Millions of Dollars Pouring into UK Democracy from Trump’s America

MPs and leading UK think tanks have received major sums from U.S. benefactors – often with ties to U.S. President Donald Trump – since the 2024 general election, DeSmog can reveal. 

Six MPs, including Reform UK leader Nigel Farage and Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch, have collectively accepted £335,000 for attending official Trump events and donor meetings, or gatherings held by right-wing U.S. groups.

Meanwhile, seven conservative policy groups in the UK have received at least $3.1 million (£2.3 million) from U.S. sources since 2024, and $20.4 million (£15.2 million) since 2016, the year of Trump’s first presidential election.

These revelations come as Trump’s Republican Party faces an uphill battle in today’s Midterm elections, with the Democrats vying to win control of both the House of Representatives and the Senate. Trump’s poll numbers have hit new lows with more than two-thirds of U.S. voters disapproving of the president’s handling of the cost of living amid a surge in gas prices due to the U.S.-Israeli war with Iran.

Trump is also unpopular in the UK and across Europe, with 85 percent of Brits saying they have an unfavourable view of the U.S. president. 

Yet his administration has been openly attempting to fund its allies in Europe. According to The Guardian, the State Department has allocated $15 million (£11.2 million) to three conservative groups in the UK. These grants form part of a “slush fund” to boost likeminded organisations across Europe, with up to $3 million (£2.2 million) reportedly available to those focused on “developing civilizational bonds” and “defending rule of law”.

DeSmog’s analysis has found that, in addition to these planned donations by the Trump administration, millions have been poured into UK democracy by U.S. donors in recent years.

Right-wing think tanks to have received funding from U.S. donors since 2024 have included Policy Exchange ($1.1 million), the Henry Jackson Society ($955,000), the Institute of Economic Affairs ($609,000), the Global Warming Policy Foundation ($222,000), Prosperity Institute ($137,000), the Adam Smith Institute ($51,000), and the Academy of Ideas ($5,000). 

In 2024, the Adam Smith Institute and Academy of Ideas received £50,000 and £4,965 respectively from the Prometheus Institute – a philanthropic foundation founded by Carl Barney, who donated over $1.6 million to Republican and pro-Trump campaigns during the 2024 election, including more than $900,000 to the Trump 47 Committee – making him one of California’s top pro-Trump donors during the race. 

Six MPs have also received substantial payments from prominent U.S. conservative groups. 

Farage has received £69,126 in income and £153,101 in expenses for attending 10 events – including over £32,000 to campaign for Trump during the 2024 presidential election campaign, and £27,000 to attend events during Trump’s inauguration in January 2025. Both trips were funded by crypto billionaire Christopher Harborne, who has financial ties to the White House. 

Reform MP Suella Braverman, who defected to the party in January, has received £23,664 in expenses for attending four U.S. events, including delivering a speech in January 2025 at the Heritage Foundation – the group behind Project 2025, the radical right-wing blueprint for Trump’s second term. Braverman attended these events while she was a Conservative MP. 

Farage, who is the only MP to have accepted speaking fees for some of the U.S. events, has come under intense pressure for his relationship with Trump. The Reform leader has labelled the president the “single most resilient and bravest person I’ve ever met in my life”, and has frequently called for Trump’s policies to be replicated in the UK – including the mass expansion of domestic fossil fuel production, the creation of a new immigration deportation agency, and unleashing the crypto industry. 

“The continuing influx of overseas funding for UK think tanks, especially through opaque transatlantic networks, poses urgent questions for the government over how to safeguard our democracy against the risks of foreign interference,” said Tim Picton, senior advocacy advisor at Spotlight on Corruption,

“This funding can have a significant influence on our political discourse, but largely falls outside of the regulated sphere we currently have in place.”

All the MPs and think tanks named in this article were approached for comment. 

The MPs

A number of Conservative MPs have also been paid to attend right-wing U.S. events in recent years. 

Shadow Foreign Secretary Tom Tugendhat, who was appointed to the role in August, has received £49,000 in flights and accommodation since April 2025 to attend several meetings organised by the Hudson Institute, a conservative group based in Washington DC, at which he is a ‘distinguished fellow’.

