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Prosperity Institute
Educational charity based in London, England From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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The Prosperity Institute, formerly known as the Legatum Institute, is a think tank based in London.[1][2][3] Its stated mission is to promote and protect the principles that produce local and national prosperity.[4][5] The Institute has over forty donors, including the Legatum Foundation.[6] It has been called "arguably the most influential think tank in Britain pushing its free-market pro-Brexit vision and enjoying privileged access to media and ministers", but has attracted controversy as well.[7]
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History, operations and funding
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The Legatum Institute was founded in 2007, funded by the Dubai-based Legatum Group, owned by businessman and hedge fund manager Christopher Chandler.[8] Chandler and his brother, Richard, built their fortune through a range of investments in the 1990s and 2000s, notably in Russia as well as in Hong Kong property and Japanese banking sectors. The Institute is supported by their family charity, the Legatum Foundation.[9] The Foundation contributes to various philanthropic initiatives, including the END Fund[10] and the Freedom Fund.[11]
In 2018, it was criticised by the Charity Commission for breaching its charitable objectives by publishing a partial and biased account of the benefits of free trade post-Brexit.[12] It was closely aligned with the Vote Leave campaign, awarding fellowships to the campaign's chair, Gisela Stuart, and its CEO, Matthew Elliott. The team targeted by the Charity Commission subsequently moved to the Institute of Economic Affairs, where they continued to face scrutiny. However, the Charity Commission has since issued an apology for the entire episode.[13][better source needed] Additionally, Prosperity is no longer registered as a charity.[citation needed]
In 2018, the Legatum Institute also received $10,000 from the Robert F. Agostinelli Foundation. Agostinelli is a right-wing billionaire who backs neoconservative causes and once called the left a "cancer that needs to be eradicated". He was previously a donor to the US presidential campaign of former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani.[14]
The Legatum Institute states that it is funded by private donors. [citation needed] These are not listed on its site or in its financial declarations.[15] In November 2022, the funding transparency website Who Funds You? rated the institute as E, the lowest transparency rating (rating goes from A to E).[16]
The Institute is located in Mayfair.[17] Philippa Stroud (formerly executive director of the Centre for Social Justice, and a Conservative Party peer in the House of Lords) was appointed CEO of the Legatum Institute in 2016 and left this post in March 2023 to head up the Institute's Alliance for Responsible Citizenship.[18][19][20]
In 2018, Chandler was publicly accused by Bob Seely, a Conservative MP, of links to Russian intelligence. Seely claimed that he and other MPs had seen intelligence documents suggesting Chandler might be a counterintelligence concern.[21] Chandler and the Institute strongly denied these accusations.[21] In response, Chandler filed a libel lawsuit in the US District Court for the District of Columbia against a private investigator who had allegedly provided the information. In 2021, Chandler successfully revived the libel case after it was initially dismissed,[22] and in 2024, he was awarded him $8 million in damages after finding in his favor.[23]
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Reports and advocacy
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Research focuses
Brexit and trade
The Prosperity Institute (and under its previous brand as Legatum Institute) has a record of researching areas related to Brexit and, relatedly, trade policy. This included releasing early publications following the UK’s referendum on EU membership encouraging complete withdrawal from the EU and its regulatory orbit, including papers such as "A Blueprint for UK Trade Policy",[24] among others published by economist and trade lawyer Shanker Singham (later described as "the Brexiteers' brain"[25] in some of the left-leaning press), Tylecote, and others. During this period, another newspaper alleged that the Institute was becoming a "shadow civil service",[26] in part due to its apparent influence on ministers. As of 2025, researchers at the Institute continue to criticise renewed attempts at UK-EU convergence in regulation or other areas.[27]
CPTPP
The Institute was also an early advocate, by 2017, of UK membership of the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP);[24] the UK formally acceded to the CPTPP in 2023.
Other areas
Prosperity Institute has also called for what it calls less burdensome regulation as well as lower taxes, including in response to tax cuts elsewhere, notably the United States.[28]
The Institute has criticised ESG or DEI in business and finance,[29] and remains a persistent critic of UK involvement in European "harmonisation", such as in the EU’s apparent plans to harmonise militaries and the defence industry.[30]
Since 2023 it has established units such as the Sovereignty Unit to advocate for national sovereignty above multilateral institutions more generally. Institute authors have also repeatedly criticised "mass-immigration"[31] and illegal immigration,[32] stating that this situation prevents integration;[33][34][35] the Institute’s Guy Dampier, for example, has called for more restrictive immigration policies, such as extending the time it takes for immigrants to the UK to receive indefinite leave to remain (ILR).[31] Authors frequently take a traditionalist position on culture, and have criticised what they call the woke takeover of heritage institutions.[36]
The Institute’s international focus includes its establishment of a UK-US Special Relationship Unit[37] which advocates closer trading relationships, as well as lower tariffs, between the UK and US.
