The Pro-Trump Money Pushing Libertarian ‘Young Voices’ on British TV

During a recent GB News interview, commentator Jack Rowlett lambasted Keir Starmer’s Government for its apparent “lack of vision”. 

He told Tom Harwood that the new Government was “all about tax rises…smoking bans, and taking away people’s freedom, rather than any positive vision”.

Rowlett may seem like an independent voice. However, he is in reality one of a new group of young right-wing commentators appearing on TV news channels, who have been handpicked and primed to deliver soundbites by a talent agency that received funding from American pro-Trump foundations.

Rowlett, like several others, is backed by Young Voices, a “nonprofit talent agency for rising freethinkers in public policy” that operates in the US, UK and the EU and promotes the libertarian cause of “free speech, property rights, the rule of law, free trade of goods and labour, and low taxation and regulation”.

The emergence of a talent agency to help deliver right-wing views to the masses is, what one former advertising executive described as a “completely new phenomenon”, and a graduation from traditional attempts to influence opinion and policy through lobbying and PR.

“Young Voices, as a talent agency specifically for right-wing talent, is a worrying new development in the media world”, a former EMEA marketing director at Saatchi & Saatchi, who declined to be named, told Byline Times.

On its website, Young Voices promises its members “media training and placement services” and details how its team of “PR professionals edits and places op-eds, schedules broadcast interview opportunities, and connects our best writers to mentorship and employment opportunities”.

Young Voices, the website claims, has 102 current contributors who, in 2023, reportedly made 906 broadcast appearances, published 856 articles and achieved 81 million “coverage views”.

Young Voices “discovers, nurtures, and promotes independent communicators and creators ages 18-35”, the website notes, working with “unconventional young thinkers from a variety of backgrounds working in policy, journalism, innovation, and academia”.

“We work with political independents who don’t fit neatly on the left-right spectrum. The most interesting people rarely do,” the website states.

One testimonial on the page is from an Assistant News Editor at the Daily Mail, Bill Bowkett, who writes that over a four-year period, he went from writing for his student newspaper “to becoming a regular political broadcaster on national television and radio programmes, and from there, I became a news editor at one of the world’s biggest newspapers”. He credits Young Voices for its training, guidance and “wealth of connections” which was “invaluable in spearheading my career”.

The placement of libertarian voices in the media is achieved with the support of radical right-wing foundations. Until at least 2021, the agency was listed as a partner of the Charles Koch Foundation, from which, that year, it received £34,000.

The Charles Koch Institute is named after its American oil magnate founder, Charles Koch, who Greenpeace dubbed the “kingpin of climate denial” for pouring money into climate change obfuscation and denial campaigns through the institutions he funds. 

Koch has also funded a decades-long fight against trade union legislation in America, and in 2023, was accused by the Guardian of using his network to bring cases to the Supreme Court that could undermine the core “functions of the US Government”. 

Young Voices is currently partnered with the Atlas Network, which Greenpeace US describes as a “Koch Industries Climate Denial Front Group”. Another 2021 donor was the Lynne and Harry Bradley Foundation, an aggressively pro-Trump non-profit, co-founded by one of the original members of the far-right John Birch Society.

On Sky News in April 2024, Noah Khagali, a Conservative councillor and Young Voices member dismissed activists attempting to bring climate-related cases to the European Court of Human Rights as, “better than Just Stop Oil throwing paint on things and blocking roads, but it’s still not particularly helpful.”

Arguing against opposition to the Government’s decision to go ahead with the Rosebank oil field, he said: “Climate policy on its own cannot be the only focus of any Government. Domestic energy production is so important for something like national security that you cannot just look at climate policy in a vacuum […] you cannot look at one piece of policy, like an oil field in a vacuum, you have to look at the state of world energy.” 

In 2021, Khagali contributed a piece to City AM criticising Boris Johnson for his net-zero commitments and climate policy, arguing against Government intervention and “for a market-based approach” and against “demanding substantial behaviour change from individuals”.  