Badenoch also received over £23,000 in expenses to speak at the Hoover Institution at Stanford University in October 2025. The Tory leader has regularly praised Trump – claiming in February 2025 that he was “fixing” America’s problems. Like Reform, the Conservatives have proposed introducing an immigration ‘Removals Force’ modelled on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agency, while Badenoch supported Trump’s bombing campaign in Iran. 

The three groups already allocated money through the Trump administration’s European slush fund are also run by high-profile Conservatives.

The Guardian reported in July that $7 million (£5.2 million) had been allocated to 878, which describes itself as a new “leading British and American think tank” devoted to “the rediscovery of our ancient culture” and “ending mass immigration”. The group lists its founding directors as Jacob Rees-Mogg, the former Conservative MP and Cabinet minister, and his former adviser Radomir Tylecote. 

A reported $5 million has also been set aside for Free Speech Union International – the global offshoot of the Free Speech Union (FSU), a legal advocacy group run by Conservative peer Toby Young, who told The Guardian that its international branch had “expressed interest in applying for grant funding from the U.S. State Department” but that it had not yet been awarded the money. 

Young reiterated this claim when approached by DeSmog.

The FSU is also already known to have received funding from U.S. sources. As first reported by Democracy for Sale, its now-defunct U.S. arm received money from a charity linked to a prominent anti-abortion lawyer.

An additional $3 million allocation from the State Department slush fund has reportedly been made to the Jobs Foundation for a programme called ‘Countering Overregulation to Advance American Investment’. Conservative peer Matthew Elliott, who led the official Vote Leave Brexit campaign, is the president of the Jobs Foundation, which is a pro-business advocacy group.

“If this money is being used to fulfill a specific direction from the U.S. State Department, there is a legal obligation for these organisations to declare this to the Home Office’s Foreign Influence Registration Scheme under national security laws,” Picton said.

The Think Tanks

Significant payments have also been made from U.S. donors to UK think tanks in recent years. 

DeSmog’s analysis has found that right-wing think tanks have accepted over $20.4 million from U.S. benefactors since 2016, often via their American fundraising wings, and $3 million since 2024.

Much of this money flows from U.S.-based donor advised funds (DAFs) – entities that keep the original source of funding hidden from public view. DAFs such as the Vanguard Charitable Endowment Programme, the National Philanthropic Trust, and Donor Advised Charitable Giving have been used to give money to right-wing UK think tanks in recent years – which has obscured the identities of some donors.

However, some are publicly disclosed. For example, the New York-based Achelis and Bodman Foundation gave $75,000 (£56,000) to the American Friends of the GWPF in 2024 – the entity that accepts donations from U.S. sources on behalf of the Global Warming Policy Foundation, one of the UK’s principal climate science denial groups. The Achelis and Bodman Foundation also donates to the likes of the Heritage Foundation and the Hudson Institute. 

Several UK conservative think tanks use ‘friends of’ groups to channel donations across the Atlantic. Last year, American Friends of Policy Exchange, belonging to the influential Westminster think tank, accepted $50,000 (£37,000) from the Florida-based Swordspoint Foundation, which is run by Trump donor Robert Bishop. 

In 2024, the IEA accepted up to $189,000 (£141,000) for research and study programmes from the Cherish Freedom Foundation – a group historically funded by Robert Mercer, a major donor to right-wing groups and campaigns whose family gave $25.5 million to Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign. The Institute of Economic Affairs has previously received money from fossil fuel majors including BP, ExxonMobil, and Shell, as well as from the U.S.-Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch. 

The IEA told DeSmog that it does not accept money from government sources and that it does not take donations “in exchange for research”.

These groups have also frequently echoed Trump’s narratives. The campaign director of Net Zero Watch, the lobbying arm of the GWPF, appeared on Murdoch-owned TalkTV in March and declared that “Trump is absolutely right to say that windmills [sic], and our mad policies on North Sea oil and gas, are making our energy more expensive.”

Meanwhile, in February 2024, Policy Exchange senior fellow Edward Stringer wrote an opinion piece for The Telegraph entitled: “Trump is right. Defenceless Europe can no longer freeload off America”.

Almost all of these UK groups belong to the Tufton Street network, a right-wing alliance based in Westminster that lobbies to dismantle state services and privatise public bodies. Its members share an opposition to climate action, and they have spent decades attempting to undermine policies designed to reduce emissions. As revealed by Democracy for Sale, the U.S. funding to some of these groups has increased by 29 percent from 2024 to 2025. 