Current programmes and policies
The Institute has a number of programmes including: British Prosperity Unit (focused on streamlining regulation and cutting taxes for economic growth), Nationhood (focused on reducing immigration), the UK-US Special Relationship Unit (SRU), and Sovereignty. [38]
The Legatum Institute founded the 'Courage in Journalism' award in 2017 following the death of Daphne Caruana Galizia that same year.[39] The award was created to highlight the dangers faced by journalists around the world and to support press freedom.[40][41] In 2019, Ján Kuciak, a Slovakian journalist who died in 2018 at the age of 27, was named the winner of the annual prize.[42] In 2020, the award was given to Syrian journalist Raed Fares who ran Fresh Radio and was assassinated in Idlib.[43] The panel of judges included journalist Christina Lamb among others.[44]
The Legatum Institute formerly houses the Social Metrics Commission, founded in 2016, which published its first report into UK poverty levels in 2018.[45][46] The report found that 14.4 million people were living in poverty in 2017, including 4.5 million children.[47] On the 17th May 2019, the Department for Work and Pensions announced that it would adopt the Social Metrics Commission's methodology for measuring poverty in the UK.[48][49] This was largely achieved due to the cross-party involvement and support of the new measure.[50][51][52] The Commission's modelling was used by Baroness Stroud and the Legatum Institute in a campaign to call for the Chancellor of the Exchequer to retain the £20 Universal Credit uplift in Autumn 2021. The Institute estimated that "840,000" people would be shielded from poverty if the cut on Universal Credit was axed.[53][54]
Legatum Prosperity Index
The Legatum Institute publishes the annual Legatum Prosperity Index,[55] which measures prosperity across countries by applying a combination of material wealth and life satisfaction factors. The report has been in continuous publication since its launch in 2007 and has expanded its coverage from 50 countries to 167 in 2020.[56][57][58]
Historic programmes
At the 2015 Africa Prosperity Summit, the Legatum Institute participated as a panellist during the session on "Stoking African Innovation: Ways and Means", which focused on addressing economic and social requirements.[59] The same year, the Institute commissioned YouGov to investigate public attitudes towards capitalism, which highlighted a nearly universal belief that the biggest corporations in the world had become successful through cheating and at the expense of the environment.[60]
In 2017, the Legatum Institute commissioned a poll by Populus, estimating the views of the general British public on the Institute's political priorities.[61] The top priorities for respondents were: food and water; emergency services; universal healthcare; a good house; a decent well-paying job; and compulsory and free education. At the bottom were owning a car and cheap air travel.[62] The British public:
- Favour public ownership of the UK's water, electricity, gas and railway sectors
- Believe taxes should rise to provide more funding for the NHS
- Support higher levels of regulation
- Favour wage caps for CEOs
- Favour worker representation at senior executive and board level
- Support the abolition of zero hour contracts
- Hold an unfavourable view of 'capitalism; as a concept, viewing it as 'greedy', 'selfish' and 'corrupt'.[63]
Writing in The Sunday Times, Will Clothier used the poll to reflect that "capitalism has delivered for too few".[64]
In July 2018, Legatum Institute released a report linking "anxiety, self-harm and other mental illness with high social media use among young people". The report argued that this is damaging families and young people's relationships with other adults.[65][66] More widely, Legatum Institute has advocated the use of parenting courses as a useful way of embedding parental skills and values to support children, but that the take up of these courses remains low due to stigma (people relating such courses incorrectly to 'troubled families' and 'poor parenting'), poor accessibility and lack of familiarity with the trainer's and facilitators.[67]
Other initiatives
In October 2013, the Legatum Institute co-founded the Centre for Entrepreneurs (CFE) in partnership with entrepreneur Luke Johnson.[68][69] Its intention is to research and communicate the positive impact of entrepreneurs on the economy and society. The CFE took ownership of Startup Britain in 2014 and has released research on the role universities should play in entrepreneurship[70] and the benefits of offering entrepreneurship schemes to pre-release prisoners.[71]
Role in Brexit
The think tank has been widely characterised as influential in the Brexit debate.[6][72] In July 2017, soon after the UK's EU referendum result, Legatum Institute formed the Special Trade Commission, headed by SShanker Singham (who backed remain in the run-up to the EU referendum) and included former New Zealand Ambassador and Permanent Representative to the World Trade Organization Crawford Falconer as a commissioner.[72] This group provided reports looking at the UK's future trade negotiations. The Special Trade Commission's work was seen by some commentators as pushing for a "hard Brexit",[73] although the Institute said their role was to support the referendum result and pointed out that the Institute took no public position in the lead-up to the EU referendum.[74]
The Institute proposed using unmanned aerial vehicles to patrol the Republic of Ireland – Northern Ireland border issue post-Brexit.[75] The solution, which by the report's own admission faced issues around cost and bad weather, was criticised[76] – the Daily Telegraph describing it as being "held up to ridicule".[77] The report proposed other potential measures including re-purposing the Special EU Programmes Body and creating a special economic zone, an idea also put forward by the Republic of Ireland's main opposition party.[75] Crawford Falconer left the Special Trade Commission to become the Chief Trade Negotiation Adviser and Second Permanent Secretary for the Department for International Trade in June 2016.[78] Shanker Singham left the institute in March 2018[79][80] to take his team to the Institute of Economic Affairs and Matthew Elliott left in May 2018.[81] In May 2018, the institute announced it would end its Brexit-related research.[82]
In June 2018 the UK's Charity Commission said the Institute's 'Brexit Inflection Report' could be seen as seeking to achieve a "particular final outcome", something that would constitute political activity and an infringement of policy. The Institute was told to remove the report from its website.[83]
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Events
The Legatum Institute holds regular public events. In 2012 the Dalai Lama spoke at an event called "ethics for a more prosperous world".[84] In 2015, they held an event which looked at the ownership and management of public assets.[85] In 2018 they gathered thinkers from different perspectives and let them argue under the Chatham House Rule to promote debate.[86]
Fellows
The following people are current Fellows at the Legatum Institute:[87]
Previous Fellows have included Peter Pomerantsev, Gisela Stuart and Matthew Elliott.
References
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