ConservativeHome's ToryDiary

Centre for Social Justice wins Think Tank Publication of the Year

Prospect Magazine has awarded the Centre for Social Justice's “Breakthrough Britain report" ("Ending the costs of social breakdown”).  The report published last year won the Magazine's Publication of the Year Award.  The Royal United Services Institution won the overall think tank of the year award with the IFS the runner up.  Iain Duncan Smith accepted the award on behalf of the CSJ, which he founded in 2003, from George Osborne.

IDS has written for today's Times about the consequences of a recession for indebtedness and of indebtedness for family breakdown.  The article is here and reproduced below is the accompanying graphic (click on the graphic to enlarge):

Neil O'Brien is new Director of Policy Exchange

Congratulations to Neil O'Brien, currently running Open Europe, for being appointed the new Director of Policy Exchange.

Neil replaces Anthony Browne, who is off to work for Boris Johnson.

It's a great appointment.  Neil brings considerable intellectual and communication skills to the job.  (And, by way of an aside, as a child of Huddersfield he will be northern-friendly!).

PX is in a strong position - financially and staff-wise.  It recently appointed, for example, the very able James Bethell as Head of Communications, for example.  Its challenge is to retain strong links with the party but to be more independent-of-mind, particularly on economic policy.  The decline of the IEA has left the Conservative Party without adequate input on competitiveness issues.  As a centre right think tank, the plight of the UK economy should be at the top of Neil's in-tray.

'David Cameron's favourite think tank'

ConHome's Tim Montgomerie has worried about this before but it's been obvious for some time that Policy Exchange and the Conservative Party had grown too close. Both are at fault but PX itself needs to take the lion's share of the blame. Outgoing PX Director Anthony Browne (outgoing because he's off to join a host of other ex-PXers working for the Tories) cultivated the idea that they were 'David Cameron's favourite think tank' - at least once suppressing material that could be uncomfortable for the party.  A recent analysis of their press coverage revealed that one of their top reasons for press mentions was their (genuine) closeness to Team Cameron.

The Tory leadership will be reconsidering the benefits of having a 'favourite think tank' when they survey this morning's (unthinking) press cuttings...

The press cuttings refer to a report edited by PX's Oliver Marc Hartwich on the difficulties of government policies that attempt to thwart profound changes in the geographical balance of the UK economy.  It's a thoughtful report (debated over at CentreRight) and exactly the sort of report that PX should be publishing.  But Chris Grayling had to disown it this morning - concerned to avoid the report overshadowing David Cameron's tour of nine marginal northern seats, beginning today.

As PX Chairman Charles Moore considers who should replace Anthony Browne he should think of appointing someone who has no ambitions to be a Tory MP or a Tory adviser.  He needs someone of independent mind and someone who will be happy working at Policy Exchange for a number of years to come.  If rumoured applicants like James Bethell, Camilla Cavendish or Alice Thomson fit that bill, all well and good.  Mr Moore also needs to find someone to replace Chief Economist Dr Hartwich.  Graeme Leach, Chief Economist at the IoD, would be perfect.  Economic issues are back in spades and Mr Leach would provide the kind of challenging advice that the Tories need to hear.

None of this is to say that PX isn't a successful think tank.  It is.  PX's research on school choice, housing and Islamic extremism has added handsomely to the public square.  But they must not be tempted to follow the model of the IPPR.  The IPPR enjoyed incredible access to Labour ministers during the Blair years but many suspected that their advice was conditioned by needing to maintain that access.   Britain's challenges are too considerable for a less-than-frank conversation between the Conservative Party and centre right thinkers.

Anthony Browne leaves Policy Exchange to become Boris Johnson's Policy Director

Anthony Browne, Director of Policy Exchange for just eighteen months, is to step down and become Head of Policy for Boris Johnson.  During his time at PX there was a doubling of staff numbers but a concern that the think tank became too close to Project Cameron.

