George Monbiot's Opinion piece for the Guardian (Tue 1 Sep 2020) on Thinktanks, such as Policy Exchange, seeks to expose how these capitalist sponsored entities are working in the UK to shift power away from state institutions and into the prime minister’s office. He writes:
To accumulate power, a government with authoritarian tendencies must first destroy power. It must reduce rival centres of power – the judiciary, the civil service, academia, broadcasters, local government, civil society – to satellites of its own authority, controlled from the centre, deprived of independent action. But it must do this while claiming to act in the people’s name.
So it needs an apparatus of justification: arguments that can be fed through a sympathetic press and manufactured into outrage against its rivals. This is where the intellectual work of such a government is focused.
In the UK, Dominic Cummings is not the sole architect of this project: much of the intellectual landscaping has been outsourced. Since the 1950s, an infrastructure of persuasion has been built, whose purpose is to supplant civic power with the power of money. The model was developed by two fanatical disciples of Friedrich Hayek, the father of neoliberalism: Antony Fisher and Oliver Smedley. They knew it was essential to disguise their intentions. While founding the Institute of Economic Affairs, the first of the thinktanks whose purpose was to spread Hayek’s gospel, Smedley reminded Fisher it was “imperative that we should give no indication in our literature that we are working to educate the Public along certain lines … That is why the first draft [of our aims] is written in rather cagey terms.”
The institute, and the other lobby groups Fisher founded, honed the arguments that would be used to strip down the state, curtail public welfare and public protection, and restrict and undermine other forms of social cohesion, releasing the ultra-rich from the constraints of democracy. Unsurprisingly, some of the richest people on Earth poured cash into his project.
His groups translated Hayek’s ideas, seen by many as repulsive, into a new political common sense – producing the reframings and justifications on which Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan built their revolutions.
Others began to copy this model. Madsen Pirie, the founder of the Adam Smith Institute, describes in his autobiography how, using funds from 20 of the UK’s biggest companies, he helped to chart the course that Thatcher took. Every Saturday, while she was in opposition, staff from the Adam Smith Institute and the Institute of Economic Affairs sat down for lunch with Conservative party researchers, and leader writers and columnists from the Times and Telegraph, to plot out her rise to power. They “planned strategy for the week ahead”, and would “co-ordinate our activities to make us more effective collectively”. Pirie describes how he devised many of the policies that defined Thatcherism.
And elsewhere too, not least in the testimony of the Brexit campaign whistleblower Shahmir Sanni, there is evidence that these lobby groups coordinate their work, creating the impression that people in different places are spontaneously coming to the same conclusions. Several of them work from the same offices, in 55 and 57 Tufton Street, Westminster.
The lobby group that Boris Johnson’s government uses most is Policy Exchange. While it claims to be a neutral educational charity, it was founded in 2002 by the Conservative MPs Francis Maude and Archie Norman, and Nick Boles, who later also became a Tory MP. Its first chairman was Michael Gove. Its proposals and personnel have been adopted by the Conservative party ever since.
Policy Exchange has played an important role in shifting power away from rival institutions and into the prime minister’s office. For several years it has been building a case for curtailing the judiciary. It provided the ammunition for the government’s current attack on judicial review, which enables citizens to sue the government to uphold the law. This was the process transparency campaigner Gina Miller used: in 2016 to oblige Theresa May to seek parliamentary approval for triggering the Brexit process; and, last year, to overturn Boris Johnson’s suspension of parliament.
Policy Exchange calls such rulings “judicial overreach”. It claims they threaten the sovereignty of parliament and the separation of powers between government and judiciary. To my mind they do the opposite. The law is not whatever Boris Johnson says it is: it is legislation passed by parliament and interpreted by the courts. Both the Miller cases returned powers to parliament that prime ministers had seized. The government has now appointed a former Conservative minister, Lord Faulks, to examine judicial review, along the lines suggested by Policy Exchange.
