Women who reject these roles are “meddlesome and quarrelsome” (Scott Jener), “miserable cat ladies” (JD Vance), and  “sterile” ‘spinsters’, incapable of succeeding in professional life. Simultaneously, they are “evil“, traitors, and sex toys.

Alarmingly, this unvarnished hatred is being actively mainstreamed and is exerting an ever-expanding cultural pull across Western society.

Misogyny is an ancient mindset that isn’t exclusive to Western Judeo-Christian culture. But this culture is my focus here because it’s where misogyny was supposed to diminish but has instead been shockingly re-vitalised.

It’s now embedded in a wider extreme right mindset according to which the great, white Judeo-Christian male is inherently superior, and rightfully presides over all other religious creeds, genders, and races. For brevity I’ll call this mindset ‘masculism’.

Masculist pushback

Masculism is currently pushing back. Pushback is a group’s desire to assert its dominance over other groups to protect its identity and efficacy against a perceived shift in norms and values. This process plays out across history, from Irish Protestantism vs Catholicism, the Crusades and 19th US nativism vs ‘papism’ to modern-day assaults on positive action policies.  

Masculist pushback is, I’d argue, best understood as an emotional response. Pathological fear of weakness triggers visceral hatred of, and an urge to control, objects which are perceived as potential sources of debilitation. These emotions drive pushback across diverse parts of the masculist agenda, from race, religion and gender to theories of the natural order, aesthetics, tech, governance, and modernity.

As the framework for a comprehensive extreme-right ideology, funded by a behemoth of super-wealthy global investors, masculism is an exceptionally powerful and ubiquitous instance of cultural pushback.

Why now? Arguably, Western endorsement of liberal values on human rights grew in the 1990s and early 2000s to a critical ‘unacceptable threat’ level, a crisis snapping point for a subset of ‘the right’. Enter powerful actors like Trump, Theil, Musk, Miller and co. who seized their moment. A co-ordinated major fightback project unfolded, using governmental powers, tech, social media, global blackmail, propaganda, and financial networking to subdue the threat.

Displacement in a zero-sum world

Pushback is a zero-sum perception – ‘your gain is my loss’. One group’s opportunities, improved rights and life chances are felt to detract from those of another group on the same pitch. Masculist anxiety about these losses is primarily psychosocial and focussed, not on material scarcity, but on “cultural displacement”,  loss of status, competence, and hegemonic power.

We see zero-sum pushback permeating incel thinking – they perceive women, and the positive discrimination they are perceived to enjoy, as the cause of their feeling diminished and displaced. In their heads, they’ve become oppressed second-class citizens whose efficacy and meaningfulness as males has been usurped.

In line with the Christo-misogynists quoted above, and Andrew Tate’s manosphere, the incel solution to this ‘corrosive weakening of maleness’ is to disempower the ‘hateful offenders’ by re-inventing them as traditional objects for subordination and exploitation.

Replacement horror

Masculist fear of weakness is equally evident when anxieties about positive discrimination and racial ‘replacement’ combine. Charles Q Brown held a distinguished military position as a US Airforce Chief of Staff. But he was fired by Trump in 2025 on the presumption that, since he was black, he must have obtained the post illegitimately via the DEI programme.

This is one instance in a constant flow of masculist fortifications of white identity – a ‘2-in-1’ pushback seeking to control non-whites and policies which advantage them. Musk speaks the masculist angst aloud when he argues that white dominance is necessary for self-protection since, if non-whites get the upper hand, they’ll use it to ‘destroy us’.

Masculism also fuels seething contempt for LGBTQ communities precisely because they threaten the prized purity of ‘maleness’. The US and UK extreme right, assisted by their media, fought against this perceived threat by transforming LGBTQ rights from a low public interest issue into a crisis. This shift worked because LGBTQ rights are such strong masculist fear-hate triggers.

The transphobic, racial, misogynistic hatred above is captured in Trump’s call to straight white men to get compensation for discrimination. Written all over this call is the zero-sum threat to white males, victimhood, and angry paranoia.

Mainstreamers and killers

Masculist narratives are formulated within organisations like the Heritage Foundation, ARC, CPAC, MEF, then pumped (via WSI, Tufton Street, IEA, Advance UK, etc) through Europe’s and the UK’s online arteries. The tech broligarchy’s shouty social media and AI pundits are mainstreaming inequalitarian narratives. Data analysis indicates that misogynistic objectification and sexual harassment of women on TikTok, for example, recently jumped from 13% to 56%.

Alex Karp, CEO of Palantir, “the world’s scariest company”, argues for tech and state power mergers and fast-track AI expansion. Advantages, he claims, include our ability to build killer robots before our enemies do, and a significant reduction in the power of women. This echoes Yenner’s view of women as dangerous “backbones” of the ‘left world view’ needing restraint. Again, paranoid fear of being weakened is all over these narratives.

Within the masculist agenda there’s considerable cross-fertilisation. Tommy Robinson’s improbable foray into Christianity isn’t because he ‘got religion’ but because, like others, he spotted its value as a weapon in the masculist armoury, serving as a handy ‘sanctimony shield’ and a further tool for oppressing groups against which he’s pushing back. The Judeo-Christian arm of masculism can attack Islam and the ‘outrage’ of women’s desired bodily autonomy in one convenient hit.

Longing for super-strength

Meanwhile, Charles Cornish-Dale laments that the alienation and emptiness of contemporary life thwarts masculinity by hollowing out virility, risk, and vitality. Modernity replaces these ‘virtues’ with nanny statism, over-regulation, conformity, and anti-individualism. Masculists look to an alternative world of male inviolability and perfection through dominance, efficacy, and mental and physical prowess.

This masculist longing travels in two directions: backwards as far as a ‘Bronze Age’ when men were potent, and simultaneously forwards to a tech world where the weakness of feminised flesh is replaced by the digital muscularity of super-intelligent robots.

Musk and co retreat to, and preside over, this virtually post-human world as transcendent half-machine superheroes. Naomi Klein views this slide into ‘dark MAGA’ as a derangement caused by extreme wealth. I see it as a fight against the horror of frailty.

Perfection and nature

Either way, this two-directional hankering offers ‘barricades’ against the forces of disintegration.  So, too, does the masculist ideal of perfection driving the current male fetish for extreme body aesthetics: enter the looks maxxers and protein bodybuilders. These aspirations inoculate against weakness whilst providing online highways to the manosphere and extreme right politics.

