Revealed: Money men behind disastrous Truss mini budget now pumping millions into Sunak

Our investigation finds bosses of Tufton Street think tanks have given £35 million to the Tories but have not donated a penny to Labour - despite their ‘non-partisan’ status

Credit: CPS, Twitter

Rishi Sunak likes to present himself as very different to Liz Truss.

The Tory leader has said that Truss’s economic policies were “wrong” and tried to distance himself from her calamitous six-week term.

But a major new investigation by this newsletter - published in conjunction with Led by Donkeys and the Mirror - has found that Sunak’s party is being bankrolled by the same super-wealthy donors that were behind Truss and her disastrous mini-budget. 

Directors, trustees and advisors of some of the most influential ‘Tufton Street’ right-wing think tanks have given more than £5.5 million to the Tories since Sunak replaced Truss in October 2022 - including £100,000 from a man once described by Reuters as “a former Russian arms tycoon.”

These right-wing think tanks - which do not declare their donors but have previously received funding from oil, gas and tobacco firms - have been widely credited with dreaming up Truss’s mini-budget that saw sterling crash and mortgages soar.

The Institute of Economic Affairs and Policy Exchange are registered educational charities with a duty "to engage equally with all major political parties". The Centre for Policy Studies describes itself as “independent and non-partisan.” 

But their trustees and executives have given 500 times more money to the Tories than to the Lib Dems, and have never donated to Labour.

Responding to this investigation, Labour’s shadow chief secretary to the treasury Darren Jones said: “when all Rishi Sunak has to offer the British people is £71billion of unfunded spending commitments, it’s no surprise that Truss’s cronies are bankrolling the Conservative party. 

“Rather than turn his back on the kamikaze approach that made working people worse off, Sunak was happy to reward the people who crashed the economy with seats in the Lords, and now put them firmly in the driving seat of his campaign.”

Over many months this newsletter has been digging deep into Tufton Street and its political influence, drawing on publicly accessible data, Freedom of Information (FOI) requests and corporate filings that have not been reported on previously.

Our investigation also found:

• Conservative Party bankrolled by Tufton Street: The bosses leading the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) and Policy Exchange at the time of Truss’s mini-budget in September 2022 have collectively given more than £35 million to the Tories in the last two decades.

• Fleet Street influence: British newspapers mentioned Tufton Street groups including the IEA, CPS, Policy Exchange and the TaxPayers’ Alliance more than 15 times per day in the past year.

• ‘Unrivalled’ political access: Tufton Street think tanks and their staff had more than 150 meetings with Conservative ministers since 2020, lobbying on everything from post-Brexit trade and freeports to deregulation. Government refused to answer FOI requests about many of these meetings.

• Connections: When Sunak attended a lavish 50th anniversary gala dinner for the Centre Policy Studies in March, he said: “In no small part, we live in the world created by the Centre for Policy Studies.” The audience included 12 of Sunak’s ministers, another 30 Tory MPs, at least 10 Lords and another 10 Special Advisers. 

Jo Maugham of the Good Law Project, which has lodged a  formal complaint with a cross-party group of MPs over the Charity Commission refusal to investigate the IEA, said: “The players may change but it's the same farce - successive Prime Ministers working to the unchanging agenda of their ugly funders in Tufton Street."

‘Incubating’ Truss
Liz Truss’s accession to prime minister in September 2022 was the crowning achievement for the small, well-organised network of campaign groups based in and around Tufton Street, a stone’s throw from Westminster in central London. 

It was the high-point of a decade-long collaborative project between the Thatcherite MP and one think tank in particular: the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Truss was a regular visitor to the IEA’s Lord North Street offices after becoming an MP in 2010. When she was elected PM, Conservative pundit Tim Montgomerie described it as a “massive moment for the IEA”, which had “incubated Truss and Kwarteng during their early years as MPs. Britain is now their laboratory.” The then head of the IEA, Mark Littlewood, responded by posting a sunglasses emoji. He now runs Truss’s ‘Popular Conservatives’.

Many of Truss’s key pledges - to cut tax, allow fracking, revise the Bank of England mandate, review inheritance tax and reform banking solvency rules inherited from the EU - were inspired by the IEA, according to analysis by Politico. 

The IEA was not the only outfit on Tufton Street with strong ties to Truss. Truss brought former Policy Exchange staff into Downing Street. The Centre for Policy Studies’ welcomed Truss’s cataclysmic September 2022 mini-budget as “exactly what we would have hoped for and what people like us have been calling for for a long time.”

