The beta version of Companies House’s website looks like a godsend for Webcheck addicts. Here’s their file on Matthew “BadSpellers Alliance” Elliott, who has apparently been in favour of social mobility, arguably against it, in favour of British membership of the European Union, against it, opposed to identity cards but only after they were already certain to be abolished, and always twirling, twirling upwards towards the cash. Best of all, he’s been a director of the Yes Campaign and the No Campaign. At the same time. Perhaps he should open the Perhaps Institute or the Maybe Centre, and hedge with a profit-making consultancy, I’ll Get Back To You On That Ltd.
The question is surely what the organisations’ funders see in him. Perhaps they think he is some sort of American-style political consultant guru. But there is no evidence that any of this activity has had any impact on the real world at all, other than by keeping him in pies and off the streets for 10 years. It’s the documentary history of a shameless chancer. That said, American political consultants are pretty much the classic case of Peter Drucker’s remark that GURU is a word spelled C-H-A-R-L-A-T-A-N.