This lobby group has called for the prime minister’s office to have greater powers “to develop and direct policy change” through the civil service, and to appoint leaders of public bodies whose “culture and values” align with government’s aims. It has led the public attacks on what it calls the “chilling effects” of leftwing views in academia. Its recent report on academic freedom was brilliantly eviscerated in the Guardian by Jonathan Portes, who found it riddled with basic statistical errors and mistaken assumptions. What purports to be a campaign for intellectual freedom looks more like a McCarthyite attempt to suppress left-leaning ideas. It’s an effective weapon in the government’s gathering culture war.
Policy Exchange’s proposals for changing the planning system, which involve a massive removal of power from local authorities, have been adopted wholesale by the government. One of the authors of this scheme, Jack Airey, has moved from the thinktank to Downing Street, as a special adviser.
Last year, Policy Exchange published a polemic that claimed Extinction Rebellion is led by dangerous extremists. As usual, it was widely covered by the media. Less discussed was the report that the lobby group has received funding from the power company Drax, the trade association Energy UK, and the gas companies E.ON and Cadent, whose fossil-fuel investments are threatened by environmental activism. These are among the few funders whose identities we know. Policy Exchange is listed by Who Funds You? as among the UK’s most opaque thinktanks. It might seem remarkable that without having to reveal its funders, while promoting shifts that could harm civil society, Policy Exchange remains a registered charity.
Conservative governments clearly attach great importance to the way charities are overseen. In 2018, a parliamentary committee sent the government an unprecedented letter, pointing out that the government’s preferred candidate as chair of the Charity Commission, the former Tory minister Baroness Stowell, was “unable to demonstrate … any real insight, knowledge or vision”; could not be seen as neutral; and had failed to withstand the committee’s scrutiny. The government appointed her anyway, and she remains chair today.
By such means, political life is steadily undermined, until little remains but authority and obedience to the prime minister. Without strong civic institutions, society loses its power. From the point of view of global capital, that’s mission accomplished. To resist the government’s machinations, first we must understand them.
A Re:LODE Radio post covered the Tufton Street connections to the UK Conservative Party, fossil fuel interests and climate change denial on Wednesday, 6 May 2020:
In June 2019 DESMOGUK published this interactive mapping tool for their Who's Who of Brexit and Climate Science Denial,
and which is a revelation. The exceptionalism that characterizes many
of national myths that are peddled in political discourses is exposed as
a network of lobbyists, politicians and campaign groups, that has been
pushing the UK towards a hard-Brexit, with the aim of axing
environmental protection in the name of free-market ideology.
Speakers from Writers Rebel, a group formed in support of the aims of Extinction Rebellion, blocked Tufton Street in London amid a noticeable police presence.
Sian Cain and Jessica Murray reported for the Guardian this evening (Wed 2 Sep 2020 21.25 BST) on a demonstration against the climate denial machine that operates from the offices of thinktanks and lobbyists based in Tufton Street. Sian Cain and Jessica Murray write:
A group of artists and writers including Zadie Smith and Sir Mark Rylance have spoken out against the thinktanks and lobbyists at the heart of Westminster, gathering with hundreds of protesters near their offices on Wednesday night.
Speakers from Writers Rebel, a group formed in support of the aims of Extinction Rebellion, blocked Tufton Street in London amid a noticeable police presence.
Offices on the street include that of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which states on its website “while [it is] open-minded on the contested science of global warming, [it] is deeply concerned about the costs and other implications of many of the policies currently being advocated”.
Four people, including author and XR member Rupert Read and Writers Rebel co-founder Jessica Townsend, were later arrested after spraying stencils reading “Lies, Lies, Economics and Lies” on the entrances to 55 Tufton Street.
The group also occupied the street on large tripod constructions, and Read poured paint representing blood down the steps of the building.
Speaking earlier, Smith, author of the novels White Teeth and On Beauty, said she had come to realise that her previous belief, that climate change denial was rooted in a genuine fear, was “naive”.
