Yahoo News Shanker Singham: is he the brains of Brexit?
Shanker Singham is known at Westminster as the “Brexiteers’ brain”. To his acolytes in the Eurosceptic wing of the Conservative party, the former Washington lobbyist and lawyer is one of the most brilliant trade experts of his generation.
In the two years since the EU referendum, he has become one of the most influential policy specialists in the UK, courted by Eurosceptic Tory MPs and ministers who have adopted much of his thinking as their own.
Oxford-educated Singham left his role as trade chief for the pro-Brexit thinktank the Legatum Institute this year for a similar role at the Institute of Economic Affairs, which on Monday will publish his plans for a hard Brexit.
His fingerprints can be seen everywhere. He sat on a committee of experts advising Liam Fox on trade deals, until he was forced to step down this summer after taking a job with a lobbying company. But he remains close to the the trade secretary’s adviser Crawford Falconer.
His ideas played a key part of a letter sent by Boris Johnson to Downing Street about the Northern Irish border this year. He was also linked to a document drawn up by the Tory European Research Group attacking Theresa May’s customs plans.
Last November he was even accused of being the “third man” in an alleged plot by Johnson and Michael Gove to push the prime minister towards a hard Brexit. He shares their optimism that “global Britain” will flourish by going it alone outside the EU.
Yet his detractors are more cautious, questioning the fundamentals of his thinking as well as how relevant his experience as a trade lawyer, built up over almost two decades in the US, might be to Brexit. Some have accused him of telling politicians what they want to hear.
Singham is philosophical about how others see him. “Either I’m a deluded Walter Mitty fantasist or I’m meaningfully influencing the government’s thinking at the very highest levels. Pick one,” he said in an interview with BuzzFeed in May. Either way, he has steered the political conversation on Brexit more than most.
