Whatever happened to the ‘silly season,’ when summer headlines were filled with crop circles and Loch Ness Monster sightings during Parliament’s recess? Instead, for the second summer in a row, the far-right seized the spotlight, shouting “bring back hanging” and stoking outrage over migrant hotels.
Echoing the racist riots of 2024, right-wing politicians and their dutiful media once again tried to stir community tensions, capitalising on their opponents’ absence. But this year’s news came with a curious twist: a quiet gathering of far-right figures tucked away in the Cotswolds.
The region’s long-standing appeal to conservatives has taken on a new hue, and it’s less “country manor” and more “MAGA playground.” The rolling hills of Oxfordshire are no longer just a retreat for affluent old Tories, they’re hosting the transatlantic right.
The peaceful Oxfordshire hamlet of Dean became a hotspot of political intrigue when US Vice President JD Vance who was holidaying there, hosted a barbecue at the village’s 18th-century manor house. Among the strange and eclectic gathering were Cambridge academic James Orr, Conservative MP Danny Kruger, and reality TV personality Thomas “Bosh” Skinner.
Kruger told the Observer that Vance had personally invited the trio to what he described as “a convivial dinner with him and his family. Obviously, we discussed politics, but it was a social evening.”
One name on the guest list, James Orr, may ring a bell. Not only is the man who once told the Times that “toxic femininity is a thing, as much as toxic masculinity,” an associate professor of the philosophy of religion at Cambridge University, but also chairman of the advisory board for the Centre for a Better Britain (CBB). This pro-Reform think-tank is reportedly seeking to raise over £25 million in a bid to install Nigel Farage as prime minister by 2029. The Times reported in June that the CBB 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 launched an operation in the United States, hoping to draw inspiration and financial support from the MAGA movement that twice helped elect Donald Trump. It has registered an entity in Dallas, Texas, with the US Internal Revenue Service.
Apart from the Prosperity Institute, otherwise known as the Dubai-based, Brexit-backing group Legatum, which Orr is also involved with, the CBB is critical of right-wing think-tanks. CBB and Prosperity, which has previously donated to Danny Kruger’s family values-obsessed New Conservatives, are already holding biweekly meetings as they “prepare for 2029.”
Orr’s think-tank affiliations don’t stop there. He is also the UK chairman of the Edmund Burke Foundation, a right-wing US think-tank that organises the National Conservatism (NatCon) conferences. As RWW readers know all too well, NatCon provides platforms for figures like Suella Braverman, Douglas Murray, Nigel Farage, and Hungary’s Prime Minister Viktor Orbán, to spout their shared ideologies about the likes of climate change, immigration, free speech and more.
Then there’s Danny Kruger, a hardline conservative voice at the cosy Cotswolds’ barbecue. A co-founder of the New Conservatives faction, Kruger is known for his anti-immigration position and opposition to environmental regulation. Last year, he faced scrutiny over financial links to groups associated with the Christian right.
Both Orr and Kruger sit on the advisory board of the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC). Launched in March 2023, the right didn’t waste any time in joining forces to address, what ARC describes as “solutions to defining challenges in areas such as the future of the family, free enterprise, affordable energy, environmental stewardship, and moral governance.”
GB News owner Paul Marshall is also on the board, as is the Spectator’s associate editor Douglas Murray. In November 2023, ARC held its inaugural conference in London and was fronted by some of the most prominent and influential names in climate change denial and alt-right thinking, including a headline speech by Canadian climate science denier Jordan Peterson.
‘But back to the Cotswolds. Completing the ‘barbe’ was Tom ‘Bosh’ Skinner, the Essex-born reality TV star, famous for cockney one-liners, all-day fry-ups, and permanent suntan. Since his appearance on the Apprentice in 2019, Skinner has built a following of over 700,000 on Instagram, with similar numbers on TikTok and X. He’s marketed as the everyman, unpretentious, straight-talking, and the voice of working-class Britain. His appeal rests on a kind of nostalgic masculinity that’s entrepreneurial, no-nonsense, common sense and supposedly left behind by modern politics.
But Skinner’s authenticity is dubious. Despite the “white van man” persona, he’s the son of a wealthy marketing executive who once owned a garage full of Lamborghinis, before losing it all in a suspected investment fraud. Skinner attended the elite Brentwood School on a sports scholarship, where fees run up to £56,000 a year, and grew up in a £2.5 million home in Essex.
Still, he never fails to play along with his ‘Del Boy’ image. “JD just thought he [Skinner] was a great personality,” said Kruger.
Following the Cotswolds bash, “Bosh” posted:
“When the vice president of the USA invites ya for a BBQ [and] beers, you say yes. Unreal night with JD and his friends n family. He was a proper gent. Lots of laughs and some fantastic food. A brilliant night, one to tell the grandkids about, mate. Bosh.”
Why the Cotswolds?
So, why are American populists and their British cheerleaders gravitating to the scenic villages and rolling hills of the Cotswolds?
This affluent region is overwhelmingly white, wealthy, and conservative, with a deep-rooted reverence for tradition, land ownership, and national heritage. It’s also a magnet for both old money and “aspirational” new elites who crave a lifestyle rooted in English exceptionalism, brimming with limestone manors, Range Rovers, and foxhunting-friendly pubs.
More cynically, Guardian columnist Marina Hyde described how in the modern-era Cotswolds, JD is “unlikely to even be the ghastliest person in the village.”
And she’s got a point. Boris Johnson has Cotswolds’ connections, having spent part of 2022 at the Daylesford estate, owned by JCB’s Lord Bamford, where he was reportedly plotting his return to No. 10. Later, the former PM moved into a listed manor house in Brightwell, Oxfordshire.
Meanwhile, Jeremy Clarkson’s Diddly Squat farm shop in Chipping Norton has become a pilgrimage site for fans of the outspoken former Top Gear presenter.
But ironically, while JD Vance and his MAGA allies are trying to export their political playbook to Britain, many of their fellow Americans, particularly wealthy Democrats, are fleeing the US altogether, and the Cotswolds is their chosen destination.
In 2024, US applications for UK citizenship reached a record 6,100, a 26 percent increase on the previous year. According to Cotswolds estate agent Harry Gladwin, the re-election of Trump drove a surge of inquiries from Americans seeking to “anchor themselves” in Britain. Citizenship advisor Armand Arton said: “The Democrats are fleeing. The higher the profile, the higher the anti-Trump rhetoric they expressed, the more serious they are about taking those steps.”
And not everyone in the Cotswolds welcomed the vice president’s descent on their region. Around 100 local residents, mostly women, staged a protest in Charlbury carrying placards like “Cotswold Childless Cat Ladies Say Go Home,” a reference to Vance’s typically blunt put-down of Democrats, especially women Democrats.
So, what does a barbecue in the Cotswolds really tell us? Perhaps more than we think.
What may appear as a charming countryside get-together is, in reality, part of a calculated transatlantic strategy to reshape British conservatism in the image of American populism. Behind the pork sausages and photo ops lies a network of ideologues, think-tanks, and political opportunists laying the groundwork for 2029, when Farage hopes to ride a wave of anti-immigration, climate change denial and culture war grievance into Downing Street.
And yet, the Cotswolds is also home to those resisting this encroaching tide, whether it’s anti-Trump therapists in Charlbury or ordinary citizens unwilling to let their villages become staging grounds for reactionary politics, and the media it attracts.
So, while JD Vance may have found his “green and pleasant land” in rural England, we would do well to remember – barbecues can burn both ways.
Gabrielle Pickard-Whitehead is author of Right-Wing Watch
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