• 1 Donald E. Abelson, Do Think Tanks Matter? Assessing the Impact of Public Policy Institutes, Québec, (...)

1To the contemporary observer, the fate of the British Conservative Party – and that of the broader ecosystem around it – appears inextricably bound to the results of the 2016 Brexit referendum and to the long-drawn political crisis that ensued. Among the organisations that can be said to have actively participated in the debates surrounding the United Kingdom’s membership of the European Union in the periphery of the Tory Party, one cannot ignore the contribution made by think tanks. These organisations, although they vary widely in size, structure and scope and therefore defy easy categorisation, are characterised by a common objective: producing independent (but not necessarily non-ideological) analysis with the intent to yield an influence on public opinion and/or the policy-making process1.

• 2 Clarisse Berthezène, Training Minds for the War of Ideas: Ashridge College, the Conservative Party (...)
• 3 John Blundell, “Waging the War of Ideas: Why There Are No Shortcuts”, in Waging the War of Ideas [2 (...)
• 4 Richard Cockett, Thinking the Unthinkable: Think-tanks and the Economic Counter-Revolution, 1931-19 (...)
• 5 Hartwig Pautz, “The Think Tanks behind ‘Cameronism’”, The British Journal of Politics and Internati (...)

2As early as 1929, the Conservative Party began relying on think tanks to conduct research, rejuvenate conservative thought, train the party’s elites or provide policy proposals2. One of the clearest and most documented demonstrations of long-lasting think tank influence on the party came later, through the combined action of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), the Centre for Policy Studies (CPS) and the Adam Smith Institute (ASI) that “fought in the trenches for freedom3” between the 1950s and the 1980s to dismantle the post-war consensus, thereby participating in the intellectual shaping of Thatcherism and the durable conversion of the Conservative Party to neoliberal ideas4. Although the legacy of Thatcherite think tanks still endures, the 2000s saw the emergence of new organisations such as Policy Exchange, which helped modernise the Conservative Party under David Cameron5 while remaining broadly aligned with the neoliberal outlook of their predecessors.

• 6 The original idea behind the Institute of Economic Affairs could be attributed to Friedrich Hayek, (...)
• 7 Virgile Lorenzoni, “From the Conservative Vanguard to a Strategic and Ideological Crossroads: Thatc (...)

3Indeed, it must be noted here that all the conservative think tanks analysed in this article are committed defenders and promoters of economic liberalism and the free market, and that this can be identified as the dominant trend among British centre-right think tanks as a whole. This neoliberal dimension can be explained by the ties these organisations have with the legacy of Thatcherism. As mentioned above, think tanks like the IEA, the CPS and the ASI undeniably played a role in the “conservative revolution” of the late 1970s, having worked tirelessly to erode the post-war consensus through different and complementary strategies6. By presenting Keynesian ideas as having nefarious consequences on the economic performance of the nation as well as on individual freedom, they justified the absolute necessity of their neoliberal crusade to reestablish a previously disrupted Hayekian “spontaneous order”, thereby participating in the lasting reconfiguration of British conservatism around the fusion between traditional conservatism and neoliberalism. However, they always took great care to steer clear of cultural issues, deciding to focus almost exclusively on economic analysis instead; an observation that still holds true today despite some slight inflections7.

• 8 Agnès Alexandre-Collier, “Le Nouveau visage de l'euroscepticisme conservateur à la Chambre des Comm (...)

4Given the increasing salience of the European question in British public life in the 2010s onwards and the political and technical questions it raised, it was only logical that think tanks play a role in the Brexit debate. The rise of euroscepticism within the ranks of the parliamentary Conservative Party8, the heated debates these ideological quarrels provoked in the broader political arena and, of course, the possibility of a United Kingdom that would have to seriously consider the course it would take outside the European Union (an eventuality made very real by David Cameron’s commitment to a referendum in 2013), all called for thorough independent analysis and political forecasting; something that organisations like think tanks should have been able to provide. From a more utilitarian perspective, contributing to the debate also meant considerable opportunities for them in terms of media exposure and political clout.

• 9 Robert Blake, in his history of the British Conservative Party, refers for instance to what he call (...)
• 10 See Andrew Denham and Mark Garnett, British Think Tanks and the Climate of Opinion, London, UCL Pre (...)