Inevitably, masculists also revile disability as a key symbol of weakness, antithetical to physical perfection. Disabled people, like women, belong in the subhuman’, ‘loser’ domain as carriers of intolerable mental and physical infirmity. Trump’s alleged refusal to have disabled vets in his military parade epitomizes this abhorrence as does the cancellation in June 26 of the ceremony commemorating female vets.

Eugenics, another masculist preoccupation, seeks to overcome weakness by creating a master race where vulnerable groups (society’s ‘weakness carriers’) are strictly controlled. Trump’s obsessive admiration for handsome pilots and Hegseth’s super-fit, weight-controlled, testosterone-primed military aren’t just adolescent fixations, but masculist gestures towards eugenic control of the pernicious spread of deadly enfeeblement.

Testosterone Ubermensch

Male aesthetic perfection, as “the pinnacle of nature”, also links to masculist views of nature as inherently unequal. This imbalance provides a biological justification for patriarchal dominance, for equality as illegitimate, and for empathy as harmful where it weakens civil society by reifying the useless underdog.

True civilisational progress, then, requires a return to command and obedience models of gender and the re-emergence of the unfettered Nietzschean ‘Übermensch’. Here masculism offers a kind of extreme libertarian, testosterone ‘Christianity’, releasing white males from religion’s traditional ‘soft’ responsibilities and virtues.

Democracy for girls

As a system of governance based around pluralism, tolerance, compromise, and protective regulation, democracy is reviled by masculists as a ‘feminised’ poison within western society. Pushback is crystal clear in the US mission to save us from ‘civilizational erasure’.  After Vance’s Munich 2025 presentation, it gained momentum with Musk and co stepping in to boost support for the UK’s extreme right fraternity, including Restore Britain.

The US now parades the UK as a disgraced exemplar of the fate of systems that reject masculist governance. Apparently, we are a culturally crippled hellhole, enfeebled by woke policies on immigration, abortion, and DEI, infested with wandering ethnic grooming gangs and knife-wielders, and just too dangerous to visit.

Lashing out

Masculist pushback against weakness is a unifying principle in that it explains the great white Judeo-Christian male’s paranoid response to feeling encircled by usurpers (women, non-whites, LGBTQ, disabled people, Muslims, modernity, democracy, etc) all positioned to subvert his power and destroy him.

And he is lashing out, in all directions, all at once, with an overarching regressive, sometimes violent, agenda to restore his historic sovereign inviolability and dominance. Managing this fear is, for him, a dynamic process, requiring constant re-iteration of the narrative.

Masculism is ultimately pathetic – a grotesque case of pre-adult arrested development. Yet it’s gaining control of much of the planet’s key infrastructure. To respond effectively, turning off its financial taps won’t be sufficient. We must also tackle the emotional drivers that make it so compelling and so lethal.

Claire Jones writes and edits for West England Bylines and is co-ordinator for the Oxfordshire branch of the progressive campaign group, Compass.

The post How masculism is taking over western culture appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

“Hottest May day ever as mercury hits 35C,” splashed the Express this week, beside a beaming child at a Hertfordshire lido. Murdoch’s Sun, meanwhile, mocked water conservation advice under the headline: “PADDLING FOOLS!” after South West Water urged households to fill pools only halfway.

Certainly, water companies deserve scrutiny but what’s entirely absent from the coverage is the obvious question – why are Britain’s weather patterns becoming so extreme in the first place?

The answer, of course, is climate change, and what scientists describe as “climate whiplash,” that is rapid swings between prolonged drought and prolonged rainfall.

Across the world, these violent oscillations have intensified in recent decades. After the UK experienced its warmest summer on record in 2025, the winter of 2026 brought relentless rain, including 50 consecutive days of rainfall in parts of Devon and Cornwall, one of the wettest seasons on record.

Yet much of the British press treat these developments not as symptoms of climate instability, but as opportunities for weather hysteria. The focus remains on “glorious sunshine,” packed beaches, and joyless officials warning people to conserve water.

Even supposedly serious newspapers downplay the significance of the heat. The Times, also owned by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp empire, led with photographs of Bournemouth beaches packed “like the Costa del Sol,” focusing on Britons “flocking to the coast” and zoo animals eating ice lollies. Readers were told temperatures were “glorious,” while the reasons such conditions are becoming more frequent, intense and dangerous, were conveniently left out.

The Murdoch effect

Perhaps none of this should surprise us. Rupert Murdoch has long expressed scepticism towards climate action. Scientists have described the media baron as a “climate villain,” whose outlets consistently promote denial, distraction, and political inertia.

“It’s hard to think of another person who has single-handedly done more to muddy the public’s understanding of climate change,” said Dr Joëlle Gergis, a climate scientist at Australian National University.

“We have wasted decades debating the fundamental science in the media, when we really should have been focused on urgently implementing climate policies that will genuinely reduce emissions.

“Murdoch will be looked back on by historians as someone who used their media monopoly to influence the destabilisation of the Earth’s climate.”

Indeed, the impact extends beyond headlines. Media narratives don’t merely reflect public opinion, they shape it. They influence what voters fear, what politicians prioritise, and which policies become politically toxic.

That transformation is particularly striking because climate action wasn’t always politically divisive on the British right. For decades, there was broad consensus across the mainstream political spectrum that climate change was real and required serious action.

Even Margaret Thatcher, a science graduate, warned in the late 1980s about global warming, pollution and ecological destruction, delivering speeches to the Royal Society and the United Nations that the BBC later described as showing “crackling environmental passion.”

John Major supported environmental protections during his premiership. David Cameron attempted to modernise the Conservative Party around green politics, promising the “greenest government ever.” Even Boris Johnson, despite years of sceptical newspaper columns, ultimately embraced ambitious climate legislation ahead of COP26, building on Theresa May’s legally binding commitment to net zero by 2050.

Today, it’s difficult to imagine any of those leaders receiving fair treatment from the right-wing press.

From conservatism to culture war

Analysis by Carbon Brief found that UK newspapers published nearly 100 editorials opposing climate action in 2025, the highest number since tracking began in 2011. The hostility came predominantly from right-wing outlets such as the Sun, the Daily Mail and the Daily Telegraph. Renewable energy, net-zero targets and environmental regulations were increasingly portrayed not as long-term economic necessities, but as elite ideological obsessions imposed on ordinary people.

The attacks also became deeply personal. Carbon Brief identified 112 editorials targeting energy secretary Ed Miliband in 2025 alone, repeatedly mocking him as a fanatic pursuing a ruinously expensive agenda rather than advocating policies Britain itself once championed across party lines.

