Sacked Environment Secretary Dodges Question on Whether he Will Challenge Conservative Party Leadership

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Owen Paterson dodged questions last night on whether heโ€™s organising a challenge to the Conservative Party leadership in the run-up to next Mayโ€™s generalย election.

The sacked environment secretary simply answered โ€œitโ€™s a private dinner, you better ask the organisers,โ€ as he left an event discussing the future of the free marketย economy.

The organiser of the โ€˜political economy supperโ€™, as the event listing describes it, was none other than free market think tank, the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).

Bankrolled by Big Oil and Big Tobacco, the IEA helped Thatcherโ€™s rise to power. More recently, DeSmog UK revealed in September that Neil Record, IEA trustee and Lord Vinson, โ€˜Life Vice-Presidentโ€™ of the IEA are both funders of Lord Lawsonโ€™s Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF).

UK2020

Paterson, who gave the keynote speech at the GWPF last month arrived at the event with the head of his newly launched conservative think tank UK2020.

Among its goals, UK2020 will seek to free Britain from some climate change regulations andย targets.

While Paterson mentioned UK2020 โ€œseveral timesโ€ according to dinner guest, Geoffrey Clifton-Brown, MP for the Cotswolds, the event was not connected to the thinkย tank.

According to Clifton-Brown, the some 20-30 male dinner guests talked mostly public policy at the IEAโ€™s Westminster offices: โ€œWe didnโ€™t talk much about climate, it was really free marketย stuff.โ€

The Freeย Market

โ€œIt was a discussion about how we win the ideas of the centre-right of British politics,โ€ he said, suggesting the spring election was among the topics discussed. โ€œHow are we going to promote those [free market ideas] and be able to make sure the electorate actually votes for a centre-rightย government?โ€

According to author and activist Naomi Klein however, climate change is evidence that free market ideology isย dangerous.

In addition to IEA staff, those in attendance included former conservative MP and current UKIP deputy chairman, Neil Hamilton, Alistair Hide of British American Tobacco, Allan Rankine of BP and Edgar Miller, a Texan-born venture capitalist and GWPFย funder.

Several MPs were also there such as Julian Smith, MP for Skipton and Ripon, as well Lord Glentoran and academics Jeremy Jennings, head of department and professor of political theory at Kings College London and David Myddelton, professor at Cranfield School ofย Management.

Daniel Johnson, founding editor of Standpoint and Sir John Craven, a director of Reuters and former director of Deutsche Bank were alsoย there.

Lord Howard Flight, deputy chair of the Conservative party and member of the IEAโ€™s advisory board, described the eveningโ€™s conversation as โ€œfundamentally [about] why the economic model that Russia and China used to employ was such a disaster and caused so much starving and death and why by contrast the model which the West has followed has been successful.โ€

Christopher Chope, conservative MP for Christchurch said: โ€œI think most of us are singing off of the same hymn sheet as one mightย say.โ€

Reporting: Kyla Mandel, Brendan Montague and Richard Heasman. Photo: Brendanย Montague

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Kyla is a freelance writer and editor with work appearing in the New York Times, National Geographic, HuffPost, Mother Jones, and Outside. She is also a member of the Society for Environmental Journalists.

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