5Because of their peculiar place in the public debate, halfway between research and politics, conservative think tanks occupy a slightly out of frame position in the historiography of the British right. Indeed, most well-known histories of the British Conservative Party have granted them only superficial attention. Despite being generally considered capable of exerting an influence on both policymakers and public opinion, this influence has not always been subjected to precise evaluation9. This has contributed to maintaining a certain degree of ambiguity surrounding the actual extent of think tanks’ influence, an ambiguity that they can exploit to overstate their impact without being convincingly contradicted. Richard Cockett’s invaluable study of the role played by conservative think tanks in the Thatcherite revolution, mentioned above, has also contributed to giving credit to the think tanks’ self-aggrandising discourse, by describing them as the main architects of a long-lasting ideological realignment within the British right. Although more recent approaches have underlined the fact that the magnitude of the impact these organisations have on the policy-making process and on public opinion is extremely difficult to measure10, the relative blind spot which conservative think tanks occupy in the literature makes it difficult to effectively evaluate their own claims of influence.

• 11 Emma Bell, “Brexit: Towards a Neoliberal Utopia?”, Observatoire de la société britannique, n°24, 20 (...)

6This article therefore aims at providing an analysis of the role played by conservative think tanks in the Brexit debate that steers clear from an overreliance on think tanks’ self-representations and from the persistence of teleological narratives, by placing the contributions made by several of these organisations to this debate in a long-term perspective. It relies on historical analysis as well as on discourse analysis, examining past contributions of conservative think tanks and observing the evolution of their narratives and positions over time. It starts by observing how the IEA and the ASI once defended the idea of British EEC membership, on the grounds that the Treaty of Rome had been originally intended as a charter for economic freedom. This retrospective look at the early attitude of conservative think tanks towards European integration helps explain why most of their contributions on Brexit (before the referendum as well as during the period of negotiations that ensued) represented a form of ideological continuity, as they revolved around the presentation of Brexit as an opportunity to bolster economic liberalism and the free market, through the advent of a “neoliberal utopia11”. However, the analysis of their contributions during this time frame also shows that these organisations adopted a largely reactive strategy, tailoring their discourse to current events rather than shaping them. This paper finally analyses how these think tanks have dealt with the question of Brexit since the United Kingdom’s official withdrawal from the European Union. It observes how they seem to have partly reneged their initial shining promises through a subtle reorientation of their discourse, which might indirectly shed light on deeper contradictions that lay at the heart of contemporary British conservatism.

• 12 In June 1975, Harold Wilson organised a referendum on the United Kingdom’s continued membership in (...)
• 13 The Hobart Papers are a recurring publication of the IEA, intended to provide analyses of current i (...)

7The Brexit referendum of 2016 was not the first time think tanks had the opportunity to ponder over the potential benefits or drawbacks of European integration for the United Kingdom in a context of heightened political tensions. A few months before Edward Heath finally secured Britain’s official entry in the European Economic Community, and as both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party were experiencing internecine struggles of varying magnitudes over the issue, which would eventually lead to a first membership referendum in 197512, the IEA devoted part of its efforts to the debate. True to its founding principles, the think tank did not seek to explicitly enter the political fray; instead, it dedicated one of its Hobart Papers13 to the question.

• 14 Roberto Ventresca, “Making Neoliberal Narratives of European Integration: The Case of the Institute (...)
• 15 Its contents were described by Ralph Harris, then director of the IEA, as follows: “the theme is th (...)
• 16 Roberto Ventresca, op. cit.

8Entitled Rome or Brussels…? and co-signed by William R. Lewis (former head of the EEC Information Office in London and director of the Conservative Political Centre14) its aim was to assess the cost-benefit balance of joining the EEC from an economic viewpoint, weighing the liberal spirit of the Treaty of Rome against the potential risks of an increase in Brussels bureaucracy15. The report’s conclusions remained relatively optimistic, viewing the United Kingdom’s accession to the EEC – albeit with some reservations – as synonymous with economic liberalisation. Over two decades, the think tank continued to develop a similar discourse, halfway between mistrust of regulation imposed by a centralised European system and recognition of the potential benefits of the Common Market16.

• 17 Hugh Thomas, speech draft for Margaret Thatcher, “Europe/Bruges speech”, 27 August 1988, Thatcher M (...)

