Street but moved to bigger offices several months before the referendum. Leave Means Leave, a campaign group set up after the EU referendum to campaign for a hard Brexit, also operates out of theย offices.
The European Foundation, a high-profile Eurosceptic thinktank chaired by Conservative MP Bill Cash, works out of the office. Civitas, an educational charity and publisher specialising in health, education, welfare, and economics, is also based in 55 Tufton Street. Sir Alan Rudge and Lord Nigel Vinson are both Civitas trustees.
UK2020, a thinktank described as the โUK version of the American Tea Partyโ, set up by Owen Paterson, is also registered at theย address.
The Initiative for Free Trade (IFT), a campaign group set up by Tory MEP Daniel Hannan, was until recently registered at 57 Tufton Street, and the Centre for Policy Studies โ another libertarian free market think tank that also runs the CapX news and analysis website โ continues to operate out of theย office.
A few doors down from number 57 is 7 Tufton Street, home to Open Europe, a Eurosceptic policy thinktank with offices in Brussels. And just down the road is the Adam Smith Institute, one of former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcherโs favourite thintanks, which has published articles casting doubt on climate science and indirectly opposed greenย energy.
Around the corner from Tufton Street is another of Thatcherโs favourites, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), based in offices on Lord North Street. The IEA is a free-market thinktank and โeducational charityโ whose trustees include Nigel Vinson, Neil Record, and Michael Hintze โ who all also fund the GWPF.
Record gave the IEA ยฃ36,000 to support a seminar featuring Nigel Lawson in November 2009 โ ย the same day Lawson launched the GWPF.
The IEA was embroiled in controversy last July after a sting by Greenpeaceโs investigative unit, Unearthed, showed the group was willing to offer access to ministers for donations, and allow donors to influence the contents of itsย reports.
US funders of climate science denial and Donaldย Trump
The Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) is one of many London-based organisations that is helping US groups push for market deregulation in a post-Brexit tradeย deal.
The main coordinating force behind such pressure is the Atlas network. Atlas is a Washington DC-based non-profit organisation that works to support more than 450 organisations in more than 90 countries promoting what it describes as individual liberty and free-market ideals. Members from the UKโs Tufton Street network include the IEA, Taxpayersโ Alliance, Centre for Policy Studies, Adam Smith Institute, and Civitas, amongย others.
Fossil fuel magnates and infamous funders of climate science denial the Koch brothers are major donors to Atlas through the Donors Trust and the Charles Kochย Foundation.
Koch Industries is the USโs largest private fossil fuel company, and its owners – brothers David and Charles Koch – have multiple ties to UK organisations pushing libertarian free-market ideologies and climate scienceย denial.
Along with ExxonMobil, the Kochs fund the Committee for a Constructive Tomorrow (CFACT), one of the main US peddlers of climate science denial. CFACT employee Marc Morano regularly makes headlines at the annual UN climate talks for loudly criticising the process and casting doubt on climateย science.
The group also supports prominent British climate science denier Christopher Monckton, a former advisor to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher and the third Viscount Monckton of Brenchely who has been formally warned to stop falsely telling people he is a member of the House ofย Lords.
Monckton and Morano are two of the most visible members of a niche global group known as Clexit, which opposes the Paris Agreement, pushing for a โclimate exitโ. According to Clexit’s founding statement: โThe world must abandon this suicidal Global Warming crusade. Man does not and cannot control theย climate.โ
Piers Corbyn, an astrophysicist who regularly speaks at climate science denial events, has advised Conservative leadership candidate Boris Johnson on the subject and is the brother of UK Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn, is listed as one of Clexitโsย members.
The Kochs also fund the US thinktank the Competitive Enterprise Institute, whose director of energy and environment, Myron Ebell, has been hosted by the GWPF.
The Cato Institute, which has close ties to Tufton Streetโs Initiative for Free Trade, also receives Koch support, as does the Heritage Foundation, which regularly hosts UK politicians including Owen Paterson, Labour MP and Brexit campaigner Kate Hoey, and the current Secretary of State for International Trade, Liam Fox.
The Heritage Foundation is also an official partner organisation of the pro-Trump youth-focused US group, Turning Point USA (TPUSA). Founders Charlie Kirk and Candace Owens toured the UK in 2019 trying to drum up support for its new UK outpost.
