Nevermind the Think-Tanks

Why the British right should be wary of outsourcing its thinking to Westminster wonks

May’s local elections reaffirmed the public’s decade-long rejection of the political establishment. The stage seems set for a radical right-wing party to sweep to power in 2029, a break with the orthodoxy that has seen the country tailspin into decline. Change is the order of the day.

Yet in SW1, the same old four or five think-tanks of the centre-right are jostling for influence over the policies of that future right-wing Government. In fact, they boast of their influence over previous governments to add credibility to the claim that they should be involved in the next. It’s telling that Policy Exchange is proud of the inclusion of its policy recommendations in the 2024 manifestos of the Tories, Labour, and the Lib Dems.

The ‘think-tank’ is an institution that comes into its own at the particular historical moment of the Thatcherite (and proto-Thatcherite) bid to separate the market function from political control. Whatever one’s interpretation of the economic legacy of such reforms in themselves might be, the ‘depoliticisation’ and separation of policymaking outside of a systematic political platform was an expediency of that period.

Events hosted by one of these think-tanks are the very essence of Westminster institutionalism; an MP and a Senior Fellow will introduce a glossy new report to an audience of ex-Tory MPs, journalists and staffers. Speeches will include the necessary buzzwords about the size of the state, judicial overreach, the speaker’s barely concealed fetish for a strict older woman, or, my favourite, ‘institutional sclerosis’ and are followed by clapping and house wine. The rhetoric often sounds radical, but the culture is not. Considering the ‘buyers’ of the product here are, without any offence intended, of that portly portion of a generation whose moment of glory was the popping of champagne bottles following Thatcher’s Big Bang, it should be of little surprise that the offerings share an approach that also belongs in 1983.

The notion that policies can be generated in a vacuum, from which ministers and parties can pick from a smorgasbord platter, has in recent years produced incoherent politics — as well as straightforwardly bad policy. Still, the demands on MPs’ time, fixing potholes and whatnot, mean that these institutions will play some role in defining the policies of the future; it is only fair that we reflect on the fruits of their involvement in the past.

In 2022, for instance, the then Chief Executive of Legatum Institute co-authored a report criticising the Rwanda policy and calling for asylum seekers to be granted the right to work after six months. Positions such as these are presumably the reason for their successful rebrand as the Prosperity Institute — now probably the most influential think-tank on the British right, especially with Reform.

A quick skim of Policy Exchange’s website shows their proud involvement in creating Police and Crime Commissioners, implementing Net Zero, and the adoption of a sugar tax. These were inarguably big state, expensive proposals by politicians who thought little of the consequences, and left the heavy lifting to the think-tank to find the correct market-friendly Pigouvian language to legitimise it.

The Centre for Social Justice, renowned for the simplification of the benefits system to Universal Credit, has a spending tilt with reports on Free School Meals, an entire report dedicated to ethnicity and disadvantage, and has previously called for an expansion of the ‘Race Disparity Unit’.

Only the Centre for Policy Studies was actually ahead of the curve on the damaging impact of Net Zero, but even their record is not perfect. In 2022, they published the Levelling Up and Zeroing In report, taking at least a hearty gulp of the Net Stupid Zero Kool-Aid.

The Institute for Economic Affairs and the Adam Smith Institute are still in the gloom due to their association with Liz Truss’ premiership, and it is clear from our seventy-year-high tax burden that their message of low tax, low regulation has sadly failed to cut through. The fatal impulse to generate a ‘dash for growth’ has possessed everyone from the right-wing think-tanker to the bruisers on X. We should remember that the incoherent combination of radical tax-slashing, in combination with proposals for a ‘workers’ rights bonfire’, open borders with India in exchange for minute reductions in tariffs, and the Truss government also deciding to subsidise household energy costs without cuts elsewhere — did produce a kind of ‘economic jet fuel’, assuming that the aeroplane in question was headed for the World Trade Center. Ultimately a failure of the politicians, yes, but this episode more than any other goes to show that the relationship of the policy infrastructure to political leadership needs a rethink, and far less sloganeering.

There are serious, thinking people at all of the above institutions, and most of the think-tanks in question have indeed done work of great value. Prosperity, in particular, has some very high-calibre individuals. Pimlico Journal is loath to admit that Fraser Nelson has ever been right about anything, but he was stating fact when he wrote that think-tanks will be essential to solving the problems this country is facing. But politicians should remember they are merely tools that exist within the closed Westminster circuit. They are limited by the paradigm of the day, the directions of their board and (most of them) by their charitable status which nominally means they can’t be political. A stark contrast to the American think-tank industrial complex, which is far more partisan and has far deeper pockets. The Heritage Foundation, for instance, is renowned for its revolving-door relationship with the Republican administration, the architects of Project 2025.

Reform UK is getting around this by bringing much of their thinking in-house and cherry-picking the brightest thinking talent to bring within their ranks: Amar Johal and James Graham, both formerly of the Prosperity Institute, Sam Ashworth-Hayes of The Telegraph, and, most recently, Karl Williams of the CPS. One charge levelled against Reform has been its lack of deep policy thinking. If there was truth in this, they are getting around it by bringing some of the best policy brains into their ranks — a mature approach that breaks with the stale orthodoxy of SW1.

The future holds even more exciting opportunities. Away from the ivory tower, a fragmenting media ecosystem creates new possibilities for experts to find the audience and necessary remuneration in actually shaping the political platform that will carry forward their technical aspirations. This free marketplace of ideas will enable the best to have a real opportunity to mould the future of the country.

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This article was written by Blaine de Gersey, a Pimlico Journal contributor. Have a pitch? Send it to submissions@pimlicojournal.co.uk.

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