9Although the Centre for Policy Studies was created in 1974, it did not publish any pamphlet that tackled the question of British membership directly during the EEC referendum campaign. However, as the CPS had been founded by Keith Joseph to turn the IEA’s more academic publications into concrete policy proposals for the Conservative Party, it can be safely inferred that its views of Europe were not that dissimilar from its older counterpart. In other words, the CPS was favourable to the strict interpretation of the EEC as a market. This can be exemplified by the fact that among the many documents that were drafted by the CPS for Margaret Thatcher during her premiership, one can find the speech that would become widely known as the Bruges Speech, which clearly echoed the early preoccupations of the IEA by describing the Treaty of Rome as a “charter for economic liberty” and famously warned against the dangers of the Brussels bureaucracy17.

• 18 Omega Report: Foreign Policy, Adam Smith Institute, 1983, p. 16. [Online: https://static1.squarespa (...)
• 19 Ibid., p. 18.

10Because it was founded in 1978 by Madsen Pirie and the Stuart and Eamonn Butler, the ASI could not actively participate in the debate over the first membership referendum. However, in the years following its creation, it also treated the question of European integration through the prism of economic liberalism. In the “Foreign Policy” volume of its Omega Project, a large-scale report designed to provide turnkey policy solutions in all areas of public policy and published in 1981, it adopted a resolutely pro-EEC stance, while making it clear that it was an absolute necessity to “steer […] the Community back to its original aims of free enterprise and sound economic management” in order to “re-assert […] the letter of Rome over the spirit of Brussels18”. The ASI therefore put forward a neoliberal vision of European integration, warning against the turn towards federalism and highlighting the heaviness of the EEC’s bureaucratic structure, “with its supporting web of corporatist and intergovernmental Euroquangos19”.

• 20 Agnès Alexandre-Collier, op. cit.
• 21 Karine Tournier-Sol, “From UKIP to the Brexit Party: The Politicization of European Integration and (...)

11These early examples show how think tanks involved in the Thatcher revolution adopted a generally favourable attitude toward European integration, particularly because of their sensitivity to the founding principles of the Treaty of Rome, which they regarded as a “charter for economic freedom”. The neoliberal orientation of British conservative think tanks is therefore central to understanding their conflicted relationship with the question of Brexit. As changes in the parliamentary Conservative Party20 and the disruptive influence of UKIP and later the Brexit Party21 fuelled Euroscepticism in the British public debate, these organisations were able to attract an audience on the right by claiming that the spirit of the Treaty of Rome had gradually been perverted, ultimately giving way to a European Union that imposed ever more supranational regulations detrimental to the “spontaneous order” of the market. If one may thus speak of a Eurosceptic “turn” in their discourse, it was essentially the result of a strong ideological commitment to their neoliberal principles; the question of national sovereignty featuring only in the background, or rather being almost exclusively considered through the prism of the free market. However, if this means that their pro-Brexit discourse was indeed a sign of coherence on their part, it could also be described as more opportunistic than strategic, and, as will be discussed below, it would later prove increasingly at odds with some of the central ideological underpinnings of the 2016 vote.

• 22 Some of the examples of think tank contributions discussed in this section also appear in Mark Garn (...)
• 23 Miles Saltiel, Britain and the EU: A Negotiator’s Guide, Adam Smith Institute, January 2012. [Onlin (...)

12This section therefore analyses the conservative think tanks’ contribution to the Brexit debate, from the pre-referendum period to the 2019 elections, through the prism of their neoliberal outlook22. Almost exactly one year before David Cameron promised an in-out referendum, but as the eventuality of a renegotiation of Britain’s terms of membership loomed on the horizon, the Adam Smith Institute chose to explore different scenarios for a post-Brexit United Kingdom in a cautious report entitled Britain and the EU: A Negotiator’s Guide, whose objective was explicitly to “focus […] on process and scenarios rather than outcome” and argued that Britain could obtain more from negotiations with the EU if it were able to convincingly picture itself “out” before entering the fray23.

• 24 Philip Booth ed., The Euro – the Beginning, the Middle… and the End?, Institute of Economic Affairs (...)
• 25 “Lord Saatchi Europe Referendum op-ed in the Daily Telegraph”, CPS website, 15 June 2016. [Online: (...)

13Despite this early initiative, the period between David Cameron’s Bloomberg speech and the Brexit vote was not characterised by an immediate and sustained think tank activity about possible Brexit scenarios. More importantly, the few contributions that were made were also marked by a certain degree of prudence. A good example can be found in the IEA’s The Euro – The Beginning, the Middle…, and the End?, a collection of essays published in April 2013, which gathered contributions from economists with diverging views, some exposing the flaws in the single currency system while others offered a more optimistic outlook24. Just a few days before the referendum, Lord Saatchi, Conservative peer and then CPS chair, published an op-ed in The Daily Telegraph that attempted to transcend the familiar terms of the debate, explaining that a victory for Remain would provide the Conservative government with a mandate to “take its natural place as the leader of Europe25”.

