By Mat Hope, editor of DeSmog UK.Originally published at DeSmog UK.
Donald Trump has finally come to the UK, 20 months after he won the election to make him the 45th President of the United States.
During that time, a trans-Atlantic network of business people, think tank analysts, and lobbyists have grown in influence — pushing a free market ideology and spreading climate science denial on both sides of the Atlantic.
DeSmog UK first mapped the network when Trump was sworn into office in January 2016. Things have moved on a bit since then.
On the eve of the President’s UK visit, over 100 scientists signed a letter urging Theresa May to challenge Donald Trump’s climate science denial. To mark the occasion, DeSmog UK has updated the network map, showing all the key connections between the actors in the shadows pushing to lighten environmental regulations and dampen corporate accountability in the US and UK:
From Trump to the UK
Donald Trump is famously keen to appoint climate science deniers and fossil fuel lobbyists to head up the US’s main environmental regulator, the Environmental Protection Agency.
First there was Scott Pruitt, a lawyer funded by the fossil fuel industry that was fond of trying to stop the EPA’s clean power plan in the courts. After Pruitt resigned in the wake of multiple allegations of inappropriate use of EPA funds, Trump appointed another coal lobbyist to replace him — Andrew Wheeler. He was a staffer of climate science denying US Senator Jim Inhofe. Inhofe once held up a snowball in Congress to try and disprove global warming.
Inhofe has taken campaign contributions from the Koch brothers — who have spent more than $88 million backing groups spreading climate science denial, according to Greenpeace estimates. Trump’s 2016 presidential bid was belatedly backed by the Kochs, but Trump mainly drew funds from Rebekah Mercer and Robert Mercer. The Mercer Family Foundation spent at least $3,824,000 between 2003 and 2010 directly funding groups opposing climate change action.
The Mercers and the Kochs fund a number of organisations that tie Trump and his administration to the climate science denial and Brexit lobbying in the UK, including the Competitive Enterprise Institute, the Heartland Institute, The Heritage Foundation, the CATO Institute, the American Legislative Exchange Council , and Americans for Prosperity.
Trans-Atlantic Conduits
These groups use a number of actors as conduits to spread their money, resources and ideas into the UK.
One organisation that rapidly grew in influence after the Brexit referendum was the Legatum Institute. OpenDemocracy revealed how Legatum got privileged access to UK government ministers, with all the links and meetings mapped by DeSmog UK.
Legatum hired two US lobbyists with ties to climate science denial organisations — Alden Abbott and Shanker Singham. Abbott authored a report for the Heartland Institute, and was a Deputy Director at The Heritage Foundation, while Singham was a policy expert for the US<-based Heartland Institute.
Singham is often credited with working inside government to push for a Hard Brexit. Singham had begun advising PR and lobbying firm Grayling about Brexit, Open Democracy revealed. This was a problem, as Singham was a member of International Trade Secretary and arch-Leaver Liam Fox’s trade advisory team. Singham said there is no conflict of interest, but stepped down from his trade advisory role anyway.
The controversy saw Singham shuffled out of Legatum. He now works for the Institute of Economic Affairs, which has strong ties to organisations based in a building that acts as an incubator for climate science denial and deregulatory ideas in the UK — 55 Tufton Street.
One resident, the Taxpayers’ Alliance, was set up by Matthew Elliott, now a Senior Advisor at Legatum. Elliot was Chief of the Brexit campaign group Vote Leave. He recently visited the US to work on the US-UK trade deal, alongside Singham.
Elliott is married to Sarah Smith, chair of right-wing lobby group Republicans Overseas UK. Smith used to work as a Major Gifts Officer for Americans for Prosperity, a Koch brothers lobby group.
There are other links, beyond Legatum.
Myron Ebell, a Director at the Competitive Enterprise Institute and a member of Trump’s transition team, is an ally of the UK’s premier climate science denial campaign group, the Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).
Ebell spoke at an event organised by the GWPF in January 2017. At the event, he said he considered the “climate industrial complex”, which included everyone from climate campaigners to publicly funded scientists, as one of the “most dangerous” threats to society.
When asked where he got his information on climate change, if not from experts or scientists, Ebell said he was “very skeptical of expert opinion when it becomes group-think and experts gang up against public”. He pointed to Brexit as another example of the public rejecting expert opinion. When asked what special interests he was representing, he replied “freedom”.
And then there are Arron Banks and Nigel Farage, famously photographed in a golden elevator with Donald Trump in November 2016.
Farage, former leader of UKIPand the Leave.EU campaign group, has spoken at The Heritage Foundation. One of Brexit’s main funders, Banks has also been invited to Heritage Foundation events, as well as speaking at the CATO Institute — both of which promote climate science denial and rampant free-market capitalism.