This hostility coincided with a shift inside the Conservative Party itself. Under Liz Truss, the government briefly lifted the fracking ban. Rishi Sunak delayed the phaseout of petrol vehicles and gas boilers while approving around 100 new oil and gas licences. Under Kemi Badenoch, the party has gone further still, openly questioning the viability of Britain’s net-zero commitments and proposing to repeal key climate legislation once championed by Conservatives themselves.

The right-wing climate denial ecosystem

Right-wing climate denial operates like a classic propaganda conveyor belt, a process we’ve explored before on RWW. A free-market think tank such as the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), long criticised for publishing material that downplays the seriousness of climate change, releases a piece of supposedly authoritative “research.” That report is then eagerly amplified by right-wing media  outlets and injected into the public discourse as fact, with little or no scrutiny.

In January this year, for instance, the IEA published an error-strewn pamphlet on ‘The Cost of Net Zero,’ which received prominent coverage across several newspapers, including a front-page splash in the Daily Express.

As the London School of Economics observed, the pamphlet was largely covered by political reporters rather than specialist environment or energy correspondents, meaning its fundamental errors went largely unchallenged.

America’s influence on Britain’s climate backlash

And the British climate debate is becoming steadily more Americanised, increasingly shaped by US-style right-wing populism.

For years, the US right has transformed climate change from a scientific issue into a cultural identity battle, driven by fossil fuel lobbying networks, partisan media outlets and libertarian think-tanks. That same infrastructure is now influencing British conservatism.

Nigel Farage and Reform UK have become central to that shift. Reform has abandoned even rhetorical support for climate consensus, framing net zero as an attack on ordinary people while promoting familiar climate-sceptic talking points, that climate change is simply natural variation, that CO2 is harmless because plants need it, and that emissions are insignificant because carbon dioxide forms only a tiny percentage of the atmosphere.

The language closely echoes decades of messaging developed by the American climate denial movement.

Investigations by DeSmog have highlighted growing links between Reform figures and the Heartland Institute, a US organisation that has described itself as one of the world’s leading promoters of scepticism about man-made climate change. Heartland has long enjoyed close ties to Republican networks and figures associated with Donald Trump.

Last year, Farage addressed a Heartland fundraiser in Chicago, encouraging the organisation to expand “across the Pond.”

Meanwhile, Reform allies have helped launch Heartland-linked initiatives in Europe alongside far-right activists and Trump supporters. According to DeSmog, Reform has also received millions in donations connected to fossil fuel interests.

The result is that Britain’s climate politics increasingly resemble the United States. Net zero is no longer discussed primarily in terms of energy security, industrial investment or scientific necessity, but as a symbolic battleground in a wider war against “elites,” regulation and liberal institutions.

And it’s dragged the Conservatives with it, where there is little daylight between Tory and Reform on climate policy, including repealing the Climate Change Act 2008.

The cost of climate scepticism

The irony is that Britain was once seen as a world leader on climate policy. Both Conservative and Labour governments understood that cutting emissions was not just about protecting the environment, but about energy security, economic stability and preparing for the future.

Now, that political consensus is starting to fall apart under the pressure of culture-war politics, fossil fuel lobbying, tabloid outrage and the growing influence of American-style populism.

Climate change doesn’t care whether newspapers describe heatwaves as “glorious,” whether columnists mock net zero, or whether politicians decide green policies are unpopular. The consequences continue regardless, hotter summers, wetter winters, rising food prices, overstretched infrastructure, and increasing pressure on water and energy supplies.

Most worrying of all is that such scepticism is no longer limited to the populist fringe. Just this week, Tony Blair urged Labour to scale back climate ambitions and move closer to Donald Trump, confirming the scale of how American-style climate politics has entered Britain.

More worrying still, Tony Blair’s comments this week, delivered in a highly critical essay on the current Labour government, have been criticised for parroting Donald Trump’s billionaire backers. Critics have pointed in particular to Larry Ellison, the Oracle billionaire and prominent Trump supporter, who has reportedly funnelled hundreds of millions of dollars into the Tony Blair Institute.

What began as Murdoch-driven tabloid scepticism is fast becoming mainstream political thinking, at precisely the moment serious climate action is most urgently needed, as Britain swelters in temperatures hotter than Hawaii and Athens.

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch

The post The Murdoch effect: How the right abandoned climate conservatism appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

A new investigation by DeSmog has found that the IEA, which has campaigned for more fossil fuel extraction and against government climate action, received more than £150,000 from BP, £124,000 from Esso (owned by ExxonMobil), and £106,000 from Shell. 

DeSmog has also revealed that the right-wing think tank received £164,667 in donations from News International – which Murdoch used to own – between 1991 and 2000. 

Murdoch has described himself as a climate sceptic, and used his outlets to peddle climate denial.

In 2020, Murdoch’s son James criticised his outlets News Corp and Fox for describing coverage linking the Australian wildfires to climate change as “hysterical” and “silly”. 

The IEA does not publicly disclose its donors, on the grounds that it respects “the privacy rights of donors”. UK think tanks are not legally obligated to declare their funding sources. 

The IEA has called for increased fossil fuel extraction. It has said the ban on fracking for shale gas should be lifted, lambasted the government for banning new North Sea oil and gas licences.

It also celebrated the Conservative Party’s pledge to scrap the 2008 Climate Change Act in October, calling it “the first step back to sanity”.

“This investigation confirms one of the worst-kept secrets in Westminster,” said Ami McCarthy, Greenpeace UK’s head of politics. “This self-styled economic think tank is really a lobbying shop for the harmful and polluting industries that fund it, with fossil fuel giants chief among them.”

McCarthy added that the IEA “spent years downplaying the climate crisis while taking loads of cash from some of the world’s biggest oil and gas companies and one of its most influential climate sceptics, Rupert Murdoch.”

Olivia Barber is a reporter at Left Foot Forward

The post The Institute of Economics Affairs has pocketed over £600,000 from big oil and Murdoch appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

Orr, whom one academic colleague described as “more Tommy Robinson than St Thomas Aquinas,” became a driving force behind the pro-Reform think-tank, the Centre for a Better Britain (CFABB). He chaired the group’s advisory board before formally joining Reform UK as Farage’s senior adviser in October.

A prominent figure in the “national conservatism” movement, Orr cast the CFABB as a “post-Brexit, pro-nation, pro-sovereignty, pro-Britain” project. He has been heralded as JD Vance’s “intellectual mentor” and was a guest at the now infamous Cotswolds gathering hosted by the US Vice President in the summer. A close buddy of Vance, Orr has previously said the US Capitol Riot in January 2021 was exaggerated by the “global left.” 