• 26 Before joining the IEA, Julian Jessop worked for Capital Economics, an economic consultancy based i (...)
• 27 “About the Brexit Unit”, IEA website. [Online: https://iea.org.uk/about-the-brexit-unit-1/].

15The aftermath of the referendum, on the contrary, saw a drastic increase in activity in think tank circles. In the year after the referendum, the IEA created a Brexit Unit, headed by the economist Julian Jessop26, which was tasked with providing various briefings on many aspects of the crisis. Its mission statement reiterated the IEA’s commitment to limiting state intervention in the economy, warning that “Brexit could actually lead to more bureaucracy and protectionism rather than less, especially with all major political parties in the UK now proposing a bigger role for the state27”. The think tank therefore remained true to its core beliefs, presenting itself as one of the guarantors of a truly neoliberal Brexit. In doing so, the IEA aligned with the “Global Britain” narrative, that presented Brexit as a shining opportunity for the United Kingdom to take back its rightful place as a global trading power.

• 28 Richard Cockett, Thinking the Unthinkable: Think-tanks and the Economic Counter-Revolution, 1931-19 (...)

17This alone highlighted the fact that the strategic interests of the think tank seemed to have superseded its initial vocation of being a trailblazer, opting instead to tailor its discourse to fit the more urgent needs of the political debate so that it resonated more effectively with a targeted audience. Such a strategy paradoxically contributed to distancing the IEA from the pioneering role it had once been credited with in the pre-Thatcher period. This evolution was by no means confined to the IEA, as other Thatcher-era think tanks similarly adjusted their modes of operation, privileging immediate impact and media visibility over long-term Gramscian influence. What Alfred Sherman, co-founder and first director of the CPS, had once described as the artillery of the war of ideas28, preparing the ground in advance, became mere foot soldiers of the Brexit debate, engaging in daily skirmishes.

• 29 Shanker Singham, Radomir Tylecote and Victoria Hewson, Freedom to Flourish, Institute of Economic A (...)

18Before turning to other think tanks, it must however be said that the IEA also produced longer reports, such as Freedom to Flourish, a volume authored by Shanker Singham, Radomir Tylecote and Victoria Hewson. Despite its more in-depth and documented approach, it was also characterised by the enthusiastic promotion of a neoliberal Brexit, arguing that “The United Kingdom ha[d] a unique opportunity to use withdrawal from the EU to grow its economy and become considerably more productive29” if only it made sure that Brexit meant more “regulatory autonomy”; in other words, freedom to engage in unfettered global free trade.

• 30 Daniel Mahoney, Tim Knox and Jon Moulton, “The City Boys are Here to Stay”, Centre for Policy Studi (...)

19Even if it was not the most prolific, the Centre for Policy Studies also intensified the rhythm of its Brexit-themed publications and adopted a similarly optimistic tone. In keeping with its original purpose as a purveyor of concrete conservative policy proposals (as opposed to the traditionally more academic output of the IEA), it rapidly issued, in the wake of the referendum results, a series of reports targeting specific aspects of the British economy and the positive effects that Brexit could have on them. For instance, in its September 2016 Economic Bulletin, entitled “The City Boys Are Here to Stay”, the CPS celebrated the strength of the UK’s financial services, and put forward the argument that Brexit could mean new opportunities through “bilateral trade agreements with emerging financial centres like Hong Kong and Singapore30.”

• 31 Rishi Sunak, The Free Ports Opportunity, Centre for Policy Studies, 14 November 2016. [Online: http (...)

20The next month, a CPS report entitled The Free Ports Opportunity, written by none other than Rishi Sunak, looked at how leaving the EU could “enable Britain to capitalise on the Free Port opportunity31”. These publications strongly echoed the “Singapore-on-Thames” scenario, by representing the United Kingdom after Brexit as a trading and financial hub. In June 2019, shortly after Theresa May’s resignation and amid a full-blown political crisis, the CPS demonstrated its unwavering faith in a positive outcome by publishing a collection of essays entitled Britain Beyond Brexit: A New Conservative Vision, which gathered contributions from prominent Conservative Brexiteers such as Dominic Raab, Suella Braverman and Penny Mordaunt, who all praised the result of the Brexit vote as a harbinger of a glittering future for the UK as a leading economic and trading power.