Boris Johnson has issued this statement:

"I am delighted that Anthony is joining my team at City Hall. As a policy expert in the fields of environment, health and politics for the influential Policy Exchange and a former journalist on the Times and Observer, I am sure Anthony will be a valuable asset in helping to shape London's future over the next four years".

And this from Anthony Browne himself:

“It is a real wrench to leave Policy Exchange, but the opportunity to develop policy for the first Conservative administration in London for over a quarter of a century was irresistible. I have lived in London for twenty years, and loved its extraordinary vibrancy and diversity from the day I moved here. It is the world’s greatest city, but we need to make sure that all Londoners can be part of its success. It is unacceptable that one of the world’s most affluent cities has such high unemployment, and such deep pockets of deprivation. I look forward to helping ensure that all Londoners are equipped to take advantage of the amazing opportunities it offers, and to help make London more liveable for all Londoners. I can think of no higher calling than trying to make the city I love more loveable for all who reside in it.”

Anthony Browne will be a real boost to Boris' office.  He is a considerable talent but in searching for his successor we'd like to re-emphasise these words from Tim Montgomerie in a recent piece for Comment is free: "PX's director Anthony Browne appeared on the Today programme a couple of weeks ago and sounded like a Tory Treasury spokesman. He peddled the modernisers' myth that tax cuts had lost the last few elections and wouldn't be potent now. Times have moved on, and PX will lose some of its usefulness to the party if it simply echoes the party line."

Policy Exchange recently lost its excellent Chief Economist, Dr Oliver Marc Hartwich, to Australia's Centre for Independent Studies.  Portland PR's respected James Bethell has replaced Steven King as Head of Communications.

Bullseye!

We've just read THE best indictment of the Labour years.

The Centre for Policy Studies is relaunching its pamphlets this week with a new bullesye-style logo and an old-fashioned colour style that reminds us of those great Penguin paperbacks.

The first in the new series of pamphlets is written by Lord (Maurice) Saatchi.  Written in the style of a prosecuting barrister it makes the case that Labour has acted as the 'Enemy of the People' over the last ten years:

"The People charge New Labour on seven Counts:

• Conspiracy to make citizens dependent on the State.
• Conspiracy to force citizens to claim benefits to pay higher taxes.
• Incitement of poor people to pay more tax than rich people.
• Solicitation of multiple tax revenues by stealth.
• Attempt to obstruct the right of citizens to independence.
• Conspiracy to mesmerize and anaesthetise citizens.
• Attempt to conceal their true status as an enemy of the people.

On all Counts, the defendants are found: Guilty."

It will formally be published on Wednesday - when we'll publish key extracts.  You'll be able to get a copy from the CPS website then.  You won't be disappointed.

Campaigner of the Year: MigrationWatch

Today we reveal the latest winner of the 2007/08 conservative movement awards - as voted for by more than 8,000 readers.  The winner of the Campaigner of the Year is MigrationWatch.  Runners up were the TaxPayers' Alliance and No2ID.

Sir Andrew Green, Chairman of MigrationWatch, sent us this statement:

"As a voluntary organisation, we are much encouraged to receive this vote of confidence from your members.   It is perhaps no accident that it coincides with some recent hostility from certain sections of the press as will be apparent from our web site."

MigrationWatch do not have quite the press exposure of the TaxPayers' Alliance but the issue of immigration often scores higher in polls of most important issues to voters.  Most parties are now looking to implement tougher migration policies.  No party is offering serious tax relief.  In the years ahead the work of the TaxPayers' Alliance is going to be very important.

You were right: The TaxPayers' Alliance were the 'one to watch'

Last year ConservativeHome readers voted The TaxPayers' Alliance the 'One To Watch' in the first Conservative Movement Awards.  It's certainly been a good year for the TPA.  Its long campaign for the abolition of inheritance tax has been taken up to a large extent by the Conservatives (and to a lesser extent by Labour).  Last night - at the Stockholm Network's Golden Umbrella awards - the TPA won the Innovator of the Year accolade.  An analysis of media hits for September, October and November 2007 (based on a UK search of Factiva) also suggests that the TPA is top of the London think tank league although media hits is only one (probably over-rated) measure of a think tank's impact.