CFABB’s mission is unambiguous, as its website claims, “Britain is simply broken,” and needs “rapid, radical reform.” Among its top priorities is developing options for constitutional reform and new policy to “help prepare the next government in 2029.”

Needing constitutional reform is a familiar refrain on the anti-liberal right but becomes far more dangerous when its advocates move from the ideological margins to seriously addressing the machinery of government.

As well as plans that reportedly involve cutting state services, opposing DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion) initiatives, and “reforming healthcare,” the think-tank’s agenda includes resisting efforts to address climate change. Documents leaked to the Sunday Times, say the CFABB has already had “research commissioned” on the subject of “challenging the ESG [environmental, social, and governance] narrative.”  

Reform insists it has no formal ties with the new think-tank and is formulating policy in-house, but, prior to its launch, those involved in setting it up, reportedly met with both Farage and Reform’s deputy leader Richard Tice, and some of its key figures are Farage allies.

The question, then, is simple: how worried should we be?

Warnings from America

The United States offers a terrifying illustration of what happens when such ideological projects are handed power.

From Britain, the cumulative impact of Donald Trump’s second presidency can be difficult to grasp, we see only fragments filtered through the news.

But independent monitoring offers a clearer picture. Since Trump returned to office in January, the independent Trump Action Tracker, has logged over five hundred actions that violate democratic norms and undermine the rule of law, more than two hundred moves to control or distort information including through misinformation and propaganda, and hundreds of measures weakening civil rights.

The pattern is clear, once such movements gain operational freedom, the guardrails of democracy can dissolve at alarming speed.

Tom Brake, CEO of Unlock Democracy, warns that a Reform-led ‘Project 2029’ could fast-track a similar trajectory in Britain. Writing in Left Foot Forward, he notes that an incoming government elected with less than three in ten votes, but with a large working majority, would have no difficulty implementing what Unlock Democracy has christened ‘Project 2029,’. This is seen as the UK’s equivalent of the US’s Project 2025: the Heritage Foundation’s successful blueprint for the Trump administration, something which Orr has expressed admiration for.

“It could overturn swathes of UK legislation without any serious resistance, including laws considered of a constitutional nature such as the Human Rights Act. Lord Hailsham’s ‘elective dictatorship’, 50 years after he first floated the danger, would become a reality,” Brake warns.

A well-funded, well-connected machine  

CFABB began under the name Resolute 1850, in reference to the HMS Resolute Royal Navy ship whose timbers were used to make the president’s desk in the Oval Office. It was gifted to the United States in 1880 by Queen Victoria as a symbol of gratitude and friendship. 

But such nostalgic symbolism differs sharply with the think-tank’s aggressive ambitions. The documents obtained by the Sunday Times show the CFABB has been in direct contact with Reform, including Nigel Farage, and is cultivating links with Robert Jenrick’s team. The documents also state that the Conservative Party “appears to be in terminal decline,” with doubts around Kemi Badenoch’s leadership. Plans were shared with potential donors in May and the project is reportedly seeking to raise over £25 million in a bid to install Nigel Farage as prime minister by 2029. The Times reported that it aims to funnel these funds into the development of “radical” policy proposals, draft legislation, targeted polling, and the recruitment and training of parliamentary candidates.

The group has even established a presence in the US, registering an entity in Dallas, Texas, to draw inspiration, and millions of dollars, from the MAGA movement, which twice propelled Donald Trump to the White House.

It is said to hold bi-weekly strategy meetings with the Prosperity Institute, the Legatum-linked, Dubai-based organisation that played a prominent role in the Brexit campaign, as they “prepare for 2029.”

Millbank Tower

The think-tank operates out of Millbank Tower, the same building that houses Reform UK’s headquarters. It’s a location with storied political pedigree, where successful political campaigns have been cooked up, including Labour’s 1997 landslide and Leave.EU’s winning plans for Brexit.

At the centre of CFABB’s operations is Jonathan Brown, a former Foreign Office diplomat. Though removed from the Reform Party in 2024 during an effort to “professionalise” its operations, Brown now leads CFABB and continues to cultivate US and UK donor networks. Only two donors have been disclosed so far – CFABB co-founders David Lilley and Mark Thompson, investors with business interests in the energy and metals industries.

Whether the rest of the funding sources will ever be disclosed remains unclear. As Brake notes, unless the group is more transparent than its likely stablemates, the ASI, IEA, TaxPayers’ Alliance, and Policy Exchange, foreign funding could remain entirely opaque.

Brown told Politics Home that a centre-right government, potentially one led by Reform, will need to bring non-traditional types into the civil service, like senior business people and academics, to ensure it can push through its plans.

In September, he told the Financial Times that the think-tank would “examine ways to weaken the authority of Britain’s judiciary and civil service under a future right-wing government, and make Trump-style sweeping changes to UK law.”

A media landscape built for power

Adding to the concern, is the fact that the multimedia system is already mobilising behind ‘Project 2029.’ Tom Brake writes: “An eco-system of supportive new media, social media and old media is already in place to support and amplify a Project 2029 agenda.”

Reform has mastered the contemporary media environment, particularly TikTok. A Guardian analysis of more than 12,000 posts found that since the general election, Reform’s engagement per post is nearly fourteen times that of Labour, the Conservatives, or the Liberal Democrats.

As we know, legacy media, too, has shown notable willingness to shield or amplify the party. The most recent and perhaps starkest example has been the muted coverage of Nathan Gill’s conviction for taking Russian bribes. Had a senior Labour figure been implicated in the same scandal, the right-wing press would have erupted with weeks of front-page outrage. In Reform’s case, much of the press simply looked away.

Reform is also expanding its reach among younger audiences. In June, Sky News reported that Archie Manners, the influencer and prankster who assisted Farage during the election campaign, had taken a leading role in CFABB’s communications strategy, emphasising the party’s intention to dominate digital media.

A path to resistance?

So, is there any way out of the prospect of a Reform UK government led by Nigel Farage, aided by a well-connected, opaquely funded, MAGA inspired movement?

There is, thankfully, some cause for optimism.

The grave risks posed by Project 2029 have prompted the 99% Organisation and Unlock Democracy, alongside other experts, to develop a Defensive Constitutional Reform Report, a set of measures the government can adopt now to reduce the chance of electoral manipulation by wealthy overseas backers and to limit the harm any future radical government could inflict.

