Global Vision

Background

Global Vision (also known as Global Vision UK) is a Brexit-focused media outlet that provides “an online home” for “all those wanting to follow the next chapter as the UK begins the process of negotiating our future relationship with both the EU and the wider world,” according to its website.¹

It brings “specialist coverage for everyone in the UK and beyond who wants to understand and make a success of Brexit,” and for those who advocate Britain’s future as an “independent, free-trading, sovereign nation.” ²

Its website provides “news, analysis, comment and insight”³ from Brexit-supporting commentators,.⁴ as well as a weekly email bulletin and video content posted on its YouTube channel⁵

Global Vision is chaired by former Washington lawyer and lobbyist Shanker Singham⁶ and edited by Rebecca Ryan, who has said that Global Vision will aim to “fill the space” left by BrexitCentral, a Brexit-supporting news outlet edited by former Vote Leave CEO Matthew Elliott, which ceased to operate in January 2020.⁷

Singham, who has been described by some in the British media as the “Brexiteers’ Brain” is a former international trade lawyer and an influential figure in UK politics.⁸

Since the EU referendum, Singham has worked in senior roles for pro-Brexit, free-market think tanks the Legatum Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs, and has enjoyed “unparalleled” access to senior Eurosceptic politicians and ministers, including Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Steve Baker, Liam Fox and David Davis.⁹

Ryan is the Founder of the UK-based news and comment website Free Market Conservatives and the pressure group “StandUp4Brexit.”¹⁰

Global Vision contributors include prominent individuals from the UK’s principal climate science denial organisation, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), as well as other figures associated with the network of pro-Brexit, free-market organisations based in and around Westminster’s 55 Tufton Street.¹¹

These include GWPF director¹² and trustee Ruth Lea,¹³ GWPF advisor Viscount Matt Ridley.¹⁴ and Harry Wilkinson, the head of policy for the Global Warming Policy Forum, the GWPF’s campaigning arm.¹⁵

Several of Global Vision’s contributors have links with the Eurosceptic think tank, Global Vision, established by Ruth Lea and Conservative peer Lord Blackwell in 2007,¹⁶ ¹⁷ and based at 55 Tufton Street. Despite sharing a name, it is unclear if they are otherwise related.¹⁸

Although the website of the Global Vision think tank is active, it is listed as a “dormant” company by Companies House,¹⁹ and its last event, held with former UKIP MEP and climate science denier Roger Helmer, was in 2017.²⁰

Stance on Climate Change

Global Vision UK has not released any statements on climate change. However, it provides a platform for numerous individuals associated with the Global Warming Policy Foundation, as well as other figures who have expressed and promoted climate science denial.

March 23, 2020

In an article for Global Vision entitled “We musn’t let green lobbyists use coronavirus to turn us back into the ‘sick man of Europe,’” Global Warming Policy Forum head of policy, Harry Wilkinson, criticised attempts to organise a green recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. Wilkinson wrote:

“The Executive Director of the International Energy Agency (IEA), Dr Fatih Birol, has opportunistically announced that we should ‘put clean energy at the heart of stimulus plans to counter the coronavirus crisis’. Why exactly building new wind turbines would make a sensible stimulus plan compared to other approaches is not explained, suffice to say it is justified on the basis that it will both stimulate the economy and ‘accelerate clean energy transitions’.

“…A sensible stimulus plan should be well-targeted and effective, and I haven’t heard any good reasons why investing in clean energy would be either of these things.

“There is greater reason to believe it would be a most iniquitous strategy. The history of climate change policies, from grants to pay for expensive electric vehicles to green energy subsidies that have primarily benefited large landowners, is one of ordinary people paying the privileged few to feel good about themselves. On what basis are we to think the regressive distributional basis of crony green capitalism has changed?”²¹

Funding

Funding sources for Global Vision are unknown.

Annual Reports

Global Vision does not appear to have been registered on Companies House.

