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Adam Smith Institute
Orientation: free-market and classical liberal; in 2016 it officially changed its self-description from libertarian to neoliberal. Funding: private donors it does not name; Who Funds You? gives it an E, the lowest grade.
Founded in 1977 by Madsen Pirie and the brothers Eamonn and Stuart Butler, the ASI made its name pushing ideas before they were mainstream. Pirie has been described as a leading architect of Thatcher's privatisation programme, and the institute published Douglas Mason's proposal for a flat per-person local charge, which became the community charge, or poll tax, in Scotland in 1989 and England and Wales in 1990, and was abolished after Thatcher fell. Read it for the boldest version of the free-market case.
More about Adam Smith Institute26
Centre for Policy Studies
Orientation: centre-right, committed to free markets, a small state and low taxes, with historic links to the Conservative Party though it calls itself independent. Funding: undisclosed private donors; Who Funds You? gave it a D in 2023.
Keith Joseph and Margaret Thatcher founded the CPS in 1974 as a base for rethinking Conservative economics, and its early output shows where Thatcherism came from: Thatcher said Joseph's Monetarism Is Not Enough was among the few speeches that changed a political generation's thinking, and a 1982 CPS report recommended privatising British Telecom. Run today by Robert Colvile, it remains one of the think tanks closest to the Conservative Party, so read it to see where the party's thinking is heading.
More about Centre for Policy Studies27
Policy Exchange
Orientation: centre-right, founded in 2002 by Conservative modernisers including Francis Maude, Archie Norman and Nick Boles. Funding: a charity that mostly declines to disclose its donors; Who Funds You? gives it an E.
Policy Exchange has an unusual record of ideas becoming government policy. Free schools, elected police and crime commissioners and garden villages all appeared in its work before ministers adopted them. Its Judicial Power Project argues that unelected judges have taken on too much power, which puts it at the centre of arguments over human rights law and the courts. Dean Godson, now Lord Godson, is its director. It is a reliable early signal of the next wave of centre-right policy.
More about Policy Exchange28
Institute for Public Policy Research
Orientation: progressive and centre-left, set up in 1988 to give Labour modernisers an alternative to free-market thinking. Funding: trusts and foundations, some government support, companies and individual donors; Who Funds You? gives it an A for transparency.
IPPR's Commission on Social Justice, set up in 1992, helped shape the thinking of the New Labour era, and its Commission on Economic Justice reported in 2018 with a plan that included a national investment bank and a higher minimum wage. With Labour in government since 2024, its reports are worth reading as a guide to the arguments taking place inside the governing party, across subjects from the NHS to net zero.
More about Institute for Public Policy Research29
New Economics Foundation
Orientation: progressive and green, arguing for an economy that works for people and within environmental limits. Funding: trusts, foundations and other donors, with Who Funds You? giving it an A for transparency.
Founded in 1986 by the leaders of The Other Economic Summit to pursue a new model of wealth creation, NEF is a source of alternatives to growth-first economics. Its Happy Planet Index, launched in 2006, challenged GDP as the measure of national success, and in 2010 it called for a gradual move to a 21-hour working week to tackle overwork, unemployment and carbon emissions. Its ideas come from outside the Westminster mainstream, so test them against independent costings.
More about New Economics Foundation30
Resolution Foundation
Orientation: independent, with a focus on the living standards of low and middle-income households; its former chief executive Torsten Bell had advised Ed Miliband and left in 2024 to become a Labour MP. Funding: mainly the Resolution Trust, set up by the financier Clive Cowdery, with smaller foundation grants; Who Funds You? rates it A.
Founded in 2005, the Resolution Foundation specialises in household incomes, pay and the generational divide in wealth. Its minimum wage review, chaired by Sir George Bain and completed in 2014, was cited by George Osborne when he announced the National Living Wage in 2015. Ruth Curtice has led it since November 2024. Turn to it for the numbers behind claims about whether families are better or worse off.
More about Resolution Foundation31
Fabian Society
Orientation: democratic socialist and reformist, and formally part of the Labour movement: it was a founding member of the Labour Representation Committee in 1900 and remains a Labour-affiliated socialist society. Funding: built on membership, with about 8,000 members.
Founded in 1884, the Fabians are among the oldest organisations on this list and the clearest case of a think tank that is openly partisan. Sidney and Beatrice Webb were at its core, and the society founded the London School of Economics in 1895. It has always argued for gradual change through democratic institutions rather than revolution. Read its pamphlets as a window on debate inside the Labour Party rather than as neutral analysis.
More about Fabian Society32
Chatham House
Orientation: independent with no party line, though critics have accused it of elitism and of alignment with interventionist foreign policy. Funding: about 6,000 individual members, corporate partners, foundations and governments, including British departments and more than 60 embassies; Who Funds You? gave it a B in 2024.
The Royal Institute of International Affairs, founded in 1920, is better known by the name of its London home, and better known still for a rule. The Chatham House Rule, which originated there in 1927, lets participants use what is said at a meeting without revealing who said it or who attended, and the phrase is now used well beyond its walls. Bronwen Maddox has been its director since 2022.
More about Chatham House33
Royal United Services Institute
Orientation: no party line, but close to the British defence and security establishment; critics argue it tends to adopt UK government perspectives. Funding: individual and corporate members, publications and research contracts, with major contributors including the Foreign Office, the US State Department, the European Commission and BAE Systems.
