Matthew Elliott

Matthew Jim Elliott, Baron Elliott of Mickle Fell, (born 12 February 1978), is a British political strategist and lobbyist who has served as the chief executive officer of a number of organisations and been involved in various referendum campaigns, including Vote Leave.

Elliott was the founder and has served as chief executive of the TaxPayers' Alliance in 2004, Big Brother Watch and Business for Britain.

He has also worked as a political strategist, acting as campaign director for the successful NOtoAV campaign in the 2011 Alternative Vote referendum. In 2015, Elliott became the chief executive of Vote Leave, the official organisation advocating for a 'leave' vote in the 2016 United Kingdom European Union membership referendum. He was described as "...one of the most successful political campaigners in Westminster today."

Personal life and education Elliott was born in Leeds on 12 February 1978. He was privately educated at Leeds Grammar School and graduated with a first-class BSc degree in government from the London School of Economics in 2000. He was the president of the LSESU Hayek Society.

Elliott has been described by the BBC as "one of the most effective lobbyists at Westminster", and in 2010 was named by Total Politics as one of the top 25 political influencers in the UK. In 2017 he was placed at number 85 in commentator Iain Dale's list of the "Top 100 Most Influential People on the Right".

Since 2014, Elliott has been married to Sarah Elliott , who became the chairwoman of Republicans Overseas UK in 2017. The couple have two daughters In an article for the New Statesman, Elliot said he attended a Conservative Friends of Russia reception in 2012 and a 10-day trip to the country, but claimed he had no further involvement." receiving 67.9% of the votes cast. He is credited with helping to turn public opinion against the alternative vote, from 2 to 1 in favour to 2 to 1 against. The large victory for the NOtoAV campaign led to Elliott being praised as "...one of the most successful political campaigners in Westminster today". Tim Montgomerie wrote that "At the moment, he's there at the very top of centre-right campaigners in Britain...He does all the things that a successful campaigner needs to do. He has message discipline, he takes opinion research incredibly seriously, he's intelligent and works hard.'

Vote Leave

In October 2015, Elliott became the chief executive of Vote Leave, a cross-party organisation formed to campaign for Brexit, the withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union. Vote Leave later became the official campaigning organisation for Brexit, after having been awarded the status by the Electoral Commission. The organisation managed to recruit the support of a number of high-profile politicians, including Conservative MPs Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, who became key figureheads.

Despite a widespread belief that the Vote Leave campaign was heading for defeat, nearly 52 per cent of those who voted, or 37 per cent of the electorate, voted to leave the EU in the 2016 Brexit referendum. Elliott was praised alongside Dominic Cummings, Vote Leave's campaign director, as being one of the key masterminds of the victorious campaign.

In July 2018, an investigation by the Electoral Commission accused Elliott's campaign of breaking UK electoral law, which Elliott denied. The High Court agreed in September 2018 that Elliott's campaign had broken the law, but ruled that the Electoral Commission had misinterpreted the electoral law in relation to Vote Leave in advice it gave.

In 2026, Elliott published a book on his work during the Brexit referendum campaign titled Ten Years On: The Untold Story of Brexit.

House of Lords Elliott was nominated by Liz Truss for a life peerage in her list of resignation honours. His nomination resulted in complaints to the House of Lords Appointments Commission over the funding of one of his pro-Brexit campaigns. He was created Baron Elliott of Mickle Fell, of Barwick-in-Elmet in the City of Leeds, on 6 February 2024.

In popular culture Elliott was portrayed by actor John Heffernan in the HBO- and Channel 4-produced drama, Brexit: The Uncivil War (2019).