• 32 Liam Halligan & Gerard Lyons, Clean Brexit, Policy Exchange, 16 January 2017. [Online: https://poli (...)
• 33 Warwick Lightfoot, Jonathan Dupont, Geoff Raby and Michael Taylor, Global Champion: The Case for Un (...)
• 34 This vision was articulated in detail in a report entitled Global Britain: a Twenty-First Century V (...)

21Other conservative think tanks, which lacked the long track record of the CPS or the IEA but had been able to build significant relationships with Conservative policymakers and the Conservative Party, took part in the promotion of the “Global Britain” narrative. One can mention Policy Exchange, founded in 2002 by three Conservative politicians (including Nick Boles, who resigned from the Conservative Party in March 2019 because he was opposed to the UK leaving the EU without a deal). In January 2017, the think tank published a report co-authored by Liam Halligan and Gerard Lyons, entitled Clean Brexit, which emphasised the vital importance of negotiating free trade agreements with “the rest of the world”, even while remaining in the EU, for them to come into effect after withdrawal32. A subsequent Policy Exchange publication, bearing the evocative title Global Champion: The case for unilateral free trade, argued for the complete unilateral elimination of all the UK’s remaining tariffs “to be a true champion of global free trade after Brexit33”. Another example could be found in the Henry Jackson Society, rare instance of a British conservative think tank dealing exclusively with foreign policy, which, rather unsurprisingly due to its Anglo-American and neoconservative outlook, championed Brexit as the sine qua non for the rejuvenation of the “special relationship34”.

• 35 Sam Knight, “The Man who Brought you Brexit”, The Guardian, 29 September 2016, [Online: https://www (...)

22If one think tank may be remotely associated with a longer-term vision of Brexit, it is the Initiative for Free Trade (IFT), now renamed the Institute for Free Trade. Although the organisation itself was only founded in September 2017, its founder, former Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan, had been working for years behind the scenes to make Brexit happen. Once described as “the man who brought you Brexit,” Hannan played a central role in shaping the intellectual and strategic foundations of the Leave campaign, notably by giving the first impulse to the creation of Vote Leave35.

• 36 Daniel Hannan, Why We Invented Freedom and Why It Matters, London, Head of Zeus, 2013.
• 37 The “Anglosphere” made recurring appearances in the discourse of Brexiteers as “global community” w (...)

23The IFT’s mission statement made it clear: its purpose was to promote, in radical fashion, a neoliberal Brexit: “the IFT defends free trade both intellectually and morally and regards Britain’s withdrawal from the European Union as a unique opportunity to revitalise the global trading system.” The IFT was thus one of the principal advocates of the concept of “Global Britain” and was entirely devoted to the promotion of free trade, particularly within the specific framework of a renewed commercial relationship between the United Kingdom and other English-speaking countries. Hannan himself grounded his defence of a neoliberal Brexit in what he termed “the miracle of the Anglosphere” – an exceptionalism he ascribed to English-speaking peoples, whom he credited with having “invented liberty36.” In this sense, the IFT’s contribution reflected a neoliberal vision of international relations that advocated for the strengthening of a liberal international order, dominated in this case by the countries of the “Anglosphere37.” Freed from the constraints imposed by the European Union, the United Kingdom could thereby reclaim its place as a world leading global power.

• 38 Emma Bell, op. cit.

24Nonetheless, the way the British conservative think tank ecosystem as a whole reacted to the announcement of the referendum in 2013, and later to its result, clearly suggests that most organisations were rather ill-prepared, and that the promotion of British withdrawal had not figured in their priority list prior to June 2016. However, they were quickly able to seize the opportunity offered by the unexpected results of the vote to deliver shining promises for a post-Brexit United Kingdom. This optimistic vision was fuelled by their long-term commitment to economic liberalism and the free market, and was meant to capture the imagination of policymakers and the public opinion in order to steer the outcome of Brexit negotiations towards a “bonfire of regulations38”. After the Conservative leadership race was won by Boris Johnson in July 2019, and with a general election looming on the horizon, all these organisations saw an opportunity to push their neoliberal agenda even further, in close proximity to the Conservative Party.

• 39 A think tank such as the Institute of Economic Affairs operates under “charity status”. This status (...)

