Right’s Think Tanks Enjoying Revival
Propeller-Head Wonk Watch: James Purnell’s “workfare” proposals are being warmly welcomed by Chris Grayling his Tory welfare shadow. “Much of today’s package is a straight lift from our Green Paper in January… Because these are Conservative proposals we will support them. We will help him get them through this House.”
The Government’s Green Paper may be lifted from the Tory Green Paper from January which itself bears a remarkable similarity to the Adam Smith Institute report from November 2007 – “Working Welfare“. The ideas in that were were first expounded by the former MP for North Norfolk, Sir Ralph Howell. A resolute free-marketeer, Howell was the author of the ASI report “Why Work?” in the mid-1990s. The ASI’s Madsen Pirie says “this idea has taken longer than we would have wanted to become government policy”. The ideas were theoretical at that time in the 1990s before they were implemented in Wisconsin.
Michael Gove’s advocacy of the Swedish model of “free schools” may owe a little to another recent ASI report – Open Access for UK Schools: What Britain can learn from Swedish Education Reform. Over at the new look Centre for Policy Studies things are getting more lively after a quiet period, Policy Exchange is becoming something of a powerhouse (incidentally, it was cleared by the Charity Commission of tit-for-tat allegations of partisanship).
Alas only the venerable Institute of Economic Affairs has yet to join the renaissance of right-of-centre think tanks in Westminster’s wonkland…