All of the major centre right think tanks' media hits are listed in the graphic on the right.

The TPA achieved 133 media hits (not broadcast media) in November.  That compares with the 341 for George Osborne, 165 for William Hague and the 125 for Michael Gove in Iain Dale's 'Media Tarts' list.

George Eustice likely to manage party's relations with conservative coalition

George Eustice is to stop being the Leader's Press Secretary from the end of the month.  He's going to take a two month sabbatical - to read some books, not newspapers - and will then probably return to a part-time position at CCHQ in the new year.  If he does return it will be to coordinate David Cameron's relations with the conservative family of think tanks, campaigning groups and websites/ blogs.  George is, I understand, also hoping to stand for Parliament and cannot do that and continue to handle press for the leader.

I hope George does undertake this coalition role.  It was one of the ten ideas proposed by Donal Blaney earlier this month:

"As the conservative movement in Britain grows at an impressive rate, Team Cameron likewise need to ensure that the members of the conservative movement, and in particular its leaders, are kept in the loop and feel they have a channel of communication to the Party leadership. The appointment of someone with a role similar to Tim Goeglein at the White House (who is in charge of White House relations with the conservative coalition) will help ensure the broader conservative movement remains if not wholly on side then at least broadly on side, thereby avoiding future misunderstandings and rows."

On a personal note I'd like to record my own little tribute to George.  ConservativeHome hasn't always been 100% helpful (!) but he's always been courteous to me and a pleasure to deal with.  I travelled down from Blackpool with him after this year's Conference - the BBC's Nick Robinson was also with us - and, licence feepayers, party donors, CH mug purchasers, take note - we were all in the second class carriage.  I hope he takes up this coalition manager role.  His experience at the 'No campaign'  and his closeness to David Cameron makes him ideal for the job.  In my two months as chief aide to IDS, when he was leader, I identified such a role as a priority task.  It would be great to see it finally happen...

Jill Kirby, champion of marriage and lower taxation, is new Director of Centre for Policy Studies

One of the most interesting weekend stories appeared in Saturday's Telegraph.  In yet another example of Copycat Labour we learnt that Chief Secretary to the Treasury Andy Burnham conceded that there were moral arguments for using the tax system to encourage marriage.  Had he cleared this with Harriet Harman, I wonder?  The feminist Ms Harman has attacked David Cameron's support for marriage as 'back to basics in a open necked shirt'.

If Mr Burnham is genuine it is hugely to be welcomed.  The evidence for the importance of marriage for the upbringing of children is overwhelming and a cross-party consensus in favour of rebuilding the family would be very valuable for child welfare and for the war on poverty.

There are many people who can be credited for making marriage fashionable again within policy circles.  Guy Hordern of the Renewing One Nation project (2000 to 2003) is one person who has campaigned on these issues for at least twenty years.  Dr Samantha Callan, who chaired Iain Duncan Smith's family policy taskforce, is another.  One of the first and most effective champions was Jill Kirby (pictured).  Jill has authored a number of papers for the Centre for Policy Studies that have set out the case for rebuilding the two parent family and marriage, in particular.  Her Broken Hearts paper (pdf) was, perhaps, the breakthrough publication.  Over the last six years Jill Kirby has chaired the CPS' working party on social and family policy.  She was also a member of Lord Forsyth's Tax Reform Commission.

The CPS, founded by Margaret Thatcher and Keith Joseph in 1974, has announced that Jill Kirby is to replace Ruth Lea as its Director when Ruth steps down on 5th November.  Ruth, will stay as a CPS Board Member, but will focus upon developing Global Vision - the campaigning think tank established earlier this year to advocate a looser UK-EU relationship.  Jill has promised to defend the CPS' principles and contend for a Britain where the frontiers of the state are rolled back and families enjoy more control over their own lives.  I regard Jill as a friend and am personally thrilled at her appointment.  I have no doubt that she'll be a very successful and innovative Director.

