By Dale Bassett, Senior Researcher, Reform
Last night Patrick Nolan and I had great fun at the sold-out Southbank Centre “Think Tank Clash”, organised by New Deal of the Mind. Eight leading think tanks from left and right came together to debate some of the key issues of the day in a very enjoyable evening hosted by Rory Bremner (who warmed up by treating the speakers to his own take on the Chilcot Inquiry in the green room beforehand).
The organisers deserve great credit for creating a different type of event with punchy debate and a genuine clash of ideas, even if I can’t help thinking that the audience weren’t entirely representative of the views of the population at large!
The four debates were fascinating, although not perhaps entirely focused on the needs of the policy debate at this moment. Jessica Asato of Progress tried valiantly but failed to win over Phillip Blond’s enthusiasm for Red Toryism. Matthew Taylor and Richard Reeves had an absorbing if abstract debate on the importance of character versus social networks, while Policy Exchange’s Andrew Lilico and the IEA’s Philip Booth took on Carey Oppenheim of the IPPR on the great question of market versus state.
The Reform team was fortunate enough to have perhaps the most topical debate of the night, arguing against Sunder Katwala of the Fabians and the Telegraph’s Mary Riddell on the topic of universal welfare. Patrick and I set out the case against, citing our research which shows that universal benefits effectively create an unaffordable £31 billion subsidy for the middle classes. But Sunder and Mary won the audience round with the appealing idea that we can “have it all”, with higher taxes and higher benefits ensuring no-one gets left behind.
The format – pitching left against right in each of the four debates with the (generally left-leaning) winners going through to a final debate on the economy – meant that the latter part of the evening was dominated by a discussion not entirely rooted in the fiscal reality facing the country today. To their credit, Phillip Blond argued for cuts to the health and education budgets and Matthew Taylor called for “mature” citizens to realise that they can’t in fact have it all. Judging by the audience’s votes, though, we still have work to do to get that message through.
