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.
Donald Trump reignited his trade war this week, unveiling the first in a series of letters threatening higher tariffs on 14 US trading partners. Meanwhile, the US dollar, long a pillar of American economic dominance, is faltering, having fallen more than 10% this year, its steepest first-half decline since 1973, when President Nixon severed the currency’s link to gold, shaking the global financial system.
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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