Our name – from the pivotal year of 878 AD – conveys the urgency of our own era. Britain and its closest allies are facing peril. But through the rediscovery of our culture, making the right choices, and finding the will to face down our philosophical and military adversaries, our shared civilisation will survive and thrive.
Now more than ever, it is incumbent on us all to rediscover and nurture the roots of our shared English-speaking civilisation in order to defend it.
At 878, we are renewing our Judeo-Christian culture and civilisational mission. Future leaders in Britain and America will need to appreciate the deepest roots of our political life and our freedoms. Working with scholars in Israel and other closely allied nations, we are rejuvenating knowledge of the origins of our constitutional tradition. We build friendships with our closest civilisational allies to restore both the fabric of our countries and the resolve of our future leadership.
878 Founding Directors
Dr Radomir Tylecote
As founding Managing Director of the Prosperity Institute (formerly Legatum Institute), Radomir brought American think tank methods to Britain, including pioneering in-house legislation drafting.
A former Special Adviser in Downing Street to the Brexit Governments of Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, Dr Tylecote has produced the most impactful works of every think tank at which he has worked.
At the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA), he co-authored and ran research for Plan A+: Creating a Prosperous Post-Brexit UK, Britain’s most publicised think-tank release, launched live on two TV channels and which “changed Brexit history” (The Telegraph).
Quoted by Boris Johnson in his first trade speech as Prime Minister, it formed the basis of Britain’s post-Brexit independent trade policy.
At Civitas, Radomir published Inadvertently Arming China?: The Chinese military complex and its potential exploitation of scientific research at UK universities, an investigation into British university funding by Chinese military-linked organisations which showed for the first time research outputs in military fields. Making international front-page news, the paper was the subject of a major BBC documentary.
This followed an MPhil at Cambridge and double-scholarship quant PhD at Imperial College London.
Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg
Rt Hon Sir Jacob Rees-Mogg is a British former politician and Cabinet Minister, and a celebrated broadcaster and businessman. He served as Secretary of State for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, as Minister of State for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency, and as Leader of the House of Commons in the Governments of Prime Ministers Boris Johnson and Liz Truss, from 2019 to 2022.
After graduating from Oxford he worked in the City of London and in Hong Kong for Lloyd George Management until 2007, when he co-founded the hedge-fund management business Somerset Capital Management LLP, scaling the firm to $10bn under management. He has a regular programme on GB News.
Advisory Board
Joshua Treviño
Joshua S. Treviño serves as the Chief Transformation Officer at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, in Austin, Texas; and as the Senior Director for the Western Hemisphere Initiative, the Senior Fellow for Europe, and Senior Advisor to the President at the America First Policy Institute in Washington, D.C. He is also a speechwriter and ghostwriter for a variety of high-level principals in government and public life, with a quarter-century of major speeches and a New York Times bestseller to his credit. In his roles, Treviño works on the U.S.-Mexico bilateral relationship with an emphasis on security, on the defense of Texas history, on U.S. strategy in the Western Hemisphere, and on the American relationship with Europe from the standpoints of both interest and civic sentiment.
Treviño’s work and bylines have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The Spectator, Engelsberg Ideas, National Review, The Critic, First Things, The American Mind, and elsewhere. He has addressed audiences in governmental and public forums in Washington, D.C., London, Mexico City, and Madrid, in both English and Spanish.
Treviño’s work and bylines have appeared in the Wall Street Journal, The Spectator, Engelsberg Ideas, National Review, The Critic, First Things, The American Mind, and elsewhere. He has addressed audiences in governmental and public forums in Washington, D.C., London, Mexico City, and Madrid, in both English and Spanish.
Dr Gudrun Kugler
Dr. Gudrun Kugler, MTS, majored in Law, European and International Law (University of Linz) as well as Theological Studies on Marriage and the Family (ITI). She holds a PhD in International Law. Since 2017, she has been serving as a Member of the Austrian Parliament for the Austrian People’s Party and is the human rights spokesperson and the spokesperson for International Development and Development Aid. With OSCE, she is the Vice-President of the Parliamentary Assembly and OSCE PA Special Representative on Demographic Change and Security.