Tufton Street donors also closely overlap with the Conservative Party. As reported by DeSmog and Democracy for Sale in June 2024, Tory benefactors had gifted over £6.8 million to Tufton Street think tanks since 2019. 

The Atlantic Bridge

There has also been a concerted attempt in recent years to build transatlantic right-wing networks to share policies, campaign strategies, and narratives. 

One of the most prominent has been the Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (ARC), which holds an annual conference in London featuring thousands of attendees. 

ARC is fronted by conservative commentator Jordan Peterson and run by Baroness Philippa Stroud, a Conservative member of the House of Lords. It’s the brainchild of the Legatum Group, a Dubai-based investment firm, and the hedge fund manager Paul Marshall – the co-owners of the radical right-wing broadcaster GB News, which employs Farage as a presenter. 

Marshall is also a key funder of ARC, having given £3 million to the group since its creation in 2023. As revealed by DeSmog and Unearthed, this year’s conference was sponsored by Reform mega-donor and crypto billionaire Ben Delo, Tory and Reform donor Anthony Bamford, and a number of U.S. funders – including fossil fuel companies and executives – that have donated to Trump and the Republican Party. 

Speakers at the conference included senior U.S. politicians – notably Trump’s energy secretary Chris Wright, U.S. House Speaker Mike Johnson, and Sarah Rogers, who is overseeing the State Department’s European slush fund. They spoke alongside UK figures who have been forging close ties, both financial and political, to Trump’s America – including Farage, Badenoch, Elliott, and Young.

Among the attendees were dozens of parliamentarians, corporate executives, and right-wing think tanks including the Heritage Foundation, Adam Smith Institute, TaxPayers’ Alliance, and Prosperity Institute. 

A key theme of the conference is criticism of global climate policies, with Marshall claiming in his 2025 ARC speech that the world has been infected by a “climate derangement syndrome”. He claimed that “our economic prosperity and our people’s livelihoods” are being sacrificed “all for the sake of making some fractional changes to the level of CO2 in the atmosphere”.

Also in attendance at this year’s ARC event was Samuel Samson of the State Department, who has reportedly been “at the forefront” of the Trump administration’s “effort to reshape America’s relationship with Europe”. 

MPs have registered complimentary tickets to ARC worth at least £6,900 since 2024. The FSU has also reportedly received funding from ARC and Reform donor Delo, who owns a venue in Westminster that serves as a hub for various right-wing groups and content creators. 

Another influential pro-Trump network has also been imported into the UK in recent months: the Conservative Political Action Committee (CPAC), which hosted its inaugural London event in July.

CPAC GB is chaired by former Conservative prime minister Liz Truss, while the event was headlined by Farage – despite the Reform leader suggesting beforehand that he would be “steering well clear” of the summit. 

CPAC GB promised to bring together “global heavyweights” of the international right, and featured Young, Rees-Mogg, Tylecote, The Telegraph’s Allison Pearson, Reform’s Matthew Goodwin, broadcaster Mike Graham, and U.S. activist Jack Posobiec.

Farage has also helped to import an influential U.S. climate science denial group, the Heartland Institute, to the UK. The Reform leader was the keynote speaker at the launch of the Heartland Institute’s UK-EU branch in December 2024, months after advising the group to set up a satellite in Europe.

Heartland Institute UK-EU director Lois Perry claims to be advising the party on its climate agenda and is the strategy director of Reform Friends of Israel – a lobbying group within the party.

Farage has also been forging ties with Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) – a powerful legal advocacy group that led the campaign to overturn Roe v Wade, the landmark ruling that protected the constitutional right to abortion in the United States.

ADF’s UK branch spent over £1.4 million on its activities in 2025, more than three times higher than in 2020. Farage has not only appeared on promotional materials put out by the ADF, but according to the New York Times the group orchestrated a visit by Reform’s leader to Washington DC in September 2025, during which he testified to Congress. 

ADF has also reportedly arranged backroom meetings between Farage and State Department officials on their visits to London, and as recently reported by the iPaper, the Reform leader has accepted more than £83,000 in earnings, accommodation, and flights from groups that support the anti-abortion movement, many of which are featured above.