Founded in 1831 at the initiative of the Duke of Wellington, RUSI is described as the world's oldest defence and security think tank, and it ranks among the most-cited think tanks worldwide. Russia declared it an undesirable organisation in 2025. Rachel Ellehuus became director-general that year. Keep its government and arms-industry funders in mind when it writes about procurement.
More about Royal United Services Institute34
Tony Blair Institute for Global Change
Orientation: calls itself non-partisan; commentators place it on the technocratic, pro-technology centre-left, in the tradition of Blair's Third Way. Funding: philanthropy and paid advisory work for governments in more than 45 countries, including Saudi Arabia and the UAE; the Larry Ellison foundation is one of its largest donors, giving more than £52 million in 2023.
With roughly 1,000 staff, TBI is part think tank and part consultancy, and it ran 21 events at Labour's 2026 conference. Its September 2025 report Time for Digital ID came days before Keir Starmer announced a national digital ID scheme, and when the government dropped the plan to make it compulsory for right-to-work checks in January 2026, TBI insisted the case still stood.
More about Tony Blair Institute for Global Change35
Centre for Social Justice
Orientation: describes itself as independent; in practice centre-right, and one of the think tanks most influential on the Conservative Party under David Cameron. Funding: private, with limited disclosure; Who Funds You? gave it a D in 2023.
Iain Duncan Smith co-founded the CSJ in 2004 with Tim Montgomerie and Philippa Stroud to put social justice at the heart of British politics, a pointed aim for a former Conservative leader. Its Breakthrough Britain reports are its best-known work, and the centre went on to play an important part in designing Universal Credit, which Duncan Smith later introduced as Work and Pensions Secretary. Its work makes the case that welfare should be judged by whether it moves people into work and stable lives.
More about Centre for Social Justice36
Bruegel (think tank)
Orientation: nonpartisan; it takes no institutional standpoint by its own rules, and its papers carry their authors' views. Funding: an unusual membership model in which EU member states and the UK, international companies and public financial institutions such as central banks pay to belong.
Based in Brussels and operating since 2005, Bruegel is where to go for clear economic analysis of European questions such as banking and capital markets, energy and climate policy and the digital economy. Because national governments are members, it sits unusually close to the people making EU economic policy. The 2020 Global Go To Think Tank Index ranked it the top international economics think tank outside the US.
More about Bruegel (think tank)37
Konrad Adenauer Foundation
Orientation: centre-right and Christian democratic, associated with but formally independent of Germany's CDU. Funding: almost entirely public; German federal and state budgets covered about 97 per cent of its budget in 2009.
Germany's party foundations have no close equivalent in Britain or America, and this one, founded in 1955 and named after West Germany's first chancellor in 1964, shows how they work: taxpayer-funded, tied to a party's outlook, yet running research, scholarships and democracy programmes at arm's length from it. With more than 100 offices abroad, its country reports are a useful window on how mainstream European conservatives see a region. Russia declared it an undesirable organisation in 2024.
More about Konrad Adenauer Foundation38
Friedrich Ebert Foundation
Orientation: centre-left and social democratic, associated with but formally independent of Germany's SPD. Funding: mainly grants from the German federal and state budgets, about €170 million in 2018.
Founded in 1925 as the political legacy of Friedrich Ebert, Germany's first president, the FES is the oldest and largest of the German party foundations. The Nazis banned it in 1933, and it was revived after the war. Its international work sets it apart: it helped democratic movements emerging from dictatorship in Spain, Portugal and Greece, and supported the African National Congress. With projects in more than 100 countries, it is the social democratic counterpart to the Adenauer Foundation; reading both gives a balanced German view.
More about Friedrich Ebert Foundation39
Fraser Institute
Orientation: described as libertarian by outlets including the New York Times, though it calls itself independent and non-partisan. Funding: individuals, corporations and foundations, including American ones; it says it accepts no government grants, and it stopped disclosing corporate funders in the 1980s.
Founded in Vancouver in 1974, the Fraser Institute is an exporter of indices. Its Economic Freedom of the World report, first published in 1996 and now co-published with the Cato Institute and more than 70 partner think tanks, is an annual ranking of countries by economic freedom. At home it publishes school report cards built from standardised test results and an annual Tax Freedom Day, both reliable starters of arguments about method.
More about Fraser Institute40
Stockholm International Peace Research Institute
Orientation: independent and nonpartisan, focused on armaments, conflict and arms control. Funding: an annual core grant from the Swedish government, approved by Parliament, plus grants from other governments and philanthropic foundations.
The Swedish Parliament decided to establish SIPRI in 1966, and its contribution is data. The Military Expenditure Database tracks the defence spending of most countries; its April 2026 release put world military spending in 2025 at about $2.89 trillion, an eleventh consecutive yearly rise. The Arms Transfers Database covers international sales of major weapons since 1950, and the SIPRI Yearbook, first published in 1969, gathers its work on armaments, conflict and disarmament.
More about Stockholm International Peace Research Institute41
International Crisis Group
Orientation: describes itself as independent and non-partisan; critics on the left have argued that it has consistently backed NATO's military interventions. Funding: a mix in which governments supplied 43 per cent, foundations 31 per cent and the private sector 22 per cent in 2018 to 2019; George Soros provided its seed money.
Founded in 1995 and based in Brussels, Crisis Group works on preventing and resolving deadly conflict, publishing reports with recommendations for governments and mediators. Its monthly CrisisWatch bulletin tracks both the risk of escalation and the openings for peace across the world's conflicts, which makes it a quick way to see where violence is rising. Comfort Ero has led it since December 2021.
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