Tea Party Spreads to UK?

Flickr user <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/markhillary/">markhillary</a> via Creative Commons.

Fight disinformation: Sign up for the free Mother Jones Daily newsletter and follow the news that matters.


The UK Guardian reports today that the American tea party has hopped the pond and is sharing its “mass-protest techniques” with British anti-tax activists. From the Guardian

Libertarian US Tea Party organizations attended a conference in London today… and described their activities as ‘an insurgent campaign’ against their government’s tax and spending policies. The move reflects an increasing desire within rightwing circles to establish a British version of the Tea Party ‘uprising’ and a growing belief that expected union action against the coalition government’s programme of cuts could be harnessed to mobilise vocal counter-demonstrations.

I’m curious to see what a British tea party would look like. Would it have the same wide streak of racism that runs through the US party? The same inflated attendance numbers? One would hope that British anti-tax activists would not adopt “teabonics” but then, the 1773 Boston Tea Party was virulently anti-British, so who knows? It’s a topsy turvy world.

Freedom Works and Americans for Prosperity (AFP) are two of the tea party groups that are advising the British TaxPayers’ Alliance in grassroots activism, though both sides are open about the fact that such “grassroots” events are often financed, promoted, or supplied by large, established right-wing groups. The conference itself is being paid for by the Heritage Foundation and the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation and is attended by reps from Philip Morris, BP, and a climate change denial thinktank called the Global Warming Policy Foundation whose Board of Advisors is composed of five Lords, one Baroness, a Sir, a bishop, and one poor title-less Frenchman. I confess I’m a bit surprised to see tea partiers, who pride themselves on being ‘salt of the earth’ kind of folks, hobnobbing with BP and British lords. Despite the differences in background, though, the American partiers and the British Global Warming Policy Foundation show a similar know-nothing approaches to reality. GWPF ignores rising sea levels in favor of slamming the IPCC, and the tea partiers ignore the fact that a Republican president initiated TARP bailouts in favor of slamming Obama. Maybe this bi-coastal tea party will work out after all. Pass the scones, please.

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

AN IMPORTANT UPDATE

We’re falling behind our online fundraising goals and we can’t sustain coming up short on donations month after month. Perhaps you’ve heard? It is impossibly hard in the news business right now, with layoffs intensifying and fancy new startups and funding going kaput.

The crisis facing journalism and democracy isn’t going away anytime soon. And neither is Mother Jones, our readers, or our unique way of doing in-depth reporting that exists to bring about change.

Which is exactly why, despite the challenges we face, we just took a big gulp and joined forces with the Center for Investigative Reporting, a team of ace journalists who create the amazing podcast and public radio show Reveal.

If you can part with even just a few bucks, please help us pick up the pace of donations. We simply can’t afford to keep falling behind on our fundraising targets month after month.

Editor-in-Chief Clara Jeffery said it well to our team recently, and that team 100 percent includes readers like you who make it all possible: “This is a year to prove that we can pull off this merger, grow our audiences and impact, attract more funding and keep growing. More broadly, it’s a year when the very future of both journalism and democracy is on the line. We have to go for every important story, every reader/listener/viewer, and leave it all on the field. I’m very proud of all the hard work that’s gotten us to this moment, and confident that we can meet it.”

Let’s do this. If you can right now, please support Mother Jones and investigative journalism with an urgently needed donation today.

payment methods

We Recommend

Latest

Sign up for our free newsletter

Subscribe to the Mother Jones Daily to have our top stories delivered directly to your inbox.

Get our award-winning magazine

Save big on a full year of investigations, ideas, and insights.

Subscribe

Support our journalism

Help Mother Jones' reporters dig deep with a tax-deductible donation.

Donate