Matthew Elliott

It's been questioned whether Matthew Elliott is trying to create the UK equivalent of the U.S. Tea Party movement. In November 2010, the Telegraph reported that the Tea Party and Elliott's TaxPayers' Alliance held a joint event in London to "galvanise anti-government sentiment" and Elliott sang the praises of the movement to the press. Then, in December 2015, former energy and climate secretary Ed Davey wrote a letter to Matthew Elliott, the head of the Vote Leave campaign. In it, Davey said the group will be guilty of attempting to take the UK “to the fringes of the international community” unless it distances itself from UKIP and the former chancellor Nigel Lawson. Elliott has also authored a 2009 book entitled "The Great European Rip-off: How the Corrupt, Wasteful EU is Taking Control of Our Lives" in which he is critical of the EU's push for climate regulation. He writes: "there seemed to be no limit to the price our masters were willing for the rest of us to pay so they could save the planet from our shameful energy profligacy."