TPUSA previously produced a video that claims NASA scientists are โwrong about climate changeโ, and founder Charlie Kirk has publicly supported President Trumpโs assertion that he will take the US out of the Paris Agreement. Turning Point UKโs chair George Farmer was a Brexit Party candidate in the 2019 European Parliamentย elections.
Two of the Kochโs main lobbying vehicles are Americans for Prosperity and Americans for Tax Reform, of which Sarah Elliott โ the wife of Taxpayersโ Alliance founder and Vote Leave Chief Executive Matthew Elliott โ was once an employee. Matthew Elliott credits Americans for Tax Reform and its chief Grover Norquist for inspiring the Taxpayersโ Alliance and his approach toย politics.
Matthew Elliott remains an important figure in Tufton Street, with his ties to the Taxpayersโ Alliance, the Politics and Economics Research Trust, Business for Britain, Legatum Institute, and New Culture Forum. He also retains strong links to groups pushing for a hard Brexit, including Brexit Central and The European Foundation. Elliott is currently an advisor to current Home Secretary and Tory leadership hopeful Sajidย Javid.
Read moreย โย
Matthew and Sarah Elliott: How a UK Power Couple Links US Libertarians and Fossil Fuel Lobbyists toย Brexitย
Another US funder with close ties to hard-Brexit campaigns and UK climate science deniers is Robert Mercer.
He was a major investor in Cambridge Analytica, the technology company credited with reaching millions of Brexit voters through social media, and was allegedly approached by Arron Banks on behalf of Leave.EU. Mercer is also a key funder of Donald Trump, whose national security advisor John Bolton used to work for theย company.
Mercer also funds outfits that spread climate science denial, including Breitbart, the Freedom Institute and the Cato Institute, as well as through the Donors Trust.
The network that has grown around Atlas, the Kochs, and the Mercers isnโt the first attempt to bridge the gap between groups pushing for market deregulation on both sides of the Atlantic. In 1997, Liam Fox, the UKโs International Trade Secretary, founded Atlantic Bridge.
With Margaret Thatcher as its president, the neoconservative thinktankโs aim was to promote a โspecial relationshipโ between the UK and US. In 2007, the group established a special partnership with free-market lobby group the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), which is known for producing template pieces of legislation that reduce protections for the environment, as well as other anti-regulationย efforts.
Many former ministers in Theresa Mayโs cabinet were involved with Atlantic Bridge, including Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Chris Grayling, and William Hague. Michael Hintze was one of the organisationโsย donors.
Government and Conservative Partyย ย
Many of the candidates in the Conservative partyโs leadership contest to replace Theresa May have connections to the Tufton Streetย network.
Former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson helped to launch the Initiative for Free Trade, and has spoken at the fossil-fuel funded American Enterprise Institute. Michael Hintze โ who also funds the GWPF โ ย donated to Johnsonโs 2008 mayoral election campaign. Johnson has also admitted consulting climate science denier Piers Corbyn on the links between climate change andย weather.
Former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab was on the advisory board of the pro-Brexit campaign group Leave Means Leave and has written several articles for the Taxpayersโ Alliance.
Environment Secretary Michael Gove, like Johnson, was one of the faces of the Vote Leave campaign. He is a board member for Tufton Streetโs New Culture Forum and has regularly met with the Institute of Economic Affairsโ director of international trade and competition, Shanker Singham.
Singham is a self-described Washington lobbyist who has become a go-to expert for Brexiteer politicians. He has ties to multiple US organisations known for promoting climate science denial including the Koch-funded Heartland Institute and Heritage Foundation.
Andrea Leadsom also met Singham while in government. She was backed by Leave.EU and Nigel Farageโs benefactor Arron Banks in the 2016 Tory leadership contest. She has ties to the Tufton Street network through her affiliation to the pro-Brexit group Open Europe. She was also a guest speaker for the anti-climate policy group the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC).
Steve Baker also regularly met Singham while Brexit minister, and is perhaps the candidate pushing for the hardest Brexit. Baker is one of the figureheads of the European Research Group, a cabal of Tory MPs pushing the government towards a no-dealย Brexit.
The ERG has a number of climate science deniers in the group, including Owen Paterson and Jacob Rees-Mogg, who has claimed it is unrealistic for scientists to project future climate changes as meteorologists struggle to correctly predict the weather. Rees-Moggโs sister, Annunziata Rees-Mogg, was recently elected as a Brexit Party MEP.
