A significant financial boost was given to the Vote Leave campaign by climate science denial and Tory Party funder Michael Hintze the day before Britain headed to the polls to vote in the EU Referendum.
The Australian hedge fund manager donated £100,000 to the Vote Leave campaign group on 22 June, according to the most recent Electoral Commission July update.
On 23 June, the country successfully voted 52 to 48 percent for the UK to leave the European Union.
This was the first donation made by Hintze to the Vote Leave campaign group. But as DeSmog UK revealed last month, Hintze forms part of the close-knit ‘Brexit climate denier’ network operating out of 55 Tufton Street – his donation therefore serves to further entrench this connection.
Known for funding Lord Lawson’s climate science denying Global Warming Policy Foundation (GWPF), Hintze has also in the past made donations to leading Brexit figure Boris Johnson, and the current frontrunner for Prime Minister Theresa May.
Hintze, however, wasn’t the only individual to make a donation to Vote Leave on the eve of the Brexit vote.
Lord Howard Stanley Kalms, life president and former chairman of Dixons Retail, gave £10,000 to the Vote Leave campaign, bringing his total donations to the group to £40,000.
Kalms, a long-time Tory donor, is no stranger to the neoliberal Brexit climate denier web either. Between 1991 and 2001 he was the director of the Centre for Policy Studies, which is located at 57 Tufton Street. And in 2002, he received an honorary degree from the University of Buckingham, which has close ties to Lawson’s GWPF.
Photo: Wikimedia Commons / Flickr
