Dean Aaron Godson, Baron Godson (born 26 August 1962) is the Director of the London-based think tank Policy Exchange. In 2016, the Evening Standard named Godson one of London's most influential people, saying: "Fiercely bright Godson, formerly chief leader writer at the Daily Telegraph, has been described as Britain's acknowledged expert on the problem of social cohesion." Commentator Iain Dale also named Godson as one of the 100 most influential people on the right of British politics, in his annual rankings in 2016, 2017 and 2018. Dale also described Policy Exchange, in a February 2020 article, as "the pre-eminent think tank in the Westminster village". Origins Godson is the younger of the two sons of Joseph ("Joe") Godson (1913–1986), a Polish-born Jewish-American diplomat who gained a law degree at New York University in 1940, and had been a Marxist in his early years later joining the Lovestoneites (adherents of Jay Lovestone) "that brave group of Americans who continued to search for a workable, democratic form of Marxism until the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 made them dissolve their organization in despair". Joe subsequently served as labour attaché at the American Embassy in Ottawa (to 1952) and in London (1953–59), where he became a close friend of Hugh Gaitskell, leader of the Labour Party 1955–63, whom he assisted in his battle against the left-wing tendency of the party. Joe was also a friend of the prominent Labour Party and trade union figures Harold Wilson, George Brown, Arthur Deakin and Frank Chapple. Joe then served as a first secretary in Belgrade, Yugoslavia (1959–61), as consul general in Zagreb (to 1964) and in Edinburgh (1968–71). Joseph Godson also served as Foreign Service Officer and European Co-ordinator of the Center for Strategic and International Studies at Georgetown University in Washington, D.C. In 1976, during his retirement spent in London, Joe established the Labour Committee for Transatlantic Understanding, funded by NATO, now the Trade Union Committee for European and Transatlantic Understanding (TUCETU), a "direct expression of American influence within the wider British labour movement" which influenced many in Tony Blair's largely pro-American New Labour circle. Godson was suspected by many in the UK Labour movement to be a CIA operative, and "although there were rumours in London during the 1950s that a CIA officer was operating under cover as a Labour attaché", Hugh Wilford concludes there is "no evidence that Godson was a CIA officer". The