Rodney Leach

(Charles Guy) Rodney Leach, Lord Leach of Fairford (born 1 June 1934), is an international banker and UK Life Peer. He is a director of Jardine Matheson Holdings Ltd and chairman of the Open Europe think tank.

Eurosceptic

Leach was non-executive chairman of the now defunct pressure group Business for Sterling and is non-executive Chairman of the Eurosceptic think-tank Open Europe which grew out of Business for Sterling. A number of Open Europe staff have been employed as House of Lords staff by the organisation's chairman Lord Leach. They include former director Neil O'Brien who went on to head Policy Exchange and is now special adviser to chancellor of the exchequer George Osborne, as well as researchers Lorraine Mullally and Mats Persson.

'Risk, Threat and Security'

Leach was a member of a private seminar series which met between May 2006 and January 2008 and produced an article in the RUSI Journal called 'Risk, Threat and Security: The Case of the United Kingdom'. The article expressed concerns that the 'politicisation' of defence policy and a national 'lack of confidence' made the UK vulnerable to security threats. It suggested therefore the partial removal of defence policy from democratic control.

In assessing the supposed security threats to the UK, the article expressed a concern that the country was ‘soft’ and lacked a cohesive identity which made it vulnerable to enemies. It complained of a ‘lack of leadership from the majority which in misplaced deference to ‘multiculturalism’ [has] failed to lay down the line to immigrant communities’.

Affiliations

• Open Europe - Advisory board member