25However, the discourse adopted by British conservative think tanks during the 2019 electoral campaign placed them in a delicate position vis-à-vis the Conservative Party, for two main reasons. The first was primarily tactical: in a context where the Conservatives had adopted the slogan “Get Brexit Done”, too clear and vocal a support for a “hard Brexit” would have amounted to declaring an allegiance to the Tory Party. This, in turn, would have jeopardised the think tanks’ independence and attracted the scrutiny of the Charity Commission39.

• 40 Kevin Hickson and Ben Williams, “Boris Johnson and Beyond: The Revival of One Nation Conservatism?” (...)
• 41 The slogan “Take Back Control” is often attributed to Dominic Cummings, director of the Vote Leave (...)
• 42 Karine Tournier-Sol, “L’Influence du Brexit Party sur les élections législatives britanniques de 20 (...)

26The second reason was more ideological, although it was closely connected to the first. There appeared to be a certain degree of incompatibility between the resolutely neoliberal Brexit championed by the think tanks, and the discourse of Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party. Indeed, if Johnson also promoted the vision of a post-Brexit United Kingdom restored to its former international grandeur through free trade (a theme that would not be highlighted during the campaign but would become central afterwards), he relied at the same time on a strategy sometimes described as an attempt – albeit mainly rhetorical – to revive One-Nation conservatism40, which promised to break away from the Thatcherite neoliberal legacy and austerity policies by investing in public services. Moreover, the campaign was fought on populist tropes, notably embodied in the “Take back control41” narrative, centred on questions of national sovereignty and anti-immigration ideas. These positions were particularly associated with the Brexit Party, which yielded a non-negligible influence on the Conservative Party42, further distancing it from the think tanks’ purely economically liberal analysis.

• 43 For a detailed analysis of the role played by conservative think tanks in the 2019 general election (...)

27Consequently, British conservative think tanks deployed several rhetorical strategies to defend their own vision of Brexit. For instance, the IEA found itself critical not only of Labour’s large-scale proposals for nationalisation and spending, but also about certain Conservative policies, which it deemed “fiscally irresponsible”. More broadly, the think tanks’ core focus on free trade and economic liberalism proved somewhat out of step with the broader populist and identity-driven dynamics of the election, which they never sought to address explicitly in their media interventions and reports. While they only emphasised open markets and “Global Britain”, the Conservative campaign appealed on the other hand to national sovereignty, “left behind” regions, and state intervention43. Therefore, even if think tanks successfully exploited these divergences to maintain a strategic distance from the Conservative Party, this sometimes resulted in a degree of alienation, cutting them off from the very political actors who had long been their closest interlocutors and contributing to a sobering reassessment of the lofty expectations they had raised in the post-referendum period concerning the advent of a neoliberal utopia.

• 44 Boris Johnson, “PM Speech in Greenwich”, 3 February 2020, British government website. [Online: http (...)

28In a speech delivered at the Old Royal Naval College in Greenwich on February 3, 2020, Boris Johnson explicitly refused to utter the word “Brexit”, arguing that it was unnecessary as the crisis, whose name was “beginning with B”, was “slowly receding in the past”. Even if this was meant to proclaim the dawn of a new era for post-Brexit Britain, finally “leaving its chrysalis” to “re-emerg[e] after decades of hibernation as a campaigner for global free trade44”, one could not help but see in this refusal a quiet acknowledgment of the existence of unresolved problems of national resonance that had been unearthed by the Brexit vote, as well as too quick a dismissal of the substantial obstacles that might await the United Kingdom in its quest for renewed global significance.

• 45 “Global Britain in a Competitive Age: the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and F (...)

29As Johnson’s strategy became clearer a year later in a document titled “Global Britain in a Competitive Age,” published by the Cabinet Office on March 16, 202145, conservative think tanks could claim that their ideas had prevailed, as the Conservative government – despite having fought the campaign on the promise to “take back control” in the face of the harmful effects of globalisation – took a clear step toward the neoliberal project they had so eagerly promoted. However, a first retrospective look at some concrete proposals formulated by those organisations reveals a clear discrepancy between what was then presented as a reliable blueprint for Britain after Brexit and the reality of the implementation of a “Global Britain” agenda.

• 46 The full list of contributors is as follows: Shanker Singham (Institute of Economic Affairs), Barna (...)
• 47 Ibid., p. 5.

