Last month’s G20 meeting in London gave thinktanks of all shades plenty to mull over – both before the big day and in the obligatory post-match analysis.
The IPPR offered something of a pre-match appetiser, with a pamphlet gathering policy recommendations from 20 ‘progressive thinkers’ including Philippe Legrain, Geoff Mulgan and everyone’s favourite bearded leftie clergyman, the Archbishop of Canterbury.
‘Making it harder for foreigners to come to work in a country … is as short-sighted and pernicious as protectionism in trade, which G20 leaders rejected in Washington last November,’ wrote Legrain, who went on to warn that such ‘labour market protectionism’ would have dire consequences for both public services and struggling businesses.
Meanwhile, the Archbishop asked, with characteristic conciseness: ‘What international protocols are needed to guarantee a convergent sense of how environmental cost is to be reckoned? I suspect that getting this right would in itself introduce into the language of economics a sense that it couldn’t be only about the mechanics of generating money and might keep other issues in perspective.’
In an article for the Fabian Society immediately after the landmark summit, a former Danish prime minister noted ‘one big disappointment’. ‘The moves on IMF funding, tax havens, trade, toxic assets and financial regulation are real progress, but European conservatives, led by Sarkozy and Merkel, blocked what the world most urgently needs – a new stimulus to create job,’ wrote Poul Nyrup Rasmussen on the thinktank’s blog, NextLeft.
Not surprisingly, the Adam Smith Institute were less than impressed with the agreement hammered out at the Excel Centre. The ASI published a paper by City analyst Miles Saltiel, claiming the agreement’s fineprint contained ‘heroic hypocrisy, unreliable sums, weak promises, meaningless language and self-serving commitments’.
‘We have the suspicion that the G20 leaders are more concerned about their domestic weaknesses than their international responsibilities,’ Saltiel thundered. ‘This means that they turned up in London for the equivalent of a complicated photo-op …’
With the Ross/Brand controversy having died down somewhat (overshadowed by trivial events like the G20), newspapers were surely overdue a spot of BBC bashing. Luckily for them, the Centre for Policy Studies was on hand with a report criticising the corporation for being a ‘me-too broadcaster with a serial record of imitation’.
Martin Le Jeune, BSkyB’s former head of public affairs, called for the BBC’s remit to be reduced to cover only programmes not provided for by the market, a freeze of the license fee and the disposal of its assets.
The Sun, not generally known for its extensive coverage of thinktank reports, seized on the CPS’s latest offering with a report headlined ‘Parasite BBC’, gleefully telling how the corporation was branded a parasite ‘for blowing the license fee on copycat shows’.
Tanked up recently reported on the New Local Government Network’s attempts to engage with popular culture, calling for public spaces to be named after B-list celebrities chosen by ‘X factor’ style public votes. The latest thinktank to demonstrate it does not live in a bubble of policy reports and statistics is Reform who last month published a report sure to stir the interest of any Amy Winehouse fans with a keen interest in the public finances.
The report, entitled Back to Black, sets out how Britain can start to live within its means again by, for example, abolishing universal child benefit, cutting doctors’ pay and removing ‘pensioner gimmicks’ such as the winter fuel payment. Just the remedy to keep the country out of rehab? No, no, no…