Polling also brings some relief. Dogged by a messy few weeks, marked by allegations of Farage’s past racist comments, the Russian bribery scandal, not to mention the chaos in Reform-led councils such as Kent, support for the party has noticeably slipped.  A Survation poll showed Reform is down by five percentage points, and their 12-point lead over Labour has shrunk to just seven points. Three other parties have also gained support. Even data from YouGov shows a decline in voting intention for the party, and their lead over Labour has been cut down to six percentage points. 

Yet if the right excels at anything, it is mobilisation. This contrasts with the left’s disarray; just look at the chaotic launch of Your Party.

Reform UK and its think-tank allies are building a well-financed, media-savvy movement aimed at reshaping Britain’s constitutional architecture by 2029. The question is not whether they are preparing, but whether the country is.

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch

The post Inside ‘Project 2029’: The radical Reform machine preparing to remake Britain appeared first on Left Foot Forward: Leading the UK's progressive debate.

Trump’s first presidency was a half-hearted dry run at Orbánisation.  His second is the real McCoy. The US’s experience of the last 10 months demonstrates that a government that chooses to ignore the normal rules of the game, circumvent its constitution and crash through democratic guardrails wields virtually limitless power and can overturn, astonishingly quickly, deeply entrenched democratic and human rights.

As the Financial Times’s US correspondent wrote: It took years for Viktor Orbán to consolidate strongman rule in Hungary. Trump is trying to pull off an equivalent system-change within months.

The scale of the democratic rout in the US is being documented in detail in the Trump Action Tracker created by Professor Christina Pagel.  Strangely the tracker is not always accessible because it keeps getting reported as a dangerous webpage.  It isn’t.

The UK is waking up to the reality that the UK is also vulnerable to the equivalent of the US’s Project 2025: the Heritage Foundation’s blueprint for the Trump administration.  My organisation, Unlock Democracy, has christened the threat Project 2029.

Key elements of Project 2029 are starting to fall into place.  And people are noticing. This is certainly true of Unlock Democracy supporters who are contributing generously to our annual Crowdfunder which focuses heavily on Project 2029.

It was reported on Sky that a new think tank, originally named Resolute 1850, has been set up with £1million in funding pledged.  This Maga-style think tank will drive Project 2029. Its stated mission inter alia is to ‘foster stronger transatlantic relationships’. Unless it is going to be more open about its sources of funding than its likely stablemates, the ASI, the IEA, the Taxpayers’ Alliance and Policy Exchange, there will be little or no transparency over how much of its funding comes from abroad and the agenda of its donors.

An eco-system of supportive new media, social media and old media is already in place to support and amplify a Project 2029 agenda.

Echoes of the US Project 2025 already feature in the rhetoric of some of the UK’s political parties, for example:

• Reshaping government by expanding executive power
• Rolling back civil liberties and minority rights
• Dismantling the administrative state
• Replacing non-partisan civil servants with political loyalists
• Challenging academic independence

An incoming government, elected with fewer than 3 out of 10 votes but securing a comfortable working majority, would have no difficulty implementing Project 2029.  It could overturn swathes of UK legislation without any serious resistance, including laws considered of a constitutional nature such as the Human Rights Act.  Lord Hailsham’s ‘elective dictatorship’, 50 years after he first floated the danger, would become a reality.

Many of the UK institutions would also be at risk and their vulnerability to government interference should not be under-estimated.  Professor Christina Pagel,  Professor Martin McKee CBE and Luke Flynn have analysed the vulnerability of the UK’s scientific institutions to political interference in their paper, Strengthening the institutions: ensuring their effectiveness and independence. The report does not make reassuring reading.

The peril Project 2029 poses to UK democracy has prompted the 99% Organisation and Unlock Democracy to come together, with other experts, to work on a Defensive Constitutional Reform Report.

We will be publishing it soon. It lists the tactical steps that the UK government could take in the short to medium term to reduce the risk that the next election could be stolen by a group of powerful, uber rich overseas backers and minimise the damage Project 2029 could inflict on the British people after the next General Election.  We will argue that Project 2029 could affect democracy and people’s well-being and security, on the scale of another pandemic or multiple natural disasters and requires a national preparedness strategy to alleviate its impact.

John F. Kennedy said that “Democracy is never a final achievement. It is a call to an untiring effort.” 

We can only hope that the government realises this, acknowledges that Project 2029 represents a real threat to our democracy, and takes urgent steps to neutralise it.

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The IEA, which has long been accused of breaching charity laws and of being biased, is also widely acknowledged as the inspiration behind Liz Truss’s disastrous mini-budget. The Tufton Street based think-tank was reported to the regulator over apparent breaches of charity law in March last year, only for the Commission to take just 12 days to dismiss the complaint.

However, after the Good Law Project threatened legal action, the Commission agreed to take another look.

Now the commission has said that the IEA has provided evidence that “demonstrates a significant change in approach since it changed Chair and Director General / CEO in 2023; with a push for greater transparency and political neutrality”.

The Good Law Project’s initial complaint related to potential political bias as well as perceptions of a potential lack of transparency around funding.

However the organisation has cautioned against too much optimism, despite the latest action from the Charity Commission. It states: “The IEA’s CEO, Linda Edwards, has already made it clear the think-tank’s rightwing agenda is at its core. In July 2023, Edwards declared that “the IEA has profoundly influenced the United Kingdom’s economic trajectory”, adding that the “ethos of reduced state intervention and faith in free markets underpins the IEA’s continued mission.”

For Good Law Project’s executive director, Jo Maugham, the commission hasn’t gone far enough.

“Whilst we are pleased the Charity Commission recognised the need for formal guidance to the Liz Truss IEA,” Maugham said, “we think it is – not for the first time – remarkably complacent in believing the leopard of 55 Tufton Street will change its spots. We will not let the matter rest here, and are consulting with our lawyers.”

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward

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The Conservative Party leader has quoted Milei at length, praising his belief that state tools such as printing money, subsidies, and price controls, only serve to dominate people’s lives. “He is absolutely right,” she said.

And Kemi is far from the only Tory figure seemingly enamoured with Argentina’s far-right president, who proudly identifies as an “anarcho-capitalist.”

Boris Johnson hailed Milei for giving Argentina “the economic medicine it needs” through drastic spending cuts.

Liz Truss, who, as we well know, is a fond of radical economic disruption, has also sung Milei’s praises. In April, she told GB News that, aside from Winston Churchill and Margaret Thatcher, Milei topped her list of political heroes.

But, alas for Liz, the feeling doesn’t appear to be mutual. When asked if he admired Truss, Milei responded: “Who?”

Truss x10?

The irony is rich. Since taking office, Milei has channelled the spirit of the UK’s shortest-serving prime minister in both rhetoric and results. Except this time, it’s a Truss – times ten.

