(repost with extra links)
When Liz Truss was forced to abandon her mini-budget, Mark Littlewood, the Director General of the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA), one of the secretively (oil, gas, tobacco) funded think-tanks at the centre of the Tufton Street network, and behind Truss’ economic policies, was reportedly “distraught”.
Even before Truss resigned, those in favour of a de-regulated/disaster capitalist/extremist agenda were lamenting, The opportunity, Nigel Farage told Politico, “now appears to be dead. And I would have thought dead for a very, very long time. The people in the Conservative Party that I talk to, who think on my wavelength … have pretty much given up.”
Fast forward to Sunak’s cabinet and making the headlines is the re-appointment of Suella Braverman as Home Secretary, whose dream of deporting refugees to Rwanda is backed by Tufton Street’s Migration Watch (and Nigel Farage).
Three other members of Sunak’s first cabinet are, according to the IEA, “alumni of IEA initiatives”. They are:
Dominic Raab – Deputy Prime Minister. Co-author, with Truss, Kwarteng et al, of ‘Britannia Unchained’
James Cleverly – Foreign Secretary
Alister Jack – Secretary of State for Scotland
Four other members of the cabinet are listed as parliamentary supporters of the Free Market Forum: a “project of the Institute for Economic Affairs”. The Free Market Forum’s head is senior policy advisor to Mark Littlewood. Matthew Elliott, founder of Tufton Street’s Taxpayers’ Alliance is on the Advisory Council.
The cabinet supporters named by the Free Market Forum are:
Kemi Badenoch – International Trade Secretary and Minister for Women and Equalities (Liz Truss’ former role)
Therese Coffey – Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs
Mark Harper – Transport Secretary
Gillian Keegan – Education Secretary
Chris Heaton-Harris, former head of the European Research Group, was a supporter of the Free Market Forum’s first incarnation, the Free Enterprise Group, co-founded by Liz Truss in 2011. He remains as Northern Ireland Secretary.
Meanwhile, Rishi Sunak’s trusted press secretary, Nerissa Chesterfield, is a former communications manager at the IEA.
So the vested interests behind the crashing of the UK economy, by their own account, remain invested in, and influential at the highest level on: UK trade, transport, agriculture, environment, foreign affairs, Northern Ireland and education policy, as well as in the office of the Deputy Prime Minister and the Prime Minister. They may have gone quiet. But they have not gone away.
tabitha troughton 