Bankrolling the Conservatives
While these influential right wing campaign groups refuse to reveal who funds them, major Tory donors occupy senior positions at Tufton Street think tanks - and many of these personally backed Truss and are now bankrolling Sunak. Specifically, our investigation has found that:

• Six of the 16 company directors at the Centre for Policy Studies have made donations to the Conservative Party - worth a total of £21.9 million, according to Electoral Commission data. Three CPS directors have also worked as Conservative Party fundraisers including former Tory chairman Sir Ben Elliot.

• CPS chairman Lord Michael Spencer has given more than £7 million to the Tories. Spencer personally donated £25,000 to Liz Truss’s leadership success - praising her PMQs debut as “the most pro-business PMQs that I can remember”: now, he’s giving a quarter of a million pounds to Sunak’s election campaign.

• Graham Edwards, who runs a real-estate business and a water company, gave £50,000 to Truss’s leadership campaign. Sunak then appointed Edwards as Tory treasurer: he has raised more than £48 million for the Tories, personally donating more than £4.5 million since October 2022.

• JCB tycoon Anthony Bamford, who has given at least £9 million to the Tories, including more than £75,000 in the past year. The CPS board member had previously hailed Truss’s “plans to reward British people for working hard”.  

• Eight of the 20 current members of the IEA’s board of trustees and advisors have donated to the Conservatives. Alexander Temerko - once close to the Kremlin and a big fan of Truss’s proposals to slash taxes for the rich - has given more than £97,000 since October 2022, mainly through his loss-making, Russian-backed company Aquind - as recently reported in this newsletter.  

• Lord Michael Hintze was an IEA trustee for 17 years before resigning shortly after Truss was forced out of office. The billionaire City trader has given more than £4.9million to the Conservatives, including over £230,000 under Sunak. Hintze has also funded the Global Warming Policy Foundation, which has been accused of denying climate change.

• At Policy Exchange, five trustees have donated more than £9 million to the Tories. Trustee and hedge fund boss Andrew Law personally funded Truss’s leadership campaign and hosted a champagne party for then chancellor Kwarteng on the night of the mini-budget. Law has given more than £4 million to the Tories, including over £100,000 under Sunak.

Sunak has long-standing ties to Tufton Street. He ran Policy Exchange’s ‘Black and Minority Ethnic research unit’ before becoming a Conservative MP and wrote a paper on freeports for the CPS after the Brexit referendum in 2016

Last year, the prime minister was guest of honour at Policy Exchange’s summer party where he said that the think tank had “helped us draft” controversial legislation cracking down on protest, particularly by climate activists. Policy Exchange had previously taken $30,000 from oil giant ExxonMobil. At the party, Sunak joked that Keir Starmer was leading a “splinter group” called “Just Stop British Oil.”

Tufton Influence 
Groups in the Tufton Street network have exerted a huge influence on British politics in recent years, especially since Brexit - which most of them backed.

Since 2020, these think tanks have met government ministers more than 150 times. The Centre for Policy Studies met ministers on 64 separate occasions: more than any other think tank, according to ministerial transparency data. 

In 2023 alone, the CPS met seven times with housing and levelling up secretary Michael Gove while also discussing housing and planning policy with ministers Lucy Frazer and Rachel Maclean. Government refused to answer FOI requests about these meetings. 

Tufton Street and its spokespeople are also regulars across the British media. Alongside appearances on the BBC and other broadcast outlets, analysis of newspaper coverage showed that Tufton Street think tanks were mentioned 5,571 times in the year to 1 May 2024, according to our analysis of news database Factiva.

The Telegraph — which has been put up for sale by its billionaire owners Sir Fred and David Barclay — was Tufton Street’s biggest booster, with a fifth of all mentionsa. The Murdoch-owned Times, alongside the Mail, which is controlled by Viscount Rothermere, were responsible for a further 17% of mentions each. 

Tufton Street’s popularity on Fleet Street is partly due to the personal networks of its executives. The directors of both Policy Exchange and the Centre for Policy Studies — Lord Dean Godson and Robert Colvile, respectively — both previously worked as journalists for the Telegraph.

The Scottish National Party’s Alyn Smith said that action was needed to curb the political influence of groups that refuse to declare their donors.

“This is another major piece of work by Democracy for Sale, and shines a light on a still murky issue. We need a wholesale reappraisal of charity and electoral law,” Smith said.

A Conservative Party spokesman said that the party “is funded by membership, fundraising and donations” and that “all reportable donations are properly and transparently declared to the Electoral Commission.” 

The spokesman added that “such observations can be made about who our donors are, precisely because our donations are transparently published.”

The Centre for Policy Studies declined to comment. Neither of the other think tanks or any of the individuals named responded to a request for comment.

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