The UK is waking up to the reality that the UK is also vulnerable to the equivalent of the US’s Project 2025
Tom Brake is CEO of Unlock Democracy
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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