John Mills (businessman)

Mills is a supporter and major donor to the Labour Party.[7] He served as a councillor for the party in the London Borough of Camden for most of the period between 1971 and 2006. During his tenure on Camden council, he held a number of political appointments; including Deputy Chairman of the London Docklands Corporation, Chair of the Housing Committee at the Association of Metropolitan Authorities and the London Boroughs Association, and Chair of both the Housing and Finance Committees of the London Borough of Camden.[12][7]

Mills contested Chipping Barnet at both general elections in February and October 1974, but was defeated both times by the Conservative former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Reginald Maudling. He was also a Labour candidate in the 1979 European Parliamentary election.[6][13]

In 2013, Mills donated £1,650,000 to the Labour Party in JML shares, making him the party's biggest financial donor.[7]

A life-long Eurosceptic, Mills has been the Secretary of the Labour Euro-Safeguards Campaign since 1975. Mills has served on the board of various Eurosceptic lobby groups. In the lead up to the 2016 referendum on the UK's membership of the European Union, Mills was Chair of The People's Pledge, Co-Chairman of Business for Britain and Chair of Labour for a Referendum. He is the Vice Chair of the Economic Research Council and founder of Labour Future.[14][15]

During the referendum, he served as the Chair and then Vice Chair of Vote Leave, the official designated campaign group for Britain to exit the European Union. In April 2016, Mills left Vote Leave to run Labour Leave which campaigned among left of centre voters for Brexit.[16]

In July 2018, he resigned from Labour Leave, Labour Future, The Pound Campaign, Business for Brexit, and Labour for Britain, to comply with Ofcom requirements and to avoid any conflict of interest through also running a TV shopping channel.[17][6]

Mills is also an economist and author. He is a noted campaigner for a managed exchange rate policy, which sees sterling at parity with the dollar. He believes that reindustrialisation could increase the UK's economic growth rate by up to 2% per annum.[6]

Mills has published a series of books on economics, exchange rate policy, the Eurozone, and manufacturing, subjects on which he also blogs. His published books include A Critical History of Economics, Managing the World Economy, and Britain’s Achilles Heel.[18] In September 2020, Mills published The Elephant in the Room, a book on why Britain needs to rebalance its economy after 40 years of deindustrialisation.[19]

In 2018, Mills launched the IPPR Economic Prize, which was run by the Institute for Public Policy Research. The prize awarded £100,000 for the best proposal to increase UK economic growth. Mills sat on the judging panel alongside Stephanie Flanders, John Eatwell, and Dame Helena Morrissey DBE.[20]

In May 2020, Mills, in his own capacity, launched the John Mills Institute for Prosperity. The Institute seeks to provide policymakers with fresh ideas for economic growth. It launched with a report into how Britain can recover from the impact of COVID-19 through a manufacturing revival.[2]