Tory Politicans and the UK Government
All of these conduits are significantly involved with pro-Brexit groups, which have the backing of numerous Tory politicians and cabinet members.
For instance, Leave Means Leave, a group campaigning for a hard Brexit, had new Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab on its political advisory board.
Leave Means Leave was also supported by some of the UK’s most prominent climate science deniers such as former Tory MP and now Lord Peter Lilley, and Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) MP Sammy Wilson. It was also supported by libertarian Tories calling for deregulations which have previously pushed disinformation on climate change including Jacob Rees-Mogg, John Redwood, Christopher Chope and Ian Paisley Jr, to name a few.
Former environment secretary Owen Paterson is also a member of the group. Paterson and Lilley are both affiliated with the GWPF, and Paterson delivered a speech to the Competitive Enterprise Institute in October 2017.
Raab was also co-founder of Change Britain, which was set up by members of Vote Leave after the referendum. Change Britain’s patron is Lord Charles Guthrie, a former Field Marshal, who has been implicated in deals to buy Siberian gold alongside Arron Banks.
Raab is not the only cabinet member with strong links to the US. Just weeks after his appointment as International Trade Secretary, Liam Fox met with over a dozen Heritage Foundation members – including its president and former Tea Partier Jim DeMint and several individuals who became part of the Trump administration. Fox’s former special advisor when he was Defence Secretary, Luke Coffey, now works for the Heritage Foundation.
Fox was also the founder of Atlantic Bridge, a neoconservative thinktank aiming to promote a “special relationship”between the UK and United States. In 2007, the group established a partnership with free-market lobby group the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC, known for producing template pieces of legislation that reduce protections for the environment and other anti-regulation efforts. Atlantic Bridge operated until September 2011 when it was dissolved following a Charity Commission investigation.
A key funder of Atlantic Bridge was Michael Hintze, the billionaire hedge fund manager, Conservative party donor, philanthropist, and supporter of the climate science denying GWPF. Hintze also donated money to former Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson for his campaign to be London Mayor.
While not a pro-Brexit cabinet member, new Home Secretary Matt Hancock has also accepted cash from a key donor to the climate science denying GWPF. He has received £18,000 in donations from businessman Neil Record over the past four years.
Johnson’s Brexit co-conspirator and now Environment Secretary Michael Gove was also involved with Atlantic Bridge, and sits on the Advisory Committee of another 55 Tufton Street outfit, the New Culture Forum.
Gove, Fox and Johnson are all Brexit figureheads, and all recently held meetings with Singham and Legatum.
With so many connections between the Brexit and Trump camps, the President’s visit this week may feel more like a homecoming.
6 comments
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Thank you, JLS, for shining a light on this network.
Just a couple of things to say, having come across some of the persons mentioned in previous lives, e.g. Neil Record, a former Bank of England official like future chancellor Matt Hancock.
This network is just the tip of the iceberg and goes beyond the Tory Party. There are Labour (e.g. politicians Gisela Stuart and Kate Hoey in Atlantic Bridge) and Liberal representatives (donors from the Marshall Wace hedge fund) in the network.
It’s not helpful to limit attention to the Trump camp. Some of these networks go back to the 1990s and much earlier, e.g. the IEA, and will survive Trump. Trump serves a useful distraction and diverts attention from the people who should be at the sharp end of a pitch fork. Many need to get over their obsession with Trump.
I attended a discussion with EU27 officials about Brexit yesterday lunchtime and will send a read-out soon.
Absolutely, Colonel.
And it’s not like those neoliberal scions of the New England jetsetters or the SillyCon Valleys Boys (including Amazon’s Bozo) are trying hard to save the planet from climate change.
They’re all rotten.
CS,
Thanks for your input and reminding us that the ‘enemy’ resides in many places.
Now, and helping trace these horrible connections, not sure if you have ever visited Lobster Magazine in the UK, but it has loads of research over many years, including how the CIA channelled funds to the SDP in the early 80’s – so, these Rightwing, Altanticist links you talk of go back well beyond the 90’s, indeed, they go back to the 70’s at least – see the Mayfair Set by Adam Curtis; Here’s the link: https://www.lobster-magazine.co.uk
Thank you, CDR.
I will have a look and may well give some steers.
Thank you for mentioning Lobster – it’s an excellent magazine, edited by the very thoughtful Robin Ramsay. I think NC readers will find it very informative.
Interesting to see Lawson there. I do not recall where I read it (Garvey?) but it is said that the denialists on Global warming are following the same song sheet as the tobacco lobby in the 50s and 60s. One of the techniques used IIRC was to hire well-known public figures who might be regarded as having some gravitas to cast doubt on the science. 2+2 makes 4?