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Matthew Elliott

Credentials

BSc in Government, London School of Economics (2000) [1]
Fellow, Royal Society of Arts [2]

Background

Matthew Elliott is the founder and former chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance, a British think tank which campaigns for a low tax society. Elliot founded the group in 2004 with his wife Florence Heath, a former petroleum geologist. [3], [4], [5]

Matthew Elliot sits at the nexus of a group of “hard Brexit” campaigners closely linked to the UK’s climate science deniers and other anti-regulation think tanks. [6]

Elliott was the chief executive of Vote Leave, the official campaign group pushing for Brexit ahead of the 2016 EU Referendum. The group was responsible for the false and misleading campaign message: “Give our NHS the £350 million the EU takes every week”. [3], [7] He also founded the pro-Brexit organization, Business for Britain, from which Vote Leave emerged. [8]

Elliott was credited with trying to replicate the U.S. Libertarian Tea Party movement in Britain. His other affiliations include being on the advisory board of the right-wing think tank The New Culture Forum and the leading Eurosceptic think tank The European Foundation, where he began his career as a press officer in 2000. [9], [10], [11], [12]

Elliott also founded the civil liberties and privacy pressure group Big Brother Watch, as well as the Politics and Economics Research Trust (PERT), a charity focused on issues of public taxation. In 2017, he was forced to repay a £50,000 grant from PERT which he had used to produce an anti-EU report, following an investigation by the Charity Commission. [13], [14]

The majority of these organisations have, or have had, offices at 55 Tufton Street, Westminster. The address was also initially home to Vote Leave and currently houses the leading UK climate sceptic group the Global Warming Policy Foundation. [15]

Elliott was a senior fellow at the Legatum Institute for a year following the EU referendum, during which he says he aimed to “understand the wider international context to the Brexit vote.” [16]

Elliott was also a partner at technology firm Awareness Analytics Partners (A2P) who describe themselves as “experts in understanding and utilizing influence, enhancing online messaging and delivering groundbreaking social media advertising results.” A2P says: “We map the networks of your most engaged audience members and then micro-target your ads to the people most likely to take your desired action.” The firm says it has a database of 115 million social profiles which it uses to identify “networks and people” who share particular attitudes and attributes. [17]

Awareness Analytics Partners, through its founding partner Sean Noble, has ties to the Koch-funded network of think tanks and charitable foundations promoting extreme free-market economics and climate science denial. A 2014 investigation by ProPublica found that Noble had been employed as a consultant by the Koch brothers to distribute political donations to conservative causes in the 2010 and 2012 US elections. [17], [33]

Stance on Climate Change

Elliott has criticised government interventions to tackle climate change and protect the environment. Combined with his Eurosceptic views, he has accused the EU of using climate change as an opportunity for a “power-grab,” thereby overstepping its authority in setting environmental regulations. [18]

Elliott has spoken at events organised by the now defunct All Party Parliamentary Group on Unconventional Oil and Gas, which was used by fracking and fossil fuel companies to gain access to and filter money into parliament. [19], [20]

Key Quotes

2017

In a speech to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, Elliott said:

“I have been coming to the US now for over 14 years to learn how to do my campaign techniques, and how to set up a taxpayer group from Grover Norquist at Americans for Tax Reform.” [21]

2010

Speaking to the Guardian:

“You could say our time has come […] We need to learn from our European colleagues and the Tea Party movement in the US […] It will be fascinating to see whether it will transfer to the UK. Will there be the same sort of uprising?” [22]

2009

In his 2009 bookThe Great European Rip-off: How the Corrupt, Wasteful EU is Taking Control of Our Lives, co-authored with David Craig, Elliott wrote: [18]

“The prominence given by politicians to the threat of global warming has allowed the [European] Commission to make a huge power-grab.

“There seemed to be no limit to the price our masters were willing for the rest of us to pay so they could save the planet from our shameful energy profligacy.” [18]

September 2007

In an interview with the BBC, he said:

“I am not convinced that higher taxes are the answer. For example, something like the climate change levy, I have a concern in the way that it has impacted companies in the north of England. It has driven manufacturing jobs overseas to other countries that aren’t as stringent as we are in terms of cutting back CO2 emissions. I think the stick approach isn’t the right approach. I think we should look more at the cash approach, look to giving tax incentives to encourage companies to act in more green ways.” [23]

Key Deeds

October 2017

Prime Minister Theresa May was reported to be lining up Elliott for a senior government position to lead the overhaul of the Conservative Party “in a move that would bolster the hard Brexit-backing Tory wing,” The Independent wrote. [24]

May 2017

Elliott gave a speech to the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, in which he said he had learnt his campaigning techniques during visits to the United States, and has singled out time spent with Americans for Tax Reform and Grover Norquist as influential in helping him learn his campaigning techniques. [21], [25]

December 2015

Former energy and climate secretary Ed Davey wrote a letter to Elliott, then the head of the Vote Leave campaign. In the letter, Davey said the group will be guilty of attempting to take the UK“to the fringes of the international community” unless it distances itself from UKIP and the former chancellor Nigel Lawson. [26]

November 2010

The U.S. Tea Party and the TaxPayers’ Alliance, under Elliott’s leadership, held a joint event in London to “galvanise anti-government sentiment,” The Telegraph reported. At the time, Elliott praised the movement. [9]

2009

Elliott co-authored a book with David Haig entitled The Great European Rip-off: How the Corrupt, Wasteful EU is Taking Control of Our Lives in which he was critical of the EU's push for climate regulation. [18]

June 2007

In a blogpost atConservative Home, Matthew Elliott wrote that he was currently in the United States to learn more about a campaign by Grover Norquist at Americans for Tax Reform “to commit candidates for federal and state office to oppose all tax increases.” [27]

Elliott added:

“Green taxes are not taxes on ‘bads’ as they are sold by political parties and the media. The amount of money raised by fuel duty alone is, even under very ‘green’ assumptions, enough to cover the externalities of Britain’s entire CO2 emissions. Green taxes are revenue raising measures designed to extract more money from ordinary families and British businesses which, as you rightly say, affect the poor more. In regional terms the North is hit incredibly hard by the Climate Change Levy. I’d love to give you some more details and statistics on this issue but they are going to be in a research paper we’ll be releasing soon.” [27]