A self-styled libertarian outsider, Milei won Argentina’s presidency in November 2023 amid a crushing economic crisis. Inflation had soared to 143 percent, and nearly 40 percent of the population lived below the poverty line. His election was dubbed a “political earthquake,” cheered on by right-wing allies’ home and abroad, including Donald Trump, who declared that Milei would “Make Argentina Great Again.”

Nicknamed El Loco (The Madman) by critics, Milei campaigned on a platform of radical disruption. He promised to scrap the peso in favour of the US dollar, abolish Argentina’s central bank, which he blames for inflation, outlaw abortion that was legalised in Argentina in 2020, legalise the buying and selling of human organs, loosen gun laws, and slash welfare and public services. He also vowed to shut entire ministries, including culture, health, education, and women’s affairs, and privatise the national energy company and the country’s public broadcasters.

“Everything than can be [put] into the hands of the private sector, will be in the hands of the private sector,” he said. 

And for a while, markets loved it. Investors piled in. The stock market surged, enriching local oligarchs and foreign investors.

Milei’s rise and fall

But much like Truss’s disastrous ‘mini budget,’ Milei’s drastic measures have plunged Argentina into crisis.

The president’s promotion of a cryptocurrency pump-and-dump scheme called Libra, caused tens of thousands of his own supporters to lose millions, while insiders allegedly pocketed $100 million.

He has also overseen rapid deindustrialisation, with manufacturing and construction sectors collapsing and mass layoffs sweeping both public and private sectors. As of September 2024, over half of Argentina’s 46 million people were living in poverty.

As economic pain deepened, scandals rolled in. Audio leaks this summer implicated Milei’s influential sister, Karina, in a scheme involving bribes for medical contracts. She allegedly pocketed 3 percent of each deal, including those involving treatments for people with disabilities.

Then came the electoral blow. In September, Milei’s far-right party, La Libertad Avanza, was trounced in Buenos Aires, home to 40 percent of the electorate, by Peronism, Argentina’s dominant leftist movement. They won 47 percent of the vote to Milei’s 33.8 percent, a 13-point margin that rattled the markets.

With another key legislative election looming on October 26, putting half of parliament and a third of the Senate in play, panic is setting in that Milei’s reform agenda is finished.

Investors are dumping pesos, fleeing Argentine assets, and speculating about a looming default on the country’s massive international debts. 

The turmoil has prompted Donald Trump to offer Milei a $20 billion bailout, hoping to prop up his embattled South American ally.

“We are seeing in real time how a government can melt in front of our eyes,” Alejandro Bercovich, a leading Argentine TV and radio journalist told the Guardian: “I never thought they would collapse this quickly.”

Sounds familiar?

Truss’s own experiment with hardline libertarianism, £45 billion in unfunded tax cuts, triggered a market meltdown and ended her premiership in just 49 days, or was it 47?

The Atlas Network

It’s no surprise that Milei’s monster ‘reform bill’ was heavily influenced by Argentinian neoliberal think-tanks tied to the Atlas Network. As RWW readers know, this Washington, D.C.- coalition of nearly 600 free-market groups across 100 countries has long promoted radical market policies, with deep influence in the UK Conservative Party.

After the 2016 EU referendum, Atlas-aligned UK think tanks like the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and the Legatum Institute exploited the Brexit crisis, gaining unprecedented access to ministers and pushing for a hard exit.

And the IEA helped shape Liz Truss’s political agenda. On the day of her infamous ‘mini-budget,’ the then IEA director Mark Littlewood remarked in a recorded call: “We’re on the hook for it now. If it doesn’t work it’s your fault and mine.”

It didn’t of course, and the the plan collapsed, much like Argentina’s economy under Milei.

And with news of the Argentine economy now in freefall, the UK right’s once-gushing praise for Milei has suddenly been muted.

Well, almost.

Enter Steve Baker

At this week’s Conservative Conference, Milei’s name was noticeably absent, at least publicly. But one man is still championing the chainsaw-wielding libertarian – Steve Baker.

The self-styled Brexit ‘hardman,’ former Northern Ireland minister, and ex-Wycombe MP who lost his seat in 2024, appears undeterred by Milei’s economic implosion, electoral humiliation, and bailouts.

Instead, he’s doubling down, launching a new initiative known as Fighting for a Free Future (FFF), a campaign to identify and empower “Britain’s Javier Milei.”

“The project is non-partisan,” Baker told Politics Home. “I’m interested in creating the conditions within which a British Milei can do what needs to be done in the UK. Sweep aside planning law, sort out the health service so that it actually works and we can get high-quality care that we can afford to pay for.”

Asked whether Nigel Farage fits the bill and Baker was dismissive, claiming “Farage is closer to Trump than Milei.”

Nigel Farage – another Milei admirer

Still, Farage has repeatedly praised the Argentine president. In 2024, he described Milei’s economic reforms as “Thatcherism on steroids,” gushing: “This is incredible, cutting and slashing public expenditure, doing all the things he’s done… That’s leadership… He is amazing.”

Reform’s Richard Tice also heaped praise on Milei, saying he “rightly tells the elite the facts of life – socialism and state intervention tends to make people poorer.”

And there are parallels. Like Milei and Trump, Farage built his brand as an outsider, capitalising on so-called ‘establishment failings.’ And like Milei, his appeal is rooted less in policy detail than anti-system ‘charisma.’

As the Guardian’s Aditya Chakrabortty put it: “Broadcast to an electorate tired of a failing economy, Milei reached voters other right-wing politicians just couldn’t reach.”

But spectacle alone doesn’t govern. And as Milei’s Argentina descends into crisis, the warnings for Britain couldn’t be clearer.

Be careful what you wish for

This week, in a bid to lift national spirits, the former Rolling Stones’ tribute band frontman, belted out songs at a concert in Buenos Aires. Clad from head to toe in leather, Milei’s return to the stage was a bid to promote his new book, ‘The Construction of the Miracle,’ which he hopes will give him a boost before national midterms on 26 October.

Nigel Farage might not wield a chainsaw or sport ‘rock star’ sideburns, but you wouldn’t put it past him to appear on stage at a concert to try and shore up support from ‘ordinary people.’ After all, the theatre of populism has little boundaries.

But beyond the showmanship, the reality is stark. Amid economic collapse, corruption scandals, and rising public unrest, the question becomes unavoidable: is this really the model British conservatives want to import?

Truss tanked the UK economy and was out in 49 days. Milei may still be standing, but he’s executing an even extremer version of Trussonomics than Liz Truss executed.