On Friday ConservativeHome set out some of the challenges facing centre right think tanks.

Is the centre right really winning the battle of ideas?

There is growing awareness that the right is fighting back in the battle of ideas.  On Tuesday ConservativeHome highlighted the extent to which Labour has been copying Tory ideas.  Alistair Darling was correctly dubbed 'Mr Magpie' after his pre-Budget statement.  As David Cameron said at yesterday's PMQs, the Conservatives are beginning to look like the future and Gordon Brown is certainly looking like the past.  Waiting for him to unpack his vision is proving to be a very long wait indeed.  This week's Economist concludes that the Conservatives are looking like the party of optimism and aspiration.

It's important that we don't get carried away, however.  George Osborne may have forced Darling-Brown into one very welcome £1bn tax cut but the Shadow Chancellor has committed the Conservatives to match a £37bn real increase* in public spending.  A three year increase that is being financed by a massive underlying increase in stealthy taxation.  Mr Osborne had more or less given up arguing for the dynamic effects of lower taxation.  Will he revisit that decision?  Unlikely.  Things are beginning to tilt back our way but only after a prolonged slide in the other direction.

Across the world most conservative/ centre right parties are embracing bigger government but it's not all bad news.  American conservatives can claim welfare reform and zero tolerance policing as two huge victories for the centre right and for the idea that the right is now the true home of progress.  [Britain still needs to import both of those ideas.]  I also am hopeful that - when it comes to the environment - the centre right belief in technological solutions will eventually trump tax-and-control greenery.

In this context it's worth considering the health of Britain's centre right think tanks.  Prospect Magazine has just announced that the left-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research is its 2007 think tank of the year.  The second time that the IPPR has won the award.  Last year's winner was the right-leaning Policy Exchange.  Another leftist think tank - the Centre for European Reform - won this year's international award.   Prospect gave its bias away, however, when David Walker, the chair of its judging panel, described CER as "an island of sobriety in the midst of Eurosceptic froth"!

I'm biased (I helped found the CSJ) but I'm disappointed that the Centre for Social Justice wasn't even shortlisted by Prospect.  It has grown very fast since its launch in 2004 and has just produced the incredibly impressive Breakthrough Britain report.  Its recommended solutions to poverty have become a central feature of Project Cameron and I predict that many of BB's 188 policy ideas will be snatched by the many Magpies on the Labour frontbenches before too long.  [It won't be the first time].  The TaxPayers' Alliance should also have been a leading candidate for the award.  Its campaigns have helped to make lower taxation fashionable again.  Guido gives the TPA's Matthew Elliott credit for highlighting the unpopularity of IHT and for making a deep impression on the Shadow Treasury Team.  And, internationally, why the CER?  Open Europe's powerful campaigning for a referendum has surely been more impactful?

In his remarks to the Prospect awards event, David Walker challenged some of the centre right think tanks to band together.  He suggested the "policy impact" might be greater if they achieved "critical mass".  I think that's worth reflecting upon.  There are too many centre right think tanks/ campaigning organisations.  They all have to fund separate secretarial budgets.  They don't enjoy any economies of scale on fundraising, web strategy or premises.  If there was some consolidation there might be more scope for investment in empirical research.  One leading member of the shadow cabinet told me that the current centre right think tank scene needed to radically increase its investment in such research.  There have been attempts at consolidation in recent years but they came to nothing when the discussions were at executive level.  It will probably take a push from donors to force the issue.  It may be time to dedicate a little more time to the organisation of centre right thinking.  It may be time to rethink how think tanks engage with the public square.  Watch this space!

* UK public spending will be £626bn by 2010/11 compared to £589bn in 2007/08 (in 2007/08 prices).

11.15am: Danny Finkelstein has come to George Osborne's defence on spending here.

Do we really need another Eurosceptic pressure group?

