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Turning Point UK

Turning Point UK (TPUK) is a British offshoot of Turning Point USA, set up to challenge left-wing political ideology which the organization perceives to be dominant in UK schools, colleges and universities.

Turning Point UK's chairman was George Farmer (fiancé of Candace Owens) until April 2019, and its CEO is Oliver (Ollie) Anisfeld (the son of Lance Forman, Brexit Party MEP for London since 2019). The group employs several staff.

The organization claims it has chapters at the universities of Sussex, Oxford, St Andrews, York, Warwick, Nottingham, King's College London, University College London, the London School of Economics and the University of the Arts London. Like Turning Point USA, it does not disclose the identities of its donors.

The group was launched in December 2018 by Kirk and Owens at the Royal Automobile Club in London. Among those attending the event were Andy Wigmore, Paul Joseph Watson, and James Delingpole. On the day of its social media launch in February 2019, MPs including Jacob Rees-Mogg and Priti Patel tweeted supportive messages for the organization, as did Nigel Farage while it was marked for criticism by others. and the launch of its Twitter account was accompanied by multiple parody accounts, along with a parody of the organization's website created by a ‘left-leaning student’ calling himself ‘Skeptical Seventh’. There was also a protest from the charity Turning Point over potential confusion caused by similarities between the two names.

Labour MP David Lammy has described Turning Point UK as evidence that “sinister forces are taking hold of our country” and that the Conservative Party “openly promotes hard-right, xenophobic bile”.

Dominique Samuels, one of the group's "Young Influencers", told the BBC during a radio interview that the UK branch would not set up the same controversial Professor Watchlist for which its US counterpart is known. The group hosts the TPUK Education Watch website, where students can submit examples of political bias in the education system. The site has been described by the University and College Union as having "the acrid whiff of McCarthyism about it" after it called for videos and photos of lecturers to be sent into it for publication. Turning Point rejected the accusation and said that any academic they featured would be given the right to reply and that unlike the US group the default would not be to name people although they reserved the right to do so.

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