Shanker Singham’s political access was vital to the trip’s success: he arranged for Carnuccio and Link to meet peers at the House of Lords and to be guests of honour at a parliamentary meeting of the ERG, where Carnuccio described addressing an approving crowd and watching the MPs count votes of no confidence in Theresa May.

Littlewood said: “In the room… it was pushing at totally open doors, because that wing of the government just utterly wants some positive noises from elsewhere on planet Earth.”

Singham arranged for then-Brexit minister Steve Baker – who resigned earlier this month alongside his boss David Davis in protest at the Chequers agreement – to meet the visitors at the IEA’s headquarters. He also took them to meetings with senior trade officials at the Foreign Office and Department for International Trade.

“I’m telling you, that dude has access,” Carnuccio said.

He compared Singham to George Clooney’s well-connected “fixer” character in the movie Michael Clayton: “Shanker is like that but for trade and economics and everything else, they all just seem to call him or want to talk to him to, like, figure out how to get things done.”

An aide to Baker said: “Any suggestion – or implication of the same – that Mr Baker would attend meetings because ‘access’ to him was being sold is entirely false.”

She added: “On the occasion you refer to, Mr Baker met US Republicans in his political capacity to discuss trade relations between the two countries.”

When Unearthed suggested the IEA had provided access for potential donors representing vested interests to the heart of government, an IEA spokeswoman said: “The better inference is that prospective donors and a fellow think tank see benefits and mutual interests in making the case for free markets and prosperity in which we all have a vested interest.”

Memorandum of Understanding

At the DIT, where Carnuccio and Link met with Oliver Griffiths, director of capability, they discovered “that department is looking for a state to do like a pilot programme with,” Carnuccio said.

Littlewood and Carnuccio discussed bringing Todd Lamb, a member of the E Foundation’s advisory council who was running to be Oklahoma’s governor, to the UK for a ceremony with trade secretary Liam Fox in which they would sign a memorandum of understanding, to be drafted by Singham.

“In fact, in the meeting at the Department of Trade, the guy from Trade that said we need to get an MOU started… he turned to Shanker and he said, ‘Can you help send us some language? Can you help put this together?’” Carnuccio said.

Littlewood told an undercover reporter: “We’ll get two governments to sign it. But go and ask Governor Lamb who’s writing it. Governor Lamb wants Singham’s draft, Fox wants Singham’s draft.”

He described the agreement as a template for the future US-UK trading relationship. “We can’t sign a trade deal, but we can sign the memorandum of understanding of what the trade deal will look like,” he explained. Agricultural regulations would be among the top priorities.

“It’s not legally binding… But that obviously has political force,” Littlewood said. He hoped other states would want MOUs of their own, creating pressure on Congress for a full free trade deal.

The plan, he explained, was to create the impression that other nations were queuing up to sign a free trade deal with the UK. “The big problem is the US saying, once you [the EU] and the UK have worked out what the fuck you’re doing, give us a call,” said Mark Littlewood, director-general of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA).

“And we’re saying no, no, no – you’ve got to come into this clusterfuck and say we want a deal… the nightmare is the rest of the world waits.”