Liz Truss urged to reveal donors funding new right-wing 'Growth Commission'

After plunging the economy and plummeting the pound with her disastrous mini-budget last September, the ousted former prime minister this week launched her "Growth Commission" - a "forced task" to "fix the economy"

Liz Truss launched her think tank on Wednesday (

Image: PA)

Liz Truss has been asked to reveal who is funding her new think tank, after links to right-wing American organizations came to light.

After bringing down the economy and plummeting the pound with her disastrous mini-budget last September, the ousted former prime minister this week launched her "Growth Commission", a "task force" to " fix the economy".

A spokesperson for the organization would only say that it is funded by "private donations". But campaigners fear the body is trying to influence ministers into trying Ms Truss' reckless policies again - and have demanded to know where the money behind the group is coming from.

"The Growth Commission is not an innocent bystander. It is trying to set the government's agenda," said Tom Brake, director of the Unlock Democracy campaign group. everyone knows who is funding him and whether it is his agenda he is advocating, or an agenda that benefits the UK as a whole."

He added, "Liz Truss needs to release the names of her donors, so we can judge for ourselves."

Labour MP Clive Lewis said: "Not content with wrecking the livelihoods of millions, Liz Truss is now busy speaking out for the people and businesses her failed calamity budget sought to enrich "It's high time Truss clarified who the funders of the Growth Commissions are. If the group's ideas are so good and so beneficial, then why not all of us thank and praise the generous benefactors behind his initiative?"

While Ms. Truss does not sit on the board of 13 “commissioners” herself, a series of “experts” linked to bodies that champion right-wing economics do. In his Substack newsletter, author and investigative journalist Peter Geoghean discovered that almost a quarter of the board was made up of employees of the Mercartus Cente, a right-wing American think tank that had previously suggested that the climate change was "beneficial" and "returning humans". better."

Mercatus Center President Tyler Cowen and Mercatus Center Fellows Alden Abbott and Christine McDaniel are all on the Growth Commission.

In 2020, Mercatus was accused of promoting 'flawed' research to 'obstruct' environmental regulation in Australia. And it was largely funded by the big oil-related Koch family foundations.

Other board members have ties to the Institute for Economic Affairs, the London-based think tank whose extreme free-market ideology was a partial basis for the failed economic plan of Mrs Truss and her Chancellor Kwasi Kwarteng. And another commissioner, Stephen J Entin, comes from the US-based Tax Foundation, which supports tax cuts for the wealthy.