New think tank the Centre for a Better Britain will formally launch next month with the promise of spitting out policies for Nigel Farage’s insurgent party.
Originally named Resolute 1850 – seemingly after the navy ship whose timbers were used to make the Oval Office desk – the group hasn’t been shy about wanting to import Trump’s ideas, and his donors, to the UK.
A plan produced by the group and seen by the Financial Times suggested the think tank would be funded by rich Brits “plus US donors from MAGA, tech, [and] religious conservatives”.
The Centre for a Better Britain is chaired by the Cambridge academic James Orr, whose ties to the Trump administration stretch all the way to the White House.
Orr is best mates with JD Vance, and has been nicknamed the vice president’s “philosopher king”. According to Politico, the pair hit it off in 2019 over long walks after Vance converted to Catholicism.
An associate professor of philosophy of religion, Orr may hope to have the same spiritual effect on Farage as he makes his march towards Downing Street.
Orr has positioned himself as an intellectual pariah – a bastion of sensible conservatism in a sea of woke academia – but his views conform to the culture war mold.
Like Vance and Farage, he’s sceptical of Britain’s full-throated support for Volodymyr Zelenskyy following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. As reported by DeSmog, Orr used a speech at a Hungarian festival in early August to accuse British politicians of contracting “Ukraine brain” and failing to see the true heroes and villains of the conflict.
And, despite preaching patriotism, Orr echoes the mythologies and memes of the terminally online right, which portray Britain as a crime-infested country that has fallen waste to Muslims and liberals. “Import the Arab world, become the Arab world,” he posted on X/Twitter in October 2023.
Rather, Orr believes that the UK should emulate Hungary and eastern Europe. Speaking at the MCC festival in Esztergom, he described Viktor Orbán’s autocratic government as a “counterexample to the ideology in my own country that rejects national pride and heritage”.
For context, Orbán’s government has severely restricted political, media, and judicial freedoms in Hungary since he returned to power in 2010.
This incoherent ideological soup – anti-Britain fatalism branded with a Union Jack and tinged with Trump worship – appears to be the driving agenda behind the Centre for a Better Britain.
Orr seems to be taking his cues from the Heritage Foundation, the MAGA leviathan that drafted Trump’s second-term agenda – through a 900-page document named “Project 2025”.
Speaking on the BBC Today programme a couple of weeks ago, Orr said that other British think tanks “struggle to keep the lights on”, whereas “Kevin Roberts has built up the Heritage Foundation to the point where I think it’s getting about $100 million a year in income”.
He went on to praise the group for formulating “an enormous policy shop window”, and helping to staff Trump’s “entire administration with hundreds and hundreds of bright young things”.
The Centre for a Better Britain appears to be taking a lot of inspiration from Trump’s acolytes. The group’s plans state it intends to formulate ideas about how to cut state services, oppose DEI (diversity, equity and inclusion), and “reform healthcare” – all obsessions of the American right, and fascinations of Farage.
The Reform leader has previously suggested that the UK should move away from a state-funded NHS, while he has set up a “DOGE” unit within the party to de-fund local councils.
But creating a British version of the Heritage Foundation would require substantial seed funding, and there’s little proof that the Centre for a Better Britain has the donors to sustain Orr’s grand ambitions.
Although the think tank has allegedly raised £1 million ahead of its launch, Orr confessed to the Today programme that, as far as he was aware, only two donors had put their hands in their pockets so far – its co-founders David Lilley and Mark Thompson.
As DeSmog has revealed, Lilley and Thompson are metals traders with financial interests in mining and fossil fuels. They’re also longstanding friends of Farage, who became acquainted with the Reform leader when he was a slick young City broker straight out of Dulwich College, a posh private school in south London.
They all met in the “the late ‘80s, early ‘90s,” when Farage worked as a metals trader, Orr said. “They’ve always been fellow travellers with him … they went boozing with him when they were in the commodities business”.
Both have dabbled in politics in recent years – Thompson was a donor to former prime minister Liz Truss, while Lilley funnelled £200,000 into Reform since last year, following a decade of donations to the Conservative party.
However, if the think tank is relying on the friends of Farage – a man infamous for turning his closest allies into his worst enemies – the coffers may run dry sooner than planned.
This is perhaps why the Centre for a Better Britain has hired a secret weapon – the former YouTuber Archie Manners, who has reportedly been hired to provide communications advice.
During his era of social stardom, Manners amassed over one million subscribers with his mate Josh Pieters, before their collaboration ended late last year.
Like his new colleagues at the Centre for a Better Britain, Manners has now pivoted to politics. He ran Farage’s social media accounts during last year’s general election, with £24,000 paid to Goon Squad Limited – the business he shared with Pieters.
Farage has racked up millions of hits on social media, and Manners’ new employer will be hoping he can pull off similar wonders.
However, Manners will struggle to rely on his old YouTube playbook, which involved pranking gullible rightwing politicians.
His most notable stunts included presenting far-right commentator Katie Hopkins with the Campaign to Unify the Nation Trophy (CUNT), and convincing anti-migrant Tory politician Suella Braverman to launch a small boat while accepting the Last Leg’s Dick of the Year award.
It’s a strange irony that Manners is now helping politicians who want to sink asylum seekers, rather than pranking them.
But his arrival neatly captures the Centre for a Better Britain’s attempt to imitate American politics, including its viral showmanship. This is likely to go down well with Farage, given his infatuation with Trump’s America – but whether it will land with the population at large is a different question entirely.
Sam Bright is DeSmog’s UK deputy editor, and the author of Fortress London: Why We Need to Save the Country from Its Capital.
