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This Week’s Think Tank Roundup…

by Liam Murray    
June 21, 2008 at 10:50 am

Welcome to this weeks round-up – an (almost) ‘David Davis / 42-day’ free zone. As of next week I’m going to drop the classification between left & right – I always anticipated this causing problems and I’ve actually been contacted by some organisations with a polite request to classify them differently.

While some groups like Compass and the ASI can be easily identified with left or right, many others such as the Kings Fund, Theos etc. are harder to align and there’s a strong case that it diminishes the work of them all to assign them such blunt political labels. I trust none of my readers as so blindly partisan as to only read one part of the update anyway. In the weeks ahead I’ll look at a more meaningful way of organising the update, perhaps into reports & publications, briefings & articles, events etc.

As ever please flag anything worthy I might have missed.
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This week’s think-tank round-up

by Liam Murray    
June 14, 2008 at 2:00 pm

Welcome to this weeks round-up – everything from drug abuse in prisons and ‘virtual caliphates’ to burying carbon and a dearth of ‘jocks’ on the news. As before please flag in the comments anything worthy you think I might have missed…

Left \ Liberal Think Tanks

• Almost a month old now but worth highlighting in view of David Davis’ crusade this week – Demos have a report entitled ‘UK Confidential’ exploring “the underlying challenges and realities of privacy in an open society, and argue for a new settlement between the individual and society; the public and the state; the consumer and business. To achieve this, we need collective participation in negotiating the terms and conditions of twenty-first century privacy”
• Theos*, the ‘public theology thinktank’ also weighed in on this issue with a good piece by Dr David Landrum – ‘Are we sleep-walking into a surveillance society?’
• The IPPR was the source of the stories this week about media imbalance post-devolution. They commissioned a paper from Douglas Fraser, Scottish political editor of The Herald, which found that “The UK is badly served by a media which fails to reflect the regional and national diversity of the country. Too much of our national conversation is mediated by people who don’t get out of London enough. It is easy to dismiss these issues as more whingeing from the Jocks, but there are important issues here about Britain understands itself as a nation”. Full report here.
• Nick Clegg spoke to The Kings Fund on Tuesday night on his vision for the future of the health service. “He called for more devolution of power from Whitehall, including directly elected ‘local health boards’, for patients with long-term conditions and mental health problems to be given more control over personal budgets, and greater incentives to keep GPs in deprived areas”. Speech extracts and more details here.
• The Joseph Rowntree Foundation responded to the disappointing poverty figures released this week.
• Daniel Korski at the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) addresses what he sees as Ireland’s creative destruction in rejecting the Lisbon treaty. “The Irish voters have to be respected, but the EU must find a way to accommodate this respect with equal amounts of respect for the clear will in many other countries for the Lisbon Treaty and the EU’s machinery to improve”
• Neal Lawson’s been busy at Compass as always. First up he highlights ‘a paradox at the centre of modern politics’ – “Social liberals recognise the complexity of modern life. They want diversity, experimentation and localism so that people are more engaged in key decisions. But they want fairness, and as much equality and universalism as possible, which can only come from a strong centre. This creates the central paradox of modern politics, as diversity and equality conflict.” Neal also urges Labour to pay more attention to the unions.
• Finally, also at Compass, Lucy Wake from Amnesty asks if gender based violence remains the greatest barrier to equality.

* I’m still not sure about the classification and my decision to put Theos under ‘left/liberal think tanks’ was an accident of construction and not a deliberate provocation!
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Weekly think-tank roundup

by Liam Murray    
June 7, 2008 at 2:01 pm

Welcome to this weeks round-up. Lest anyone think I’m resting on my laurels with this feature, I’m currently reviewing the feeds I use and building a definitive links page for my own blog with all the think-tanks I can identify.

I’ve also been in direct contact with a few people from some of the leading ones to see how I can better support them in terms of publicising their output. As before please flag in the comments anything worthy you think I might have missed…

Left \ Liberal Think Tanks

• Two things worth flagging from the IPPR this week. The first is the latest contribution to their ‘Commission on National Security in the 21st Century’, chaired by Paddy Ashdown and George Robertson. Misha Glenny discusses his most recent book – McMafia: Crime Without Frontiers – explains why ‘unprecedented levels of consumer demand for drugs, trafficked women, illegal labour and arms challenge conventional policing methods and have roots that lie in global poverty and the ever widening divisions between rich and poor’.
• The other interesting piece from the IPPR is Thursday’s Child – the report Civitas take issue with above. Sonia Sodha and Julia Margo investigate the educational issues which still face children from disadvantaged backgrounds and what more schools can do to support addressing these.
• The Kings Fund have a good report addressing the health issue at the moment – Polyclinics. ‘Under One Roof’ asks will they deliver and identifies and explores both opportunities and risks in relation to quality of care, accessibility of services and cost.
• At Compass Steve McCabe defends his handling of Labour’s controversial Crewe and Nantwich by-election campaign and Howard Reed talks about the need to rebalance the tax system – “The eventual goal of the project is to design a package of tax reforms which can make the tax system more progressive overall, while at the same time enabling the UK to pursue environmental goals more effectively”
• The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) says it’s time for Europe to do more to help in Iraq and warns of the danger that outgoing Bush administration won’t pursue this opportunity to the full – “To avoid wasting the current opportunity, the presidential candidates should agree to set up an entirely independent team to canvass European views and share ideas for what do next in Iraq. It should be charged to report this winter, once the elections are done.”