If Kemi Badenoch sees Milei as a template, it demands serious scrutiny of the vision she holds for Britain’s future. Argentina is undergoing a radical experiment in state dismantlement. Though some libertarians cheer it on, the lived results so far are pain, division, and deepening repression.

In other words, governing with a chainsaw might make for good theatre, but it leaves a trail of wreckage, not reform.

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch

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So, what’s driving this exceptional growth in Spain, which is governed by a left-wing coalition under socialist prime minister Pedro Sánchez?

A key and often underappreciated factor is immigration.

While much of Europe tightens its borders, Spain is doing the opposite. It plans to welcome nearly a million new migrants over the next three years through expanded work visa schemes and the granting of residence permits to undocumented workers. This liberal approach is paying economic dividends.

According to Miguel Cardoso, chief economist at BBVA Research, 90% of the increase in the labour force since 2021 comes from immigration.

“This is allowing the service sector to expand. This is keeping firms relatively competitive in terms of containing the increase in labour costs, and it’s allowing, for example, the prices in services to remain relatively contained in a high inflationary environment.”

Last year, most people migrating to Spain came from Colombia, Venezuela and Morocco.

“Latin American economies, some of them are not doing relatively well, so there is this push factor. There is also the fact that immigration to the United States has become more difficult, and therefore people are turning around and seeing alternatives,” added Cardoso.

Low energy costs

Immigration, however, is only one part of the story. Unlike in Britain, where energy costs have spiralled following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022, Spain has benefited from low energy costs and has seen less impact from the European energy crisis, which has been pinned on the country’s heavy investment in renewable energy.

“The increase in the renewable share in the electricity mix over the past five, six years has implied a drop of 40% in wholesale electricity prices,” Spain’s finance minister Carlos Cuerpo told CNBC.

Foreign investment is following. In 2024, Chinese-founded photovoltaic technology company Arctech opened its European headquarters in Madrid, citing Spain’s dominant position in the solar energy sector as a key factor. Photovoltaic cells convert sunlight directly into electricity. It’s a burgeoning renewable energy source that can lead to lower electricity costs.

“Spain is probably the location in Europe where the most PV has been done,” Arctech’s EU and NA Markets general manager Pedro Magalhaes told CNBC.

Tourism boom

Tourism remains a major contributor, accounting for roughly 12 percent of GDP. The sector has benefited from a post-pandemic recovery, along with Spain’s relatively affordable prices compared to other Western European nations. In 2024, the tourism workforce grew by 9.7 percent compared to the previous year, reaching nearly three million people.

But according to Cuerpo, the country is now exporting more non-tourism services, such as IT, accounting, and financial services, than tourism itself, with exports in these areas reaching €100 billion in 2024, compared to just under €95 billion in tourism.

“So that’s an element of modernisation of the Spanish economy,” said Cuerpo.

Spain’s willingness to embrace immigration stands in contrast to many of its European neighbours, where political and social resistance to immigration often blocks the kind of labour market expansion that Spain is currently benefiting from.

In the words of Finance Minister Cuerpo: “Spain is a great outlier now in terms of growth. It’s also a great place to invest.”

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As markets reel and political tensions rise, the question looms: can we simply blame the American electorate for re-electing Trump, or do some of the culprits reside closer to home? In particular, what role has the UK played, financially and ideologically, in bolstering the forces that helped Trump return to power?

Enter Tufton Street. Right-wing think-tanks such as the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) and the Global Warming Policy Foundation operate from this Westminster residence, notorious for its lack of transparency around funding sources. Despite refusing to disclose donors, these groups are known to receive support from oil and gas companies and prominent Tory donors.

According to US election and corporate filings, at least 15 individuals and companies that have donated to Tufton Street organisations have also poured $45.5 million into Trump’s campaigns, Trump-supported political committees, and Republican candidates in state races over the past decade.

Among the contributors are British American Tobacco, a billionaire sanctioned by Ukraine, a major financier, and an American heiress accused of backing racist causes and climate denial. All have funded Tufton Street institutions as well as Republican campaigns in the run-up to the 2024 presidential election.

And let’s not forget, the IEA and other Tufton Street affiliates were vocal supporters of Trump-supporting Liz Truss during her brief premiership who, like Trump, rattled financial markets with disastrous consequences.

But who funds the right-wing Tufton Street think-tanks funding Trump?

You might be surprised to learn that UK-registered charities have played a role in this network of influence.

An investigation by the Good Law Project, published earlier this year, revealed that over the past two decades, right-wing think tanks and pressure groups, many of which promote climate change denial, attack public services, and inflame culture wars, have received nearly £28 million in donations from UK charities.

These groups have capitalised on the generous tax breaks afforded to charities, allowing wealthy backers to support politically charged agendas while shielding their identities from public scrutiny.

The Good Law Project’s analysis of public records shows that this funding has flowed through 48 charitable trusts and foundations. Of those, 31 are linked to individuals who have donated an additional £35 million to the Conservative Party since 2001.

Fifteen are family trusts and foundations linked to Tory peers and their relatives or are charities that have a Tory peer sitting on their board of trustees. Collectively, these entities account for 46% of total donations.  

The recipients of these funds are right-wing think-tanks based in and around 55 Tufton Street, organisations such as the IEA, the Global Warming Policy Foundation, and the TaxPayers’ Alliance, as well as various pressure groups and associated spinoff projects.

And what do these outfits all have in common? They never disclose their funding sources.

The think-tank transparency campaign, Who Funds You, believes that any organisation working to influence political debate and public policy should be open about who is financing them. The campaign rates think-tanks on a scale from A to E for funding transparency, with A being the most transparent.
Among those rated A are the Institute for Fiscal Studies, Labour Together, Compass, the Fabian Society, the Resolution Foundation, the Tax Justice Network, Unlock Democracy, the Bevan Foundation, and others.

Many of the right-wing think-tanks familiar to readers of Right-Wing Watch, fall into the D or E categories. These include the IEA and the Centre for Policy Studies ranked as D, and the Adam Smith Institute, Policy Exchange, the TaxPayers’ Alliance, and the Global Warming Policy Foundation, all ranked as E.

Conveyor belt ‘propaganda’ machine

Despite their lack of transparency, these organisations regularly appear in the right-wing press, presented as credible ‘experts.’ How often do we come across sensationalist ‘research’ from groups like the TaxPayers’ Alliance splashed across the pages of the Daily Mail, designed to provoke outrage at best, and panic at worst?

Worse still, this manufactured panic often filters into more reputable outlets like the BBC. Before long, the message from a politically motivated ‘report’ is amplified to millions and quietly absorbed into the mainstream narrative.

