The three friends agreed to meet on Monday mornings, before 9am, at the Georgian townhouse in Mayfair where one of them worked for a right-wing think tank.

Steve Baker, one of the Conservatives’ most committed Eurosceptics, had just been appointed to a ministerial position in the Department for Exiting the European Union. Crawford Falconer, a former New Zealand trade official, was the new chief trade negotiator at the Department for International Trade. Both were now deeply embedded in the UK’s preparations for leaving the European Union.

The third man, their host, didn’t work for the government, but in a different way he was also heavily involved in the political maneuvering around Brexit.

Shanker Singham, a 48-year-old lawyer and free trade campaigner, had become one of the country’s most influential policy specialists in the two years since the EU referendum. As the director of economic policy at the Legatum Institute, he’d built such close links to the Eurosceptic Tories who made the political weather in Westminster that journalists referred to him as “the Brexiteers’ brain”. Environment secretary Michael Gove, one of the architects of the Leave victory, described him as probably the UK’s “leading expert on trade deals”.

Singham had been friends with Baker since the 2016 referendum; they met often to talk about trade and economics while Baker ran the European Research Group, an alliance of more than 70 die-hard Eurosceptic Tory backbenchers. And Singham had known Falconer for 18 years, dating back to Singham’s time as a lawyer and lobbyist in the US. Falconer had been on a panel of trade experts Singham set up at Legatum before he joined DIT. All three shared a fervent belief in free markets and a vision of Britain becoming the new guiding star for global trade outside the EU’s single market and customs union.

In the second half of last year, after Baker and Falconer joined the government, Singham continued to meet both men, BuzzFeed News has established. According to a source who is familiar with the arrangements, Singham saw Baker and Falconer numerous times over several months, outside of work hours, at the Legatum building in Mayfair. This was not disputed by any of the three men or Legatum when it was put to them by BuzzFeed News.

None of these meetings has been disclosed publicly until now.