Ray Hearne

@Nigel_Farage Antisemitism? Farage was 53 when he said: "US Jews have disproportionate influence over politics" It's not a schoolboy thing. timesofisrael.com/farage-says-us…

This shameless lying bastard has a lot to answer for. The false claim that Britain is a 'high tax, high welfare' country is a myth pushed by free-market extremists. Matthew Elliott, now Baron Elliott of Mickle Fell, is one of the UK's most prominent right-wing political strategists and lobbyists. His cynical manipulative ideological extremism has caused untold harm to Britain and to ordinary British people. He founded #TuftonStreet's TaxPayers' Alliance (TPA) in 2004, Big Brother Watch in 2009, and Business for Britain, which evolved into the Vote Leave campaign. He served as chief executive of Vote Leave during the 2016 EU referendum and previously directed the successful NOtoAV campaign in 2011. In 2024, he was elevated to the House of Lords on insane conspiracy theorist Liz Truss's resignation honours list, and he now leads the Jobs Foundation while remaining active in Conservative circles and the upper chamber. Elliott is a key figure in importing American-style astroturf lobbying and dark-money techniques into British politics. His organisations, particularly those clustered around #55TuftonStreet, have operated with limited transparency on funding sources, allowing wealthy donors, including corporate and libertarian interests, to exert outsized influence on policy without proper scrutiny. The TPA has consistently declined to disclose most of its donors, fuelling accusations that it functions as a front for ideologically aligned backers rather than a genuine grassroots voice. The infamous £350 million a week for the #NHS claim on the Vote Leave battle bus has been widely condemned as misleading, given the complexities of the UK's EU budget contributions and rebate. In 2018, the Electoral Commission ruled that Vote Leave breached spending limits through improper coordination with the separate BeLeave group, resulting in a £61,000 fine and a police referral. Although Elliott has denied personal wrongdoing and courts later questioned aspects of the Commission's interpretation, the episode is often cited as evidence that the official Leave side stretched or violated electoral rules to secure victory. Earlier charity-related issues have also drawn scrutiny. Elliott established the Political and Economic Research Trust in 2006 as an educational charity, but investigations by the Charity Commission in 2011 and 2015 highlighted inadequate controls over grants to non-charitable political entities, including Business for Britain. One £50,000 grant for an anti-EU report was ordered to be repaid. When his peerage nomination was announced, opponents, including Liberal Democrat figures, urged the House of Lords Appointments Commission to block it on propriety grounds linked to these funding arrangements, though he was ultimately cleared and took his seat. Elliott is strongly linked to climate-sceptic networks and fossil-fuel interests, with his work framing EU environmental regulations as overreach. His early involvement in the Conservative Friends of Russia group, including a Moscow trip, has been raised in discussions of pre-Brexit Tory-Russia ties, though he distanced himself from further participation. Links to US libertarian figures, such as those in the Koch network and Grover Norquist's Americans for Tax Reform, which inspired his UK efforts, reinforce perceptions of him as an importer of aggressive, low-tax, deregulatory campaigning. Elliott is a highly effective operator who has prioritised ideological wins and personal advancement over transparency, factual rigour, and democratic standards. His successes in referendums and sustained influence on Conservative thinking, especially during the Truss era, come at the cost of diminished public trust through opaque networks, rule-bending, and misleading messaging. The recurring themes of financial opacity, electoral controversies, misleading misinformation using decontextualised cherry-picked often incomplete data, and ideological networking dominate his career.