Following Labour’s disastrous performance in last month’s local and European elections, Demos published a collection of essays by an assortment of left-leaning academics, campaigners and journalists diagnosing the party’s problems and offering a prescription for how it can rejuvenate itself. What next for Labour? featured contributions from a number of thinktankers, including Fabian Society general secretary Sunder Katwala, Compass chair Neal Lawson, the IPPR’s co-directors Lisa Harker and Carey Oppenheim and Progress’ very own Jessica Asato.
A number of contributors waved the banner for constitutional reform as a way to overcome public disenchantment with politics and help Labour reconnect with the electorate. Katwala advised Gordon Brown to ‘legislate for fixed term parliaments as part of a broader constitutional reform agenda’ and to call a referendum on electoral reform, in which the government would support change. Asato also called for Labour to get behind electoral reform, saying that introducing proportional representation could force the party ‘to take citizens’ concerns seriously’. ‘Proportional representation would force politicians to be smarter, to listen harder and work to explain why democratic decisionmaking requires difficult choices,’ she argued. ‘Labour has spent far too much time trying to find an answer to every problem, rather than admitting to the public that politicians don’t have all the solutions.’
Lawson, meanwhile, wrote that calling for a referendum on change to a more proportional voting system ‘represents a perfect dividing line, between Labour who trust the people to decide and the Tories, who don’t.’
Thinktanks are often thorns in the side of the government, loudly urging more action here, a policy change there. However, one thinktank to buck this trend is the National Institute of Economic and Social Research whose announcement last month that there is light at the end of the recession tunnel will have secured its place on the No 10 Christmas card list for at least the rest of this parliament.
After a tumultuous week that saw a string of ministerial resignations and rumours of plots, the NIESR must have truly brightened the PM’s mood when it declared the UK economic slump at an end, with director Martin Weale declaring the recession over ‘as far as I can tell’. Based on manufacturing figures, the thinktank estimated that GDP had slumped at the end of March and started to rise in April and May.
Not surprisingly, No 10 seized on some much-needed good news, claiming the findings showed that the ‘sometimes controversial’ government action – such as the VAT cut and action to stabilise the banks – had started to take effect. Just in case the public thought this glimmer of good news had gone to the government’s head, they added the inevitable ‘there is no room for complacency’ line.
But just in case complacency had set in, several thinktanks were on hand to dish out a healthy dose of warning and criticism. Policy Exchange issued a report calling for the creation of an emergency budget straight after the next general election to curb burgeoning public spending. In particular, the Cameronite thinktank urged the government to cancel the spending increases earmarked for the 2009 budget.
The report’s author, Andrew Lilico, said: ‘It is much easier not to raise spending than it is to cut it later. If we just abandoned discretionary increases in consumption spending between this financial year and the financial year of April 2010/11 we would save £21.6bn.’
Meanwhile, the Adam Smith Institute issued a report ahead of the chancellor’s Mansion House speech questioning the prevailing orthodoxy regarding the cause of the financial crash, claiming it was not lack of regulation but the regulators themselves who were responsible.
‘Like MPs in the expenses scandal, the banks did not actually break any of the regulator’s rules,’ the report’s authors claimed. ‘But the rules were targeted on the wrong things, allowing a disaster to flare up under the regulators’ noses.’