Whoever wins the leadership contest will inherit a party currently propped up by the votes of Northern Irelandโs Democratic Unionist Party (DUP), for which long-time climate science denier Sammy Wilson is Brexitย spokesperson.
Pro-Brexitย media
Outright climate science denial has a rapidly shrinking platform in the UKโs mainstream press. However, many of the Tufton Street organisations pushing to cut environmental protection continue to argue for market deregulation in the media โ and the authors often donโt declare their connections to organisations in theย network.
Perhaps the most prominent journalist still peddling climate science denial in the mainstream press is David Rose, who writes for the Mail onย Sunday.
Rose regularly publishes articles casting doubt on mainstream climate science about which the press regulator IPSO often subsequently requires the paper to issue corrections. He has previously described the GWPF as โfriendsโ.
Dominic Lawson, son of GWPF founder Nigel Lawson, also regularly publishes anti-environmental columns in the Mail onย Sunday.
The Sunday Telegraphโs columnist Liam Halligan is a member of Tufton Streetโs Economists for Free Trade (EFT) โ and has written columns suggesting a โno dealโ Brexit is nothing to fear (the EFTโs position) without declaring his affiliation.
Roger Bootle, founder of Capital Economics and also a member of the EFT, is another Telegraph columnist described by the paper as โone of the Cityโs leading economistsโ. Bootleโs short biography on the Telegraphโs website does not disclose his affiliation with the pro-Brexit group. Boris Johnson is also a well-paid columnist for theย Telegraph.
The Times continues to employ GWPF advisor Matt Ridley as a columnist. Ridley remains one of the most prominent climate science denial voices in the mainstream media after Telegraph columnist Christopher Booker retired earlier thisย year.
There are also a number of specialist publications that are tied to and regularly provide a platform for members of the Tufton Streetย network.
Christian May, editor-in-chief of City AM, is a member of the Institute of Economic Affairsโ ย advisory council. At the time of his appointment in 2015, the newspaper โ free to read for millions of London Tube users โ ย was understood to want to adopt a more Eurosceptic tone, according to the Guardian. May came from the PR industry and had no senior editorial experience before hisย appointment.
Kate Andrews, newly appointed associate director at the IEA, writes a fortnightly column for City AM. Graeme Leach, CEO and chief economist at Macronomics and a member of Tufton Streetโs Economists for Free Trade (EFT), also writes a weekly column for theย paper.
Matthew Elliott is the editor-at-large of Brexit Central (as well as being a regular columnist at City AM).
Hugh Bennett, former deputy editor at Brexit Central and correspondence officer at Vote Leave, and Tom Harwood, who led the student Leave campaign, have both joined Guido Fawkes as news editor and reporter respectively.
All are familiar with Darren Grimes, who has moved the other way โ the former deputy editor at Brexit Central is now digital manager at the Institute of Economic Affairs.
Brexit Centralโs editor Jonathan Isaby was formerly a Daily Telegraph columnist before moving to ConservativeHome. The websiteโs founder and former Times Comment Editor Tim Montgomerie is a columnist for CapX, a political website owned by Tufton Streetโs Centre for Policy Studies. The Centre for Policy Studiesโ director, Robert Colvile, is also CapXโsย editor-in-chief.
Other far-right political blogs continue to be home to some of the most prominent climate science denialย voices.
Occasional Spectator and Daily Mail contributor James Delingpole now mainly plies his trade at the UK outpost of former Trump chief strategist Steve Bannonโs Breitbart website. And the editor of the Arron Banks-funded far-right political blog Westmonster, Michael Heaver, was recently elected as a Brexit Party MEP.
There is also a trans-Atlantic element to the Tufton Street networkโs appropriation of the UKโs right-wingย media.
An investigation by DeSmog and the Guardian previously revealed that Spiked, a libertarian website with previous connections to the Revolutionary Communist Party and whichย regularly publishes climate science denial comment articles, was funded by the oil billionaire Koch brothers. Spikedโs former writer Claire Fox was recently elected as a Brexit Party MEP for theย North-West.
Read moreย โย Revealed: US Oil Billionaire Charles Koch Funds UK Anti-Environment Spikedย Network
British and European Populistย Parties
While the Tufton Street network, with its strong ties to the Conservative Party, represents the more mainstream end of lobbying against climate action, other previously fringe groups are becoming moreย prominent.
