The thinktank Reform celebrated its tenth anniversary on the first of the month. We do not know if it got a pinch or a punch, but it did release a new book called The Next Ten Years to mark the occasion. It sounds like quite a tome: ‘75 essays by people at the top level of politics, the civil service, business and public services’ and more, Reform proudly declares. The tank was founded by Tory minister Nick Herbert and current director Andrew Haldenby, himself former head of the political section of the Conservative Research Department. In 2009 former deputy director Elizabeth Truss, now Conservative MP for South-west Norfolk, took on and beat what the tabloids gleefully labelled the ‘Turnip Taliban’, including the former High Sheriff of Norfolk, to seize that plum seat.
Backstories aside, Reform’s stated mission is to ‘set out a better way to deliver public services and economic prosperity’, breaking out of old established ways of doing things, and it boasts a number of Labour figures on its advisory board, including Frank Field MP and former No 10 economic adviser Derek Scott. Reform is part of the pan-European Stockholm Network, which brings together 110 market-oriented thinktanks across Europe and boasts an online ‘thinktank library’ of its members’ publications.
Thinking even bigger, The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace calls itself ‘the global thinktank’, a ‘private, nonprofit organisation dedicated to advancing cooperation between nations and promoting active international engagement by the United States.’ It argues that given the ‘rapid internationalisation in all kinds of fields – from small business to terrorism to religion, entertainment and social activism’ – it is odd that thinktanks have ‘remained largely national enterprises, rooted in the views of one country’. It also recently marked an anniversary, celebrating its centennial. It has offices in Washington, Beijing, Moscow, Beirut and Brussels, and an actual library and archives, based in the US.
The director of the Carnegie Moscow Center, Dmitri Trenin, recently published a report for the London-based but Europe-focused Centre for European Reform investigating two of Carnegie’s host countries. In True Partners? How Russia and China See Each Other, Trenin concludes that ‘while Russia still relies on western technology for economic modernisation, it sees Beijing as an increasingly useful partner in curbing US power … [But] despite their overlapping interests, the two countries are not allies. Moscow will not accept a junior position vis-à-vis Beijing, while the Chinese regard Russia as a fading power.’
Also in on the international thinktank act is Policy Network whose conferences regularly feature social democrat presidents and prime ministers. This month it holds a big conference at Bloomberg HQ in London on the future of economic governance in the EU featuring CBI chief John Cridland and Philippe Legrain, principal adviser and head of the analysis team at the Bureau of European Policy Advisers in the European Commission. BEPA, as it is affectionately known in euro circles, is often referred to as Commission president José Manuel Barroso’s ‘personal thinktank’.
Policy Network seeks ‘to promote strategic thinking on progressive solutions to the challenges of the 21st century and the future of social democracy’ and director Olaf Cramme recently saw through ‘Europe’s illusionary straitjacket’, writing of current ructions that: ‘Fundamentally, there exists no economic deficit, but rather insufficient political impetus. We are sleepwalking into a lost decade, not a total collapse, because our leaders do not possess the political mandate, courage and confidence to fundamentally change the dynamics of the eurozone crisis.’
The Bloomberg conference also brings together more national-based thinktanks, such as the Hellenic Foundation for European Foreign Policy and the Brussels-based Bruegel, but more rightwing than leftwing politicians are set to put in an appearance this time: Norman Lamont is due to share his words of wisdom about European currency-related matters as is Foreign Office minister David Howell, former cabinet minister under Margaret Thatcher and father-in-law to George Osborne. So there are connections aplenty both home and abroad between personalities and organisations in the tankworld. But will all the ideas and exhortations see the leaders break out of old norms?
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