“Now we know better. Now we know the outsized, unruly emotions that surround the scientific fact of climate change are fuelled by something far more calculated and external than species shame. They are not organic, natural or unavoidable, but rather feelings manufactured, targeted, organised, and paid for, largely by oil companies and other vested economic interests who are prepared to sacrifice your long-term future for their short-term profit.
“There are people whose business it is to make science look like opinion. Who aim to transform genuine feelings of climate grief and guilt into defended ignorance and positive denial,”Smith said.
“This is no longer, if it ever was, a question of personal morality. This is a structural question of corrupt politics, of lobbying at the highest level of our government. It involves the economic exploitation of the greatest existential challenge the human race has ever known, the survival of the planet. The fate of this planet cannot be decided by well-remunerated men and women in shadowy offices. This planet belongs to the people. More accurately, we all belong to it.”
The protest was compered by the actors Juliet Stevenson and Rylance, who resigned from his role at the Royal Shakespeare Company in 2019, after 30 years, over the company’s ties to British Petroleum (BP).
“It is a great comfort for me to be out here among people who I feel share my sense of confusion,” said Rylance, to applause. “There is a culture of misinformation and lying that surrounds us. And it is only getting worse.”
Other speakers included Dame Carmen Callil, founder of the publisher Virago, and the MP Caroline Lucas, who came from tabling the climate and ecological emergency bill.
“It is a fundamental proponent of democracy that we should know who is speaking,” said the environmentalist George Monbiot. “And what is speaking here is the power of money. And the power of money is the greatest threat to democracy and the greatest threat to life as we know it.”
Margaret Atwood, author of books including The Handmaid’s Tale, lent her support via video message. “Climate change due to human activity is not a theory, it is not an opinion, it is a fact,” she said. “Denial of this fact in the interests of big money will lead to our extinction as a species.”
Writers Rebel has previously been supported by the novelists Ali Smith, Naomi Alderman and Irenosen Okojie, the historian Simon Schama and the environmental writers Robert Macfarlane and Philip Hoare.
At the launch of the Writers Rebel campaign last week, the writer and actor Stephen Fry said people had a duty to “expose the lies” of climate change denial.
The demonstration was organised in conjunction with the nascent Extinction Rebellion group Money Rebellion, which will target the finance industry for its inaction on the climate emergency.
The event took place as part of XR’s 10-day protest to demand government action on the climate crisis. The Metropolitan police said more than 230 people involved had so far been arrested.
From yesterday, Extinction Rebellion was back on the streets for 10 days of protests
Extinction Rebellion protesters staged a Titanic-themed dinner party to illustrate the threat of rising sea levels in Southend-on-Sea on Saturday. A photo of this event was used in this invitation from the Guardian to let the newspaper know more about the individual experience of XR protests taking place over the next ten days.
Jessica Murray reports for the Guardian on the first day of Extinction Rebellion's return to the streets (Tue 1 Sep 2020). Jessica Murray writes under the subheading:
Roads blocked near Parliament Square as group begins 10 days of UK-wide climate action
Thousands of Extinction Rebellion protesters have descended on Parliament Square in London leading to at least 90 arrests, as the group kicked off 10 days of civil disobedience to demand government action on the climate crisis.
Four XR groups blocked roads as they marched across central London waving brightly coloured flags and banners demanding MPs back what they have described as the “climate and ecological emergency bill”.
A number of protesters sat in the middle of an intersection next to Parliament Square blocking traffic, as dozens of police officers swooped in to carry them away to vans parked nearby.
The Metropolitan police issued restrictions under section 14 of the Public Order Act to limit the protest to the off-road area of Parliament Square gardens.
The restrictions also stipulated that no boats, vehicles, trailers or other structures were allowed at the procession at any point on its route on Tuesday, and said the protest must finish by 7pm.
Commander Jane Connors of the Met said: “The reason we have implemented these conditions is that we know these protests may result in serious disruption to local businesses, commuters and our communities and residents, which I will not tolerate.”
