UK
Protesters gather outside 55 Tufton Street against right-wing lobby groups


Photo: Stop Polluting Politics

PROTESTERS gathered today outside a London building that hosts several right-wing groups to “unite against the right.”

The action at 55 Tufton Street — nicknamed the “other back door shaping politics” — was organised by Stop Polluting Politics in coalition with climate, Palestine and migrant justice groups.

Campaigners surrounded the entrances to the building chanting: “Labour, cut the ties” and carrying banners reading: “Oily lobbyists out of politics.”

They argue that resident pressure groups are responsible for fuelling climate denial, racism and transphobia by influencing political decisions on net zero, migration, trans rights and economic policy.

Stop Polluting Politics spokesman Sam Simons said: “Schmoozing with MPs and ploughing money into political parties, right-wing pressure groups have come to exert a dangerous influence over our politics.

“For years they have been enjoying privileged access to policy-makers, all the while keeping their funding under wraps.

“The pressure groups of Tufton Street are accountable to no-one, yet they exert a dangerous influence over political decisions that impact us all.

“We demand that this government puts a stop to the toxic lobbying and cut opaque pressure groups out of the conversation.”