It's common knowledge that "think tanks" play a part in forming government policy, but how large a part wasn't clear until recently.
There was a time when "think tanks" were seen as a useful method of exploring ideas and "out of the box" thinking. This was when they were still in their relative infancy (such as forty or fifty years ago), and their influence was slight. As they were, by their nature, peripheral bodies, they could easily be ignored. Think tanks were a "safe space" to explore unconventional ideas, where they would do no harm if they were shown to be mistaken. The lessons that were learned were learned in private and behind closed doors.
It could be said this changed when one think tank in particular, the Institute for Economic Affairs (IEA), began to seriously influence the thinking of the Conservative leader, Margaret Thatcher. Its thinking then went on guide large areas of her government's policy. It was not that the IEA controlled government policy, but Thatcher's thinking and its thinking overlapped to a large degree. The problem was that these ideas became self-reinforcing, and this thinking also led to massive structural change of Britain. Some of its "Libertarian" ideas were put into practice on the British population, in the form of deregulating and privatising large sections of the economy, as well as guiding some changes to social policy.
As "think tanks" are essentially used as vehicles of political agendas, its important to recognise that these institutions are, almost by definition, working to undermine the democratic process. At the very least, we can say that "think tanks" act to manipulate the political process in a way that in opaque and beyond the public eye. Whereas at one time they were seen as useful "intellectual laboratories" for political nerds, these days they have turned into an industry in their own right, thanks to the support of wealthy donors.
Where the likes of the IEA began, others have followed over the years. There is now a plethora of "think tanks" that seem to have some form of influence on the Conservative Party and its government; perhaps the most influential, thanks to Brexit, is the Legatum Institute.
An excellent analysis of this "think tank" looks into the people involved, their backgrounds, and their motivations. The government seems to have given this "think tank" the role of doing large areas of the government's thinking on Brexit for it. In large areas of policy regarding Brexit, the government seems to have deferred judgement to the Legatum Institute. In a sense, we can call this the "privatisation of government": in this case, it is government policy itself that looks to have been privatised.
A logical conclusion?
This is a logical conclusion of the "Libertarian" school of thinking that came from Thatcherism. After privatising industries and services, it then led to the selling-off of government services themselves. The IEA had a large influence behind the scenes as it mirrored Thatcher's own thinking, thus reinforcing her own prejudices. By the time David Cameron came to power, there was a "second wind" of Libertarian thinking: under the auspices of the austerity program, there were further roll-outs of contracts for government services to the private sector.
Here we see how any event is used as an excuse to further advance the Libertarian agenda. Back in the '70s, it was used as the answer to the economic problems of the times. By the '80s, they had successfully changed the structure of the economy through deregulation, which ultimately led to the financial crisis of 2008; the answer to this (self-inflicted) problem was even more of the same agenda, now under the excuse of "austerity".
The "Brexit Agenda" was yet another furthering of the same cause: by freeing Britain of the "shackles" of the EU, it would solve the problem of "austerity". All the money that was wasted on the EU could be re-channeled to Britain. The use of the "Brexit Agenda" to dominate the political narrative was even more brazen than its earlier Libertarian incarnations, as it came about through the use of an outside force (UKIP) that didn't even have any serious representation in parliament. In earlier times, events were used as an excuse to further their agenda; nowadays, the events themselves are brazenly manipulated to further their agenda, regardless of how this demeans the democratic process. Brexit didn't come about through a "popular uprising", but through the insidious seeping of an agenda into the political mainstream.
The Legatum Institute fits into this "agenda" neatly, as it espouses the same aim using the same fallacies: that the EU was the cause of Britain's problems, and deregulation from the EU's constraints would allow Britain to thrive. Of course, this narrative all suits the agenda of those espousing the narrative: the agenda, as some of its advocates have argued, is to turn Britain into an economy like Singapore's.
The situation we are at is where the agenda that serves a narrow segment of society also serves to "privatize" government itself: with the ultimate aim being where the private sector can effectively make government policy, beyond the public eye and without proper transparency. While this idea is nothing new, as "lobbying" has been a part of politics for an eternity, its logical conclusion is the "Brexit Agenda": where the private sector runs the government, in the manner of a hierarchical company where Britain's citizens are its "worker bees".
Where a properly-functional democracy is meant to fit into this, is unclear.
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