A Dr Lee Rotherham, in another classic case of the kettle calling the pot a deep, deep shade of ultra midnight black accuses (HERE) some think tanks of being funded by the EU!! This is a veteran Eurosceptic, a historian with a long, disturbed history of irrational anti EU agitation. He has degrees in linguistics and history although I cannot see where he obtained the PhD or what the subject was. To Rotherham, anything funded by the EU is forever tainted and cannot possibly be unbiased.
The irony is that he is writing his article for Brexit Central at 55 Tufton Street, home to four of the five least transparent and most interconnected think tanks in the UK!
Among them, the Institute of Economic Affairs never publishes its sources of funding (HERE) so we have no idea if they might be biased or not. They are currently under investigation for breaching the condition of political neutrality that they should observe as a registered charity (HERE).
These extreme right wing think tanks support each other and work together (HERE) to drive the political agenda in a way the EU doesn't seem to. At least if they do, Brussels has been spectacularly unsuccessful.
They are shady, dangerous, inflammatory, subversive and biased. Many of them (all of them on Tufton Street) shouldn't be called think tanks at all, since they do little in the way of thinking but simply push their right wing, liberal, free market theories that if only we were more like low tax, low regulation Singapore all would be well. Yes, it would if you like to live in a one party, authoritarian state - but most of us don't.
I don't suggest they should be closed down - as ironically they probably would be in Singapore - but they should be clear about funding and what their agenda is, and news organisations need to be much more sceptical and question the motives of these organisations.