Gudrun Kugler has published several books and was a visiting professor at the International Theological Institute for Studies on Marriage and the Family. Kugler is the founder of the Observatory on Intolerance against Christians. From 2001 to 2004 she worked as a director of World Youth Alliance – Europe, based in Brussels. Before her election to the Austrian parliament in 2017 Kugler was a member of Vienna’s Regional Parliament, to which she got elected by popular preferential vote. There she covered especially human rights, European affairs, and integration of refugees and migrants. She received several recognitions, most recently the Cross of Merit with Heraldic Shield of the Order of Merit “pro Merito Melitensi” of the Sovereign Military Order of Malta. Gudrun Kugler is married and has four children.
Sir Bill Cash CH
Sir Bill Cash CH is a distinguished British Conservative politician, constitutional lawyer, and one of the most influential figures in modern UK parliamentary history.
Qualified as a solicitor, Sir Bill has practised constitutional and parliamentary law since 1967. He has advised successive United Kingdom governments, as well as governments across the Commonwealth, on complex constitutional and legislative matters. He also served as Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs and Shadow Attorney General.
Qualified as a solicitor, Sir Bill has practised constitutional and parliamentary law since 1967. He has advised successive United Kingdom governments, as well as governments across the Commonwealth, on complex constitutional and legislative matters. He also served as Shadow Secretary of State for Constitutional Affairs and Shadow Attorney General.
Throughout his parliamentary career, Sir Bill chaired the House of Commons European Scrutiny Committee for 15 years and served on it for 40 years. He earned a reputation as a formidable defender of parliamentary sovereignty and constitutional principle. A leading campaigner for Brexit, he played a central role in opposing successive EU treaties and in securing key constitutional protections during the UK’s withdrawal from the European Union, most notably Section 38 of the European Union (Withdrawal Agreement) Act 2020.
He was the leader of the Maastricht Rebellion, which included the Referendum Campaign. Alongside his Parliamentary career, he founded and chaired the European Foundation in 1993, delivering analysis, arguments and research on the constitutional questions of the EU-UK relationship.
After retiring from Parliament, Sir Bill remains actively engaged in constitutional affairs as founder and Chairman of the United Kingdom Sovereignty Foundation. He continues to provide expert insight on issues of sovereignty, self-government, democracy, and the rule of law.
Dr Ofir Haivry
Dr. Ofir Haivry is the Vice President of the Herzl Institute of Jerusalem. He is also the Chairman of the Working Group on Conservatism in Europe, a founding Board Member of the Edmund Burke Foundation of Washington DC and a Member of Israel’s Council for Higher Education. Between 2022-2026 he was a Visiting Fellow at the Danube Institute of Budapest.
He is a historian of political thought, that has published books and articles with the Cambridge University Press, Oxford University Press and Columbia University Press, as well as many articles in various journals and magazines in Europe, the US and Israel.
Haivry is author of John Selden and the Western Political Tradition (CUP, 2017). His current research project looks at the biblical foundations of the English legal and constitutional tradition.
Baroness Claire Fox
Adviser with special responsibility for freedom of speech and belief.
Director, Academy of Ideas; independent peer, House of Lords; author, I STILL Find That Offensive!
Claire Fox is the director of the Academy of Ideas, which she established to create a public space where ideas can be contested without constraint. She convenes the yearly Battle of Ideas festival and initiated the Debating Matters Competition for sixth-formers. She also co-founded a residential summer school, The Academy, with the aim of demonstrating “university as it should be”.
In May 2019, she was elected as an MEP for the North West England constituency of the UK in the European Parliament elections. In 2020, she was made a visiting professor in professional practice at the University of Buckingham. In September 2020, Claire became a member of the House of Lords as Baroness Fox of Buckley.
Claire is often invited to comment on developments in culture, education, media and free speech issues on TV and radio programmes in the UK such as the BBC’s Newsnight, Politics Live and Any Questions?, as well as being a frequent guest on Times Radio, Talk TV and GB News. She has been a regular newspaper reviewer on Sky News and is a monthly columnist for MJ (Municipal Journal). She was the longest-standing panellist on BBC Radio 4’s The Moral Maze for over twenty years until 2020. She is author of a book on free speech, recently republished as I STILL Find That Offensive! (Biteback, 2018), and No Strings Attached! Why arts funding should say no to instrumentalism (Arts&Business, 2007). She has written a variety of chapters and essays for a range of publications, most recently “Narcissism and Identity” in From Self to Selfie: A Critique of Contemporary Forms of Alienation (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019).