More Thinking Required

Writing in the 28 August edition of the Local Government Chronicle, the London School of Economics academic, Tony Travers described how Britain's thinktanks have long understood the benefits of launching reports in August. He says that with stand-in newspaper editors desperate for stories, there is plenty of room for extensive coverage of the latest ideas from "wonk-land". This August was no exception with for example, the Institute for Public Policy Research trailing a forthcoming report about the benefits of migration to the UK economy and the New Local Government Network proposing the abandonment of the 2011 population census. Then last Saturday, there was a very interesting editorial in the Financial Times (see http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/d218dad2-762b-11dd-99ce-0000779fd18c.html), in which it was argued that Britain needs to improve its policy institutions by, "refuelling" its thinktanks. The FT argues that due to a lack of resources (compared to say the United States), the big UK thinktanks dedicate themselves to campaigning rather than to analysis. This results in the policy support available to UK politicians from outside government being rather weak. The FT says that this is a particular problem for opposition parties that do not have access to the civil service. Interestingly, the piece argues that it was no coincidence that Tony Blair's worst domestic policy decisions were taken before he took office, including dismantling the health service's internal market (not everyone would agree that this was a bad idea, of course!). All this poses a question about whether the thinktanks need to do some more thinking about themselves and the role that they play...