Leading figures from Eton college to attend rightwing London summit | UK news
Reform UK MPs Sarah Pochin and Andrew Rosundall will be there. So are scores of Reform advisers, backbenchers and the likes of British crypto billionaire Ben Delo, who donated £4 million to Nigel Farage’s party.
But as populist right-wing politicians from around the world and their multimillionaire supporters prepare for this year’s Alliance for Responsible Citizenship (Arc) – a right-wing London summit dubbed the “anti-woke” Davos – others whose expected attendance has not been made public potentially raise more questions.
These include two leading figures from Eton college: Tom Arbuthnott, vice-president (partnerships) of the elite school, and Luke Martin, master of theology at the school.
Martin had previously been at odds with the modernization of the school, resigning from his post in 2020 to protest the firing of another teacher; He objected to the school’s promotion of “so-called progressive ideology”, which he likened to religious fundamentalism. He continues to teach at Eton, where he has a master of divinity.
He will be among 4,000 people from more than 85 countries coming to London’s Olympia exhibition center for three days of talks and discussions hosted by the Arc.
According to information obtained by the Guardian, speakers will include Sarah B Rogers, the US State Department’s undersecretary of state for public diplomacy and an official who has become the public face of the Trump administration’s growing hostility towards European liberal democracies.
He ostensibly attacked the hate speech and immigration policies of US allies and supported far-right parties.
A joint Greenpeace and Guardian investigation also identified several other US government participants, including a foreign office official who intervened in abortion rights and online safety debates in the UK. uncovered team and DeSmog.
They include Samuel Samson, a US state department official who last year challenged Britain’s communications regulator over the impact of online safety laws on free speech. While his meetings with Germany’s Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) marked the end of decades of US policy of keeping the country’s far-right at bay, he reportedly discussed abortion and censorship privately with Farage. Jon Morgan, a senior official in the office of US vice president JD Vance, also attends the meeting.
The strong US anti-abortion presence at the three-day summit also includes more than a dozen representatives of the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF), the conservative legal advocacy group behind the overturning of Roe v Wade in the US, which has also stepped up its activities in Britain.
Another Trump official expected at the Arc, fresh off attending a summit in Russia, is Rodney Mims Cook Jr., chairman of the U.S. Commission on Fine Arts and overseer of the president’s controversial White House ballroom extension.
Alongside politicians and activist groups, leading corporate entities are also taking part in this year’s Arc; The organization has been growing since its founding three years ago by people including right-wing Canadian psychotherapist Jordan Peterson and British Conservative Party member and former government adviser Phillippa Stroud.
Christian evangelical political thought is one of the strongest guiding themes of the conference, alongside hostility to net zero and climate skepticism.
European far-right participants include members of the AfD, Belgium’s Vlaams Belang, Spain’s Vox and the Netherlands’ Freedom Party.
Although most politicians are from the populist right, Conservative Party leader Kemi Badenoch is once again one of the keynote speakers. He attended the conference last year, where he vied with Farage to carry the torch of conservatism.
At least 40 British MPs will attend the event, while Reform attendees are expected to include James Orr, chairman of the party’s Christian Fellowship and a senior adviser to Farage and a member of Arc’s advisory board.
Meanwhile, wealthy donors and sponsors will ensure that the Arc continues to be as generous as in previous years in 2022, with support on a scale that will dwarf other conservative events, including a “Great Britain-PAC” initiative in July by former Tory MP Liz Truss, who briefly served as prime minister.
Key funders of the conference include GB News co-owner Paul Marshall and Dubai-based investment fund Legatum. In the past, the conference has also received financial support from a number of American fossil fuel companies and major Trump donors.
In his speech at the event last year, Marshall claimed that countries had been “swayed by an ideological zeal” that led them to develop net-zero emissions plans and that economic prosperity was being sacrificed “in the name of making some small changes to the CO2 level”.2 in the atmosphere”.
This year’s corporate participants will include Johnson & Johnson, Palantir, BP, Philip Morris International, Rio Tinto, Airbus, Sanofi, US investment fund RedBird Capital and Dubai government-owned DP World.
An Arc spokesman said its mission was to bring together leaders in business, culture, politics and technology to discuss “how to save the foundations of civilization”.
“Challenging net zero was tantamount to heresy when we launched in 2023; now everyone from Bill Gates and Tony Blair to leaders on the right have emphasized that abundant, reliable and cheap energy is the bedrock of modern civilisation.
“At the same time, no one was talking about demographic decline as a major risk for the West; now it’s firmly on the radar.”
However, MSI Reproductive Choices, which provides contraception and abortion to women in Britain and internationally, said the presence of US officials and other American activists at the Arc raised serious concerns about attempts to import US-style culture-war politics into the UK.
Tim Bale, professor of politics at Queen Mary University of London, said: “The Arc meeting – and that its participants included politicians from both fringes and the traditional sectors that it seems reasonable to call the right-wing international – is a symptom of the collapse of the formerly tightly policed boundary between the far-right and the centre-right.”
“Mainstream conservatives appear to have given up on the idea that they can alienate insurgents from their flank, preferring the old adage: ‘If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em’ – ideologically, if not institutionally through formal agreements or mergers.”