On Sunday Morning Live on BBC One in January 2024, Young Voices member Harrison Griffiths argued that a supposed narrative of climate “apocalypse” was unhealthy. 

In response to a study claiming that 31% of teenagers believed climate change was being exaggerated, he responded: “This should obviously raise the question, exaggerated by who?”

He added that if it was someone like Trump, “that’s cause for concern” but if it was referring to people in the debate who “are glueing themselves to roads that are exaggerating climate change then they are absolutely right and I wish it was more than 31%”. 

Griffiths went on to critique the idea of “the science” arguing that climate science represents a large range of opinions and is not unified”. In reality, metastudies show that between 97-99.9% of scientists endorse the evidence of anthropogenic climate change.

Bob Ward, head of policy and communications at the LSE’s Grantham Institute for Research on Climate Change and the Environment told Byline Times: “They are not actually concerned by the science, what they are concerned about is the policy implications as they see it…

“The overwhelming majority of scientists and all the world’s major scientific institutions are clear that the risks of climate change are very severe and require urgent action and anyone that denies that is essentially lying to the public and policymakers.”

Jason Reed, another member of Young Voices criticised the so-called “green blob” (networks of green NGOs) and “green virtue signalling” on Talk Radio in 2022 before arguing against state intervention in markets and deregulation of environmental standards and other regulations on commodities such as palm oil.

Not all the affiliates of Young Voices use their platforms to denounce climate activists or climate policy but espouse other libertarian views.

Lettice Bromvosky argued against smoking bans on Talk TV in October 2023.

Koch-linked conservative networks have long advocated against the regulation of tobacco product use. Koch Industries owns the manufacturer of Juul, a major e-cigarette brand in the US. In March 2024, Sam Chandler, a Young Voices affiliate wrote an article arguing against the prohibition of cigarettes and vapes.

Young Voices affiliates also frequently espouse views in favour of public spending cuts, deregulation and against trade unions.

When they appear on national radio or TV, the interviewer tends to introduce them as a “political commentator from Young Voices UK”.

Byline Times reviewed multiple appearances by Young Voices UK contributors, and the ideological bent of the organisation was never mentioned. 

Ward added: “My view is that the fossil fuel money is not the dominant driver of these opinions, these are people who adhere to an extreme ideological position which is an essentially anti-government line, an essentially small government, libertarian point of view. 

They are using ideological money, from rich conservatives and promoting their line. And the line changes over time because what they are really wanting to push back on is government intervention and any kind of limit on business, including fossil fuels

Bob Ward, Grantham Institute for Research on Climate Change and the Environment

Ward continued: “We know that this is how they operate because they have done this throughout history, particularly with regards to environmental risks and health risks like smoking.”

Another talent agency seemingly aiming to nurture future right-wing commentators is the newly established Civic Future. 

It is run by Munira Mirza, Boris Johnson’s former director of policy, and staffed partly by figures in the conservative and post-liberal think tank world like Tobias Phipps of the Common Good Foundation and Inaya Folarin Iman of the Equiano Project and formerly of the Free Speech Union.

Mirza has written about the need to change the process of “elite formation” so that more talented people can enter public life. The agency is sponsored by several figures, but only some are named. Civic Future does not yet have to file accounts with the Charity Commission as it has not yet been operating for 10 months when the first filings are due.

One of its named donors is the Mercatus Center at George Mason University in Virginia. The Mercatus Center is a conservative think tank which according to DeSmog has been historically funded by Exxon Mobil, the foundations of the Koch Brothers, the Atlas Network and the Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation.

Dr Tom Chivers, the head of research and advocacy at the Media Reform Coalition, told Byline Times that the “media activists are a core part of the lobbyists’ handbook for astroturf campaigning”. 

Their aim, as with all private lobbying, is not to broaden public debate but to manipulate it in favour of powerful elite interests

Tom Chivers, Media Reform Coalition

Chivers added: “Broadcast journalists should be the first in line to scrutinise these figures, to highlight their connections to vested interests.”

Young Voices and Civic Future did not respond to a request for comment, nor did any of the Young Voices’ members mentioned in this story.