Ruth Lea has written for this morning's Sun about the launch of Global Vision - "a campaign group calling for a new approach to Britain's relationship with Europe."  A leader in The Sun certainly gives Global Vision's aims a warm welcome:

"Instead of an “ever closer union” demanded by Euro-fanatics, Britain needs an “ever LOOSER union” so that we can continue to prosper and grow without the dead hand of Brussels round our necks."

Ruth Lea's article makes a convincing case for a "more modern relationship" with Europe - with less British subsidy of the Brussels superstate and less entanglement with its regulatory web but I'm not convinced she is adding anything new to the debate.  We already have the Bruges Group, the Better Off Out campaign working with elected officials and political activists, there's Bill Cash's European Foundation and, for intellectual leadership and with a record of running good campaigns, we have Open Europe.  I'll stop there.  We all know that there are a number of other Eurosceptic groups.  When I first heard of Ruth Lea's initiative - some months ago - I had understood that it was going to be a cross-party campaign for leaving the EU altogether.  It has backtracked from that and is now looking a lot more like Open Europe.

I'll wait and see what Global Vision becomes (can't yet find a website for it) and where it chooses to sit on the Eurosceptic spectrum.  I certainly hope that it doesn't become another worthy think tank churning out research papers.  If there is a weakness within Britain's conservative movement it is that there are too many think tanks and not enough campaigning organisations.  If Global Vision is to succeed it must be more like the TaxPayers' Alliance and less like the Centre for Policy Studies (the directorship of which is Ms Lea's day job).

Related link: The growth of right thinking

The growth of right thinking

Anthony Browne paints a portrait of Britain's centre right think tanks in a double-page feature in this morning's Times.  Mr Browne focuses on the monthly breakfast gatherings of these think tanks which take place under the chairmanship of Open Europe's Neil O'Brien.

The Times' analysis shows a marked increase in media interest in the output of the right-leaning think tanks.  The rise of the TaxPayers' Alliance is particularly dramatic.  The organisation created by Matthew Elliott has gone from just 60 media mentions in 2004 to 529 mentions last year.

Media mentions are not always the best way of measuring influence, however.  The TaxPayers' Alliance may be the media's favourite go-to-organisation but Policy Exchange probably has most influence on the Tory leadership.  Its approach to housing policy and public service reform is almost indistinguishable from that favoured by David Cameron and it was no accident of timing that it published polling on the attitudes of young British Muslims on the very same day that David Cameron made his speech on Islamic extremism.  In terms of influence on Project Cameron there is one think tank that is conspicuous by its absence from The Times' feature: the Centre for Social Justice.  The compassionate conservatism campaigning organisation - founded by Iain Duncan Smith and overseen by Philippa Stroud with unrivalled links to Britain's best poverty-fighters - rivals Policy Exchange in terms of setting the agenda for Project Cameron.

The article rightly notes the ways in which the think tanks are becoming more than think tanks.  It spotlights the rise of 18DoughtyStreet.com, for example, and its new weekly political commercials that are attempting to popularise the issues being championed by the Westminster think tanks.  This week's video on tax was the first product of 18DoughtyStreet's co-operation with the community of think tanks.  The right's dominance of Britain's political blogosphere is also remarkable.

Missing from the article is much sense of the differences between the centre right think tanks and Project Cameron.  Civitas, for example, has criticised the illiberal attitude to religious freedom evidenced by the Government's treatment of the Catholic Church (treatment shared by David Cameron).  Reform are much keener on overhaul of the public services than Messrs Willetts and Lansley.  The Social Affairs Unit takes a much more hawkish approach to the war on terror.  MigrationWatch is much more sceptical about the benefits of immigration.  The Centre for Policy Studies does not share the Tory leadership's view on tax, academic selection or Kyoto.  And, as far as ConservativeHome understands, Shadow Chancellor George Osborne has quite extraordinarily never once met the TaxPayers' Alliance.

18DoughtyStreet's CentreRight.com provides daily links to the best of London's think tank community.