30A good example of that disparity can be found in the proposal for an “Ideal UK-US Free Trade Agreement”, initially drafted in 2018 by eleven British and American conservative think tanks (which included the IEA, the ASI and the IFT46) and promoted during the 2019 campaign. Through this publication, these organisations sought to position themselves as actors of an informal diplomacy between the United States and the United Kingdom, trying to demonstrate the existence of an organic “special relationship” between the two countries, described as naturally compatible through their common affinities with economic liberalism and free trade. What is more, the authors of the report lamented that the treaty in question could not be reduced to the simple phrase “There shall be free trade among the Parties47”, reflecting a desire to establish a new, more liberal standard for free trade agreements – one that went beyond the specific case of a transatlantic commercial relationship.

• 50 Catherine McBride, Has Brexit Really Harmed UK Trade? Countering the Office for Budget Responsibili (...)
• 51 Phil Radford, Less than Meets the Eye: The Real Impact of Brexit on UK Trade, Policy Exchange, 19 M (...)

35When studying the discourse of conservative think tanks from an even more contemporary perspective, almost ten years after the referendum and more than five years after the official withdrawal date, Brexit now seems to have become as elusive as it had once been in Johnson’s Greenwich speech. The “Global Britain” theme seems to have almost disappeared from think tank publications; when it resurfaces, it does so with interesting twists. For instance, the focus has shifted from the prospect of a boom in British international trade after Brexit to simply assessing whether Brexit had actually been economically harmful for the United Kingdom. This was the subject of a 2023 IEA publication entitled Has Brexit Really Harmed UK Trade? Countering the Office for Budget Responsibility’s claims50, which has recently been echoed by a more substantial report published by Policy Exchange and entitled Less than Meets the Eye: The Real Impact of Brexit on UK Trade51. Strikingly enough, both think tanks have now switched to a very defensive position, which provides a stark contrast with the way they dealt with the issue at the height of the Brexit crisis.

• 52 Robert Jenrick, Neil O’Brien and Karl Williams, Taking Back Control: Why Britain Needs a Better App (...)

37A good example of this concerns the question of immigration: some think tanks, which for a long time had been mostly favourable to legal immigration for economic purposes or had simply ignored the issue, have now developed an explicitly restrictionist approach, echoing the arguments which had been used by parties like UKIP or the Brexit Party to support Brexit. For instance, in May 2024, the Centre for Policy Studies published a report co-authored by Karl Williams, Robert Jenrick and Neil O’Brien, which echoed the restrictionist accents of the 2019 campaign by insisting on the vital necessity for the country to “take back control” of its immigration system, arguing in favour of establishing “an overall cap on the amount of migration” and on stricter standards of selection52. More broadly speaking, the numerous fault lines that the Brexit crisis exposed within British conservatism, including the debates around the role of the nation-state in the formulation of an industrial strategy or the necessity to wage an endemic version of the American “culture wars”, have resurfaced as “ghosts” that now haunt, in one way or another, the discourse of conservative think tanks in Britain.

• 53 John Mullan, “Why Margaret Thatcher chose Wordsworth's Ode for her funeral”, The Guardian, 10 April (...)
• 54 William Wordsworth, “Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood”, origin (...)

40In April 2013, just a few months after David Cameron gave the speech that would start the process which eventually led to Brexit, Margaret Thatcher’s funeral service was held at St Paul’s Cathedral in London. The final eulogy consisted in a reading of one of William Wordsworth’s best-known poems, entitled Ode: Intimations of Immortality from Recollections of Early Childhood53. Its sobering assessment of the transient nature of human existence, captured in the lines “Whither is fled the visionary gleam? / Where is it now, the glory and the dream54?” offers a fitting epilogue to this retrospective inquiry into the conservative think tanks’ involvement in the Brexit debate. Indeed, the “visionary gleam” which inspired these organisations to push for an unapologetically neoliberal Brexit has progressively faded away, and what was once presented as a unique opportunity to restore the United Kingdom to its former glory has now almost disappeared from the discourse of the very think tanks that once promoted it so eagerly. Moreover, the passing of this formerly radiant promise may well signal that the consensus that existed on the right around radical neoliberal politics, inherited from the unwavering Thatcherite faith in the free market, has entered its twilight phase. As British conservatism is now being pulled in conflicting and sometimes contradictory directions, conservative think tanks are therefore left with the challenging task of navigating a political order marked by the deep divisions and unresolved issues that the Brexit crisis contributed to magnifying.