Matthew Elliott was born and brought up in Leeds, England. He moved down to London in 1997 to study at the London School of Economics, where he graduated with a First class degree in Government. Whilst at the LSE, Matthew ran the LSE Hayek Society and worked for the European Foundation – Britain’s leading Eurorealist think-tank. After graduation, Matthew worked for a number of MPs and MEPs in the House of Commons and the European Parliament, before founding the TaxPayers’ Alliance (www.taxpayersalliance.com) in 2004 with Andrew Allum and Florence Heath.
Under his leadership, the TPA has grown to become "arguably the most influential pressure group in the country" according to The Guardian, with over 32,000 supporters and 15 full-time campaigners working from offices in London and Birmingham, attracting an average of 700 high-quality media hits every month. Matthew also recently founded Big Brother Watch (www.bigbrotherwatch.org.uk), a new civil and personal liberties campaign, and was listed (as 31st) in the Daily Telegraph's latest list of influential people on the centre right in the UK.
In 2006, the TPA won the ConservativeHome “One to Watch” award and in 2007 the Bumper Book of Government Waste was awarded the Sir Antony Fisher Memorial Award. In November 2007, Matthew was presented with the Conservative Way Forward ‘One of Us’ award by William Hague and in December the TPA won the Stockholm Network's prestigious Golden Umbrella award for Innovation. In 2008, the TPA was named 'Pressure Group of the Year' by the readers of Iain Dale's Diary and in March 2009 Tim Montgomerie of ConservativeHome described Matthew as “the best campaigner of his generation”.
Matthew has written four books on public spending: The Bumper Book of Government Waste (Harriman House, 2006); The Bumper Book of Government Waste 2008 (Harriman House, 2007); The Great European Rip-Off (Random House, 2009) and Fleeced! (Constable, 2009). In June 2007 Matthew was elected a Fellow of the RSA. Matthew is on the Advisory Council of the European Foundation, Freedom Week, the Young Briton’s Foundation and on the Advisory Committee of the New Culture Forum