Key People

Shanker Singham – Chair. Singham is a US lawyer and lobbyist who became an influential figure in UK politics after the EU referendum. He launched Global Vision with Editor Rebecca Ryan in February 2020.²² Singham was the director of economic policy and prosperity studies at the Legatum Institute from 2016 before joining the Institute of Economic Affairs in March 2018,²³ where he directed the IEA’s International Trade and Competition Unit and co-authored their controversial post-Brexit “Plan A+” report²⁴ before becoming an IEA fellow of trade and competition.²⁵ ²⁶ Singham is CEO of his own private international trade consultancy, Competere.²⁷ As recently as 2015, he was listed as an “expert” on a now-deleted webpage of the US-based climate science denying campaign group the Heartland Institute.²⁸

Rebecca Ryan – Editor.²⁹ Ryan is founder of the website and news outlet Free Market Conservatives, which she established in May 2019,.³⁰ and founder³¹ of the pro-“hard Brexit” campaign group StandUp4Brexit launched in August 2018³² and most notable for its failed bid to organise the ringing of Big Ben to mark the UK’s withdrawal from the EU in January 2020.³³ Ryan is also campaign director at Defund the BBC, a campaign group run by Glasgow University student, James Yucel,³⁴ and which has been championed by former IEA Digital Manager, Darren Grimes. Ryan launched Global Vision with Singham in February 202. ³⁵

Contributors

Global Vision lists the following individuals as contributors as of August 2020 :

Aaron Rankin
Adam Morgan
Adrian Hill
Alastair McMillan
Alex Deane
Alicia Kearns
Alistair Kelman
Andrea Jenkyns MP
Andrew Rosindell
Ben Houchen
Brendan Chilton
Catherine McBride
Damien Phillips
Daniel Hodson
David Campbell Bannerman
Derrick Wilkinson
Douglas McWilliams
Dr Gerard Lyons
Dr Lee Rotheram
Edward Sumner
Elisabetta Ferri
Emily Barley
Ethan Thoburn
Fawzi Ibrahim
Paul Ormerod
Harry Phibbs
Harry Wilkinson
Helen Mayer
Hjörtur J. Gudmundsson
Hugh Trenchard
Jack Sowerby
Jack Walters
James Sproule
Jason Reed
Jayne Adye
Jennifer Powers
John Longworth
Jon Moynihan OBE
Jonathan De Leyser
Joshua Mackenzie-Lawrie
Julian Jessop
Lance Forman
Lars Karlsson
Marcus Fysh
Mark Wheatley
Matt Ridley
Matt Smith
Matthew Groves
Matthew MacKinnon
Matthew Patten
Owen Paterson
Peter Allgeier
Pieter Cleppe
Prof. David Blake
Prof. David Collins
Prof. U. Srinivasa Rangan
Rebecca Ryan
Richard Patient
Robert Courts MP
Rory Broomfield
Ruth Lea
Shabnam Nasimi
Shanker Singham
Sheryll Murray
Sir Bill Cash MP
Stefan Garcia
Stephen Lynch
Stewart Jackson
Suella Braverman
Suzanne Evans
Ted Jeffery
Theodore Yarbrough
Tim Bowling
Tim Dawson
Tony Smith
Victoria Hewson ³⁶

Actions

June 12, 2020

In an article for Global Vision on the subject of US-UK trade negotiations, former senior economist of the Institute of Economic Affairs’ International Trade and Competition Unit,³⁷ Catherine McBride, claimed that US chickens were farmed in “relatively luxurious” conditions compared to the UK, and said that journalists raising concerns about so-called “chlorinated chicken” were “promoting fear in the section of the UK population who could most benefit from cheaper imported food”. McBride’s web page on Global Vision describes her as an independent economist who has worked for the IEA and the Legatum Institute..³⁸

February 1, 2020

In a post to readers to mark the launch of Global Vision, editor Rebecca Ryan welcomed readers and said that the website’s “scope” would be to “cover the next stage of the Brexit negotiations as we establish our nation’s future relationship with both the EU and the wider world.”³⁹ Ryan stated Global Vision’s position that “the 2016 vote was a positive move” and said the website was “optimistic about Britain’s future as an independent, free-trading, sovereign nation, with a global vision!” She said that Global Vision would “seek to fill the space” left by the prominent pro-Brexit news outlet Brexit Central which shut down in February 2020.⁴⁰