February ushered in the eagerly awaited ‘thinktank clash’ hosted by the Southbank Centre. It is an unlikely commercial concept – get six wonks on a stage to beat the crap out of each other (with lines from their pamphlets) and see if the public will pay for it. I was a contender in the first one held in 2010, and I kid you not, the Purcell Room was sold out. So everyone in wonk world was keen to see if that was just an odd pre-election burst of political inquisitiveness, or whether the experiment would work a second time. It appears that it did. Once again the venue was sold out and sparks flew.

Sadly, though, ResPublica‘s Phillip Blond managed to overcome the forces of light (Kitty Ussher, director of Demos and former Labour minister) a second time and win the hearts of the audience with a mix of populist appeal (his proposal was to break up the banks) and his usual bluster. But, thankfully, progressive forces overcame the dark side in the second two debates. Sunder Katwala, general secretary of the Fabian Society mauled Neil O’Brien, director of Policy Exchange, ably helped by Mary Riddell of The Telegraph.

But it was Nick Pearce, director of ippr, who threw the biggest punch. To be fair, it wasn’t a particularly even match. Mark Pennington from the Institute of Economic Affairs chose to champion the idea of ending all trade barriers, price controls and benefits. Unfortunately for him, notice of the event hadn’t got to the Ayn Rand society in time, so the audience was packed with ordinary fair-minded people who realised that the state was there for a reason. Pearce’s eloquence won the day. ‘Liberty without a common life is empty freedom’ he threw back at Pennington’s call to ‘let the market rip’.

Away from the glamour of the stage, what have the tankers been wonking on? Policy Exchange has become the darling of the Express by leading the charge against prisoners’ rights following the timely publication of Bringing Rights Home in February. After the Commons overwhelmingly rejected allowing prisoners the right to vote, Blair Gibbs from Cameron’s formerly favourite tank said: ‘The government should use prisoner votes to reassert its authority over Strasbourg, and if necessary, prepare to leave the court’s jurisdiction.’ ‘It’s a good day for our democracy,’ crowed Neil O’Brien in the Telegraph. Oh, the irony.

Frances Crook from the Howard League for Penal Reform blogged a different view: ‘I find it intriguing that international news today has covered William Hague, travelling across Arab states pontificating about the introduction of human rights, at the same time as his government here is trying to circumvent them. Human rights are universal and indivisible, and sometimes they are unpalatable. There are governments all over the world who find excuses for curtailing the human rights of their citizens – we shouldn’t be one of them.’ If you put paedophiles, European bureaucrats and our inalienable voting rights in the same basket, though, what else can you expect?

A number of tanks are gearing up for budget day, set for March 23 this year. The most authoritative of them all is, as always, the Institute for Fiscal Studies’ Green Budget. It reveals that ‘the five years from April 2011 are set to be the tightest five-year period for public spending since at least the second world war. Out of 29 leading industrial countries, only Ireland and Iceland are forecast by the IMF to deliver sharper falls in spending.’ Ireland and Iceland, now there are two countries Britain really wants to be in the company of.

The economic boffins are particularly scathing of the government’s plans for ‘The Patent Box’ which will reduce the corporate tax rate on the income derived from patents to 10 per cent from April 2013. According to the IFS, this will cost ‘over £1 billion a year in lost revenue which will benefit a handful of firms’. It’s funny how this government is so insistent on pushing through tax-take reducing measures which don’t even work. But then, when city traders and businessmen fund half of your party’s coffers, it’s not so surprising, is it?

Read also… The state they’re in, last month’s Tanked Up

Photo: Robert Bruce Murray III