One of the most influential secretly funded think tanks in Westminster, the Institute of Economic Affairs, is “a provocative attention seeker” masquerading as a charity to act as a lobbying outfit – according to one of its own advisors.
Anthony J. Evans – who is listed as a member of the IEA’s shadow monetary policy committee – says that the think tank, which refuses to declare its donors, prioritises “trolling” critics on social media over policy formulation and hides behind its status as an educational charity to lobby.
“Being an education-based charity, and being a lobby group, are two separate things. You shouldn't hide behind the former to engage in the latter,” Evans wrote earlier this year, in a newsletter entitled ‘Gripes with the IEA’.