Similar protests took place in Cardiff, where protesters hung a large banner from the office of the secretary of state of Wales, and in Manchester, where demonstrators blocked roads as they congregated in St Peter’s Square with giant puppets.
In contrast to the group’s rebellion in October 2019, when some members caused controversy by targeting a rush hour DLR service, organisers said the focus this time is intended to be institutions of power, with disruption aimed at the heart of Westminster and timed to start on the day MPs returned to parliament from summer recess.
The Green MP Caroline Lucas addressed the crowd in Parliament Square to announce that she would table the climate and ecological emergency bill: “Thank you for showing more political leadership than that place over there,” she said, gesturing to the House of Commons.
The protest is the first mass gathering of XR protesters since a rebellion planned for earlier this year was cancelled because of the pandemic, and the group has been warned it could face a £10,000 fine for organising a gathering of more than 30 people under coronavirus legislation.
Many protesters said the pandemic had made them more determined to protest.
“By living the way we live, we are making ourselves more vulnerable to these pandemics and that’s why [the climate crisis] should never have been off the agenda, it should be part and parcel of the Covid debate,” said 50-year-old Ava, from Lewes in East Sussex.
Along with a specific focus on the proposed bill and calls for a national citizens’ assembly to tackle the crisis, some protesters took specific aim at the HS2 high-speed rail project.
A makeshift “Boris the Bank Engine” featuring cardboard carriages labelled “Lies” and “Communities Devastated” chugged from Buckingham Palace towards parliament, while protesters chanted “Stop HS2” and people dressed as ticket inspectors handed out flyers.
“We just hope to extend the message to people who are not aware of HS2 because it’s taking place largely outside of London so many people don’t feel the loss because they can’t see it,” said Simon Morgan, an activist.
The vast majority of those taking part were wearing masks, and XR said a digital rebellion was taking place online for those unable to attend the demonstrations in person.
“If it’s OK to get in a metal tin and fly up in the sky breathing in other people’s recycled air for four hours, then it seems ridiculous to me that you would persecute people who are trying to save the long-term health of the planet,” said Kerry Evans, 45, who had travelled from Winchester for the protest.
“To me, it’s madness not to be here. It’s madness not to be trying to force our government into action. I couldn’t not be part of this and look my children in the eye when I kiss them goodnight.”
Climate emergency bill offers real hope
A group of Westminster MP's had a letter published in the Guardian today on the tabling in the UK parliament at Westminster of the climate and ecological emergency bill on Tuesday 1 September 2020.
From these cooler years of the early 21st century, we look to a bleak future. A future where the Earth continues to heat, with more extreme weather, with parts of our planet made uninhabitable, leaving millions homeless and destitute. A future where we face the threat of mass extinctions, for which we are responsible.
We will need all of our ingenuity and imagination to prevent this future from unfolding. As we see in the response to Covid-19, people can come together, and our governments can – when they need to – do the “impossible”. The climate and ecological emergency bill was introduced in parliament today by the Green party MP Caroline Lucas with our support. Drafted by scientists, academics and lawyers, it will – if backed all the way by MPs – strengthen the Climate Change Act and ensure that Britain has a comprehensive strategy to reduce greenhouse gas emissions and restore our natural world.
The Committee on Climate Change says that the government’s 2050 net zero target gives us just a “greater than 50%” chance of limiting global heating to 1.5C if replicated across the world. We will need to make “rapid, far-reaching and unprecedented changes in all aspects of society”, according to the UN, to keep below that threshold, and the bill presents a roadmap to achieve it.
As the host of the UN climate conference next year, the government has a final opportunity to show the world, and those protesting on our streets this week, that it recognises the climate and nature emergency – and will deliver a serious plan to tackle it. Parliament now has a viable pathway to tackle this crisis. Let’s get on with the job.
Wera Hobhouse MP Liberal Democrat, Alex Sobel MP Labour, Ben Lake MP Plaid Cymru, Claire Hanna MP SDLP, Stephen Farry MP Alliance, Tommy Sheppard MP SNP
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