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Common Purpose UK is an independent not for profit organisation that runs leadership development programmes across the UK.
About Common Purpose
Common Purpose was founded in 1989 by current CEO, Julia Middleton, a published author and expert on leadership.
It claims its aim is to improve the way organisations and society work together by developing all kinds of leaders through a programme of diverse challenges and approaches.
Criticism
Common Purpose has been the subject of a series of publications circulated by writer Christopher Story, a former adviser to Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and Eurosceptic Brian Gerrish, who claim that its aim is to control the United Kingdom and ultimately merge it into an EU police state. Gerrish has stated that Common Purpose is a part of a grouping that wants ultimately “to kill you”. Similar criticism of the organisation has come from the British National Party, largely on Euro-sceptic grounds.
Common Purpose has also, free of charge, been allowed to base its staff inside a British government departments, and Conservative MP Phillip Davies has criticised it for attempting to obscure its purpose and methods.