The propaganda model is simple – an ostensibly credible think-tank, typically funded by undisclosed donors and closely linked to the Conservative Party, produces a report on a topic that fits their ideological agenda, often about refugees or net zero. A well-known political figure helps publicise it, and it’s then heavily promoted across the right-wing media ecosystem while seeping into more credible sources.

This is how the right-wing media’s propaganda machine operates.

Irish journalist and writer Peter Geoghegan, who has been uncovering the dark money that fuels the right-wing for almost a decade, says the Good Law Project’s research sheds new light on the workings of shadowy groups that manipulate public debate.

“Tufton Street’s so-called think-tanks refuse to answer a simple question: ‘Who funds you?’” Geoghegan said. “Now we can see why: charities – which are supposed to support the public good – have effectively been acting as fronts to funnel money into Tufton Street bank accounts. The whole point seems to be to put another layer of opacity between the donors, their money and the causes they support.”

The Good Law Project notes how not only do charities provide an extra level of anonymity, but they also offer a way of boosting donations through substantial tax reliefs. For every £100 given by the wealthiest individuals, the charities they’re backing can net £182.

Right-wing think-tanks setting up charitable entities

What’s more, right-wing think-tanks aren’t just funded by wealthy Tory-linked trusts, in some cases, they’ve also set up their own so-called ‘charitable’ entities to funnel millions from the super-rich under the radar.

Take the Institute for Policy Research (IPR), founded in 1982 by directors of the Thatcherite Centre for Policy Studies (CPS). Officially set up to advance public education, papers seen by the Good Law Project reveal its real purpose, to “attract charitable donations” – a goal that it has fulfilled in earnest, acting as a conduit for nearly a quarter of the funds the Good Law Project identified.

Since 2008, over £7 million has been channelled to groups like CPS, TaxPayers’ Alliance, New Culture Forum, and Policy Exchange. Nearly half of that has gone straight to CPS. In the last five years, 99 percent of its grants have been to right-wing and Eurosceptic causes.

Thirteen trusts have donated to the IPR for its own use, eight of which are linked to Tory peers, including Lord Cruddas, the Wolfson family, Lord Borwick, and Lord Moynihan. And the ‘research’ the IPR funds includes papers with laborious, often culture war inciting titles, like Go Woke, Go Broke, Tied Up and Dangerous, and Slow Growth is Morally Unacceptable.

“This [funding] should concern all reasonable people,” says Dr Sam Power, political finance expert at Bristol University. “Often these organisations operate as thinly veiled pressure groups, many of which seem intent on importing US-style culture war politics wholesale into the UK.”

Another major player is the Politics and Economics Research Trust, originally launched in 2006 as the TaxPayers’ Alliance Research Trust. In 2015, it was exposed for funnelling 97 percent of its grants the previous year into pro-Brexit groups. It triggered a Charity Commission investigation that found the trust did not have formal agreements in place to make sure the research it funded furthered the charity’s objectives to advance education, with money ultimately being returned to the charity. 

Since then, it’s handed out over £2.8 million to right-wing groups, with funding from Tory donors like Nigel Vinson and the MoyniTrust.

Then there’s the Street Foundation, founded by aerospace CEO Richard Smith, the same Richard Smith who owns the building at 55 Tufton Street. Smith has donated £31,500 to the Conservatives in a personal capacity, and is a member of the Tufton Street-based TaxPayers’ Alliance.

Though supposedly focused on helping disabled and special needs children, the foundation has pumped £749,000 to right-wing groups in the past five years alone.

Regulatory failings? 

For Good Law Project’s executive director, Jo Maugham, the revelations are a “grim set of facts”.

“The Charity Commission continues to force hardworking taxpayers to fund political activity and misinformation through its disinclination to regulate right wing charities,” Maugham said. “And diverting money away from disabled children is a new low.”

The Commission has faced mounting criticism for its inaction.

In 2024, it was accused of ripping up its own guidance while brushing off a formal complaint against the IEA. The complaint, filed in March 2024 by the Good Law Project, cross-party MPs, and a former Charity Commission board member, argued that the IEA had long strayed from its duties as an educational charity.

Charity rules are clear that organisations must remain politically impartial and avoid publishing research that promotes “biased and selective information in support of a preconceived point of view.” Yet the IEA has consistently advanced radical free-market ideology, downplayed the climate crisis, and was seen as the inspiration behind Liz Truss and Kwasi Kwarteng’s disastrous mini-budget.

Yet the Charity Commission dismissed the complaint in just 12 days, announcing that guidance the Good Law Project had cited had been withdrawn the day after they got in touch.

“Evidence that the Institute of Economic Affairs has been acting outside its charitable purposes for years is so strong that we argue it’s irrational for the Charity Commission to conclude there is no cause for concern,” said the Good Law Project. “We say the commission also fails to take account of the institute’s poor regulatory history and offers no explanation for its confidence that the think-tank’s trustees will comply with their duties under charity law in the future.”

The bigger question now is what Keir Starmer will do about it. He has promised to clean up politics and restore “the highest standards of integrity and honesty.”

Surely that must include ending the flow of dark money into British politics, by exposing Tufton Street and overhauling a charity sector that has become something of a partisan funding machine.

Because when £28 million in charitable donations is being used to bankroll think-tanks that help re-elect Donald Trump, surely, we can’t keep turning a blind eye.

Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch

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Mark Littlewood, former director at the Institute of Economic Affairs, championed and inspired the disastrous policies contained in Truss’ mini-budget, which sent markets into turmoil and people’s mortgage bills soaring, eventually resulting in her being booted out of office after just 49 days.

The Times previously reported that, Littlewood, 51, championed Truss’s mini-budget and was seen by many as having helped to inspire her programme of tax cuts and supply side reforms, dubbed “Trussonomics”.

Rather than showing humility, Littlewood has now turned his attention to telling Badenoch what to do, after opinion polls showed both the public and Tory membership losing faith in her.

In a piece for the Daily Mail, in his new role as director of right-wing pressure group Popular Conservatism, Littlewood has some words of advice for the current troubled Tory leadership.

Highlighting a survey carried out by his group of Tory members on what they would like to see, Littlewood, highlighted how Tory members want Badenoch to give more power to the membership and to ditch net zero.

He also highlighted how scrapping the Supreme Court and abolishing the Equality Act were also popular among members and advised Badenoch to push ahead with such an agenda.

After his advice led to Truss’ downfall, could Badenoch follow down the same path?

Basit Mahmood is editor of Left Foot Forward

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