Most notably, the pro-Brexit groups and individuals that coalesce around Nigel Farage have recently gained a mainstream platform. Farageโs Brexit Party won the most seats in the UKโs European Parliament elections in May, with the party fielding many candidates who doubt mainstream climate science.
Farage himself has a history of spreading misinformation about climate science, telling an interviewer in 2013: โI’m all for pollution controls but to obsess with carbon dioxide, which as I understand it, is a perfectly natural occurring phenomenon, strikes me asย strange.โ
Two major players in pro-Brexit organisations based out of Tufton Street, Richard Tice and John Longworth, were both elected as Brexit Partyย candidates.
New Brexit Party MEP for the South West, Ann Widdecombe, who retired from the UK Parliament in 2010, relinquishing her safe Tory seat, was one of only five MPs to oppose the 2008 Climate Change Act. The following year she told the Daily Express: โThere is no climate change, hasnโt anybody looked out of their windowย recently?โ
Another Brexit Party MEP, former UKIP leader for Wales Nathan Gill, once told BBC Wales it was โridiculousโ to think humans could change theย climate.
The Brexit Party all but wiped out Farageโs old party UKIP thanks to defections like Gillโs, and with it went an old guard of climate science deniers pushing their views on European platforms such as John Stuart Agnew and Roger Helmer.
But the Brexit Partyโs new crop of MEPs will be joining lots of other European politicians pushing climate science denial in the corridors of Brussels andย Strasbourg.
Germanyโs far-right party Alternative fรผr Deutschland (AfD) denies human-induced climate change. In its election manifesto it claims that rising levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has meant โworld food harvests have increasedย significantlyโ.
Likewise, the Netherlandsโ Party for Freedom, fronted by Geert Wilders, argues that there is no independent evidence that humans cause climate change and slams the work of the IPCC as unable to prove thatย relationship.
The Brexit Party MEPs will also find allies in two representatives of the Freedom Party of Austria: Heinz-Christian Strache has argued that it is a natural phenomenon that cannot be prevented, and Harald Vilimsky, who has been an MEP since 2014, voted against the ratification of the Parisย Agreement.
Fossil Fuel Companies and the PRย Industry
The Tufton Street network is generally very secretive about where it gets its cash, but a few donors areย known.
ExxonMobil is a major funder of climate science denial and the most prominent Big Oil donor to the extended Tuftonย network.
It has donated to the American Friends of the IEA, a US fundraising vehicle for the London group. It has also donated to Marc Moranoโs CFACT, Myron Ebellโs Competitive Enterprise Institute, and the Heartland Institute, the US group that lists the IEAโs Shanker Singham as anย expert.
Exxon is a member of the American Petroleum Institute (API), an industry lobby group of which Shell, BP, Total, and Chevron are also members. The API has donated to Koch vehicles includingย Americans for Prosperity and Americans for Tax Reform, which Vote Leave chief and Taxpayersโ Alliance founderย Matthew Elliottย cites as anย inspiration.
BP and Exxon were also business partners of the now-dissolved small Californian coal company Phi Energy. One of Phi Energyโs directors was Julian Wheatland, a former CEO of the now-dissolved Cambridge Analytica. Wheatland remains CEO of SCL Elections, the parent company of the SCL Group and Cambridgeย Analytica.
BP is also a corporate donor to Tufton Streetโs Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA). In a video from an undercover reporter from Greenpeaceโs Unearthed, IEA chief Mark Littlewood explains how BP uses the IEAโs work to lobby for deregulation.
The Tufton network also has some ties to UK fossil fuel companies through PR companies. Conservative Party donor James Bethell was co-founder of Westbourne Communications, which has represented the Centre for Policy Studies and Brexit Central. Westbourne Communications has also worked with fracking company Cuadrilla.
Like what you see?ย Become a Patronย today!
DeSmog isn’t behind a paywall, we don’t do advertising, and we don’t take corporate sponsorhip. That means we rely on you, dear readers, to help fund our work. If you care about investigative journalism on the climate crisis, please become a patron today.
Map by Chloe Farand, words by Mat Hope, additional research by Richard Collett-White, and multimedia supportย by Jill Russo. This project was supported by The Minor Foundation for Majorย Challenges.ย
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