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Weekly think-tank round-up

by Liam Murray    
May 31, 2008 at 9:42 am

I missed a round-up last week for family reasons but it’s still a bit thin this week – I think everyone’s been consumed by reaction to Crewe so not a tremendous amount out there in terms of new & interesting thinking. As ever please flag in the comments anything worthy you think I might have missed…

Left \ Liberal Think Tanks

• At Compass, Jonathan Rutherford calls on Labour to ‘challenge the New Conservatism, understand its strengths and expose its weaknesses’. According to Jonathan Labour’s central error was to ignore society and the dramatic changes in personal circumstances and the way communities operate. He says the Conservatives have understood this and are offering a compelling and attractive argument about how to address it.
• The IPPR carries a piece addressing a tension most people have noticed in recent years – that between the Government’s transport policy and the environmental agenda.
• On the ‘FreeThink’ blog associated with CentreForum there’s a lengthy discussion on how the current political landscape risks a fatal squeeze for Nick Clegg’s Liberal Democrats.
• With rather unfortunate timing the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) says the EU should pay attention to who takes the helm of the UN Peacekeeping forces and that engagement with UN global activity is as if not more important than EU interaction with NATO. (This piece appeared in the Observer too).
• The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has a piece on ‘Designing Citizen-centred Governance’ – “The fundamental challenge for the governance of communities is how to create flexible, effective organisations for delivering public services, while at the same time promoting the values of local democracy”.

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This week’s think-tank roundup

by Liam Murray    
May 17, 2008 at 8:30 am

Welcome to this week’s think-tank roundup. Please flag anything worthy you think I might have missed out…

Left \ Liberal Think Tanks

• At Compass Neal Lawson, in a typically robust mood, calls for a ‘New Collectivism’, a return to the basic politics of left & right and a rejection of the inherent shallowness of the New Labour project. “This capitulation to market forces had its roots in the failure of the left to renew and reinvent itself after its postwar domination of the political landscape. But in confining itself to a project that put the needs of the market before those of society, New Labour sowed the seeds of a limited and deeply frustrating life span [and the] contradictions of a largely neoliberal project performed within the body of a party of labour were always going to cause an implosion.“
• Also at Compass Gerry Hanson on the unravelling of Labour Britain – the implications of SNP control in Holyrood, the evident tensions between Gordon & Wendy and the what it all means for the union.
• In stark contrast to the Compass view the Fabian Society carries the text of a lecture by John Denham, the only Cabinet Minister representing a southern English seat. John argues that the New Labour coalition must be rebuilt and that means connecting with voters in the South of England – where his seat is – did I mention that…?
• Naomi Pollard at the IPPR picks up on research suggesting the great westward migration from Eastern Europe since 2004 may in fact be over and increasing numbers of migrants are now returning home.
• CentreForum has a piece on education policy for those with learning difficulties – it suggests the debate between specialist units or mainstream integration misses the point and “parents, rather than politicians or officials, are best placed to decide where their children should go to school”
• The European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) carries a piece by Wolfgang Ischinger on the likely relations between Europe and the US post November’s elections. “Regardless of who wins, 2009 promises to be decisive for the transatlantic relationship. On some key issues, serious differences between US and European views remain, such as on climate change, the speed of Nato’s next enlargement steps and the strategic relationship with Russia.”
• The Joseph Rowntree Foundation has a study on the attachment people feel to their current neighbourhood and the extent and nature of attachment in deprived areas.
• The Kings Fund has a report on how “social and technological changes are challenging doctors and causing many to rethink their role, the way they practise and the nature of their professionalism”

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Liberal-left think tank roundup

by Liam Murray    
May 10, 2008 at 9:51 am

This is the start of a weekly round up of what various think tanks and such organisations on the liberal-left are doing and publishing. I do a weekly round up on my blog for think-tanks on the left and the right.

• The IPPR challenges a union \ left-wing shibboleth in highlighting that at least some of the problems we see in education can be attributed to poor teachers. “[I]n the last ten years teachers’ pay has improved and the number of people choosing teaching as a career has increased. But teaching is still not attracting the very best graduates and poor performing teachers are not being dealt with effectively”
• They also carry an worthwhile report on the complexity of UK migration numbers – half of those who’ve arrived from new EU members since May ’04 have now left but I think the Daily Mail missed that story.
• “New Labour is now dead” – according to Compass who, to be fair, have been trying to administer last rights since about 1998. Last Thursday’s results have boosted their confidence somewhat – “The strategy that saw the Party continually triangulate interests and concerns, tacking endlessly to the right, doing what the Tories would do only doing it first, fixating on a mythical middle England and denying that free market policies are having a damaging effect on society is now finished”
• Also on Compass Hilary Wainwright takes a pop at the impact triangulation has on traditional supporters and one of their regular ‘thinkpieces’ tackles ‘Capitalism and Social Recession’.
  Anthony Painter also did a write-up on LC after a Compass event here.
• The Social Market Foundation have an interesting piece on individual behavioural change and the challenges policymakers face in linking that with broader cultural changes.
• CentreForum have a great (and timely) piece on whether Liberal Democrats and Conservatives can co-operate. David Cameron and Nick Clegg are “two declared liberals [who] share a vision of a new, ‘post-bureaucratic’ politics in which power is devolved, not just from central to local government, but from government at all levels to individuals, families and communities”

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