Fascinating and sympathetic Guardian piece by Tom Clark about what it was like to deal with Brown and the Brownies at close quarters for four years. It confirms a lot of what we have already surmised about the core method of policy development through dithering.

Tom Clark was a SpAd at the DWP and the old DTI hired from the Institute for Fiscal Studies. He clearly admires Brown whilst recognising his faults. Faults that make him unsuitable to be PM. Well worth a read.

The closing press conference offered few clues. All the heads of government were keen to chip in when it came to global warming and the credit crunch – big picture problems about which they can do little. But asked to speak out on China and Tibet, or Zimbabwe, they looked distinctly shifty, and kept their mouths shut. “We didn’t discuss Zimbabwe,” Mbeki said.

UPDATE : A comment by a co-conspirator is worth reproducing. Gordon said at the closing press conference that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) needed complete re-structuring so it could act as an “early warning system”. Eh?

Dec 2003 IMF gives Brown borrowing warning
Sep 2005 IMF report warning over £1 trillion mountain of debt
Sep 2005 Brown besieged over growth and borrowing plans
Dec 2005 IMF fires new warning over Britain’s finances
Sep 2006 IMF warns over UK property crash
Oct 2007 IMF report UK house market is ‘heading for crash’
Apr 2008 IMF: UK vulnerable to US-style housing slump

Guido gets invited to the occasional think tank bash and when in London generally goes to the ones with the best booze (full marks to the Adam Smith Institute – up market beers and champagne).

Not sure what the booze situation is tonight in Westminster for the Centre for Policy Studies seminar on Politics, Policy and the Internet, the invitation doesn’t say. George Osborne is a big Politics 2.0 advocate of the power of the web and he is headlining it along with Tom Steinberg.

At exactly the same time over at Bloomberg’s offices in the City, Jeremy Hunt, the DCMS Shadow, is talking about the New Media Politics Revolution. Booze is clearly highlighted on the invite.

Decisions, decisions…

Guido has just noticed that Gordon’s favourite think-tank, the Smith Institute, has a new publication out today. In it the director-general of the Association of British Insurers (ABI), Stephen Haddrill, calls for a way out for the insurance industry from the “vicious circle of unquantified longevity risks”.

So an insurer does not like risk – is he in the right business? He suggests shifting the risk off insurers onto taxpayers. Of course he wants the industry to be able to offer attractive low premiums by having the insurance industry state subsidised.

Guido expects big business with naked self interest to beg favours from big government, protectionism is the easy way to profits. But shouldn’t an “independent” think tank question the propriety of such an arrangement? Who benefits from this apart from shareholders in insurance companies?

Guido called the Smith Institute to find out how much they were paid by the ABI to produce the report. The public charity refused to answer the question. Guido contacted the ABI’s Jonathan French to ask the same, he has as yet not responded. Guido understands that the Smith Institute got a five-figure sum from the ABI. Would that compromise their independence or integrity?

UPDATE 16:00 : The ABI’s Jonathan French has got back to Guido with the promise of an answer and a request to spell his name correctly.

Guido is pretty certain that he did not dream hearing David Willetts this morning on Marr’s Radio 4 show Start the Week compare (in a positive light) the altruistic social behaviour of vampire bats to Tory thinking about human social behaviour. Stepping back from the point he was making, which was both interesting and valid, it seems to me that only Willetts would try to win people over to the Tory cause using vampire bats.

Batty? Yep. God knows what Michael Howard will have to say about this…

Propeller-Head Wonk Watch: As Polly howls in pain this morning at the Brown/Darling rhetorical U-turn on tax, which she correctly recognises has razed the ideological ground ahead of Brown as he retreats, who should we credit for her torment. Osborne? Well yes, but why did he select inheritance tax and stamp duty as tax cutting priorities?

Matthew Elliott’s Tax Payers Alliance relentlessly highlighted the unpopularity of these particular taxes in the non-ideological language that practical politicians understand. They commissioned an ICM poll in August 2006 revealing that “significantly raising the threshold for inheritance tax, or abolishing it” was the second most popular cut after cutting Council tax. This September their YouGov poll confirmed that inheritance tax was perceived as being the most unfair tax of all and was the third most popular tax to be reduced, marginally behind lowering council tax and raising the tax-free personal allowance.

The poll findings made a deep impression on the Shadow Treasury team, proving that tax cuts could once again be a popular vote winner, giving Osborne the confidence to make the announcement that has turned around Tory fortunes. As Osborne takes the battle glory, remember who fired the opening shots…

In a rare and uncharacteristic act of selfless public service, Guido spoke at an event for a few hundred sixth formers today (the honarium was a decent bottle of Marguax). He advised the politically minded students that they would be better off not going into politics if they wanted to make the world a better place.

Afterwards one of the organisers thanked me – “Yeah, thanks for that, I’m sure all the teachers who brought sudents along were overjoyed when you recommended that the world would be better off if they became honest drug dealers and arms traders rather than politicians.” Glad to be of service.

Propellor-Head Wonk Watch: the appointment of Douglas Alexander to oversee preparations for the next general election might be seen by some as Brownite genius. Guido thinks that depends on how you view his overseeing of the recent election campaign where Labour lost control in Scotland for the first time in generations. Some think it could have been worse.

Guido remembers attending a Demos event last year where the new campaign commissar was giving his thoughts. With all this talk of an early election in the air the boys and girls at CCHQ and Cowley Street would do well to dig out his “Serving a Cause, Serving a Community“ Demos pamphlet from last year. In it he urged the Labour party to work in partnership rather than parallel with like minded organisations including trade unions. Gordon is spinning today that he wants to reduce the power of the unions through one man, one vote.

He wrote about the party to becoming a “community hub” creating space for shared discussion with social interest groups who will have input into local party campaigns using blogs and chat rooms to encourage debate with those preferring not to go to formal party meetings. LabourHome is their best semi-unofficial attempt at this, and it still shaded by ConservativeHome.

He also claimed he wanted to throw off the control-freak shackles and loosen the rigid party structures to allow issues to be discussed informally and he wanted to decentralise professional party staff resources from national to local level. Once again the Tories have the edge here, they are far less control-freaky and they already have their Northern call-centre operation with regional offices benefiting from Lord Ashcroft’s cash.

If the Demos pamphlet was Douglas Alexander’s job application it will take time to achieve his goals for Labour. That together with their cash crisis, makes Guido doubtful they will go for an early election.

Gordon visited a school again yesterday for yet another photo-op with kids. This time it was the Adam Smith College in Fife. He made a plea for “Labour voters to come home to Labour” on four separate occasions during an address to students and young party activists.

Coincidentally, the respected Adam Smith Institute itself released a report calculating that Scotland could thrive as a free independent nation. If Scotland followed the low tax route to prosperity, a route which took the Republic of Ireland from the poorest country in the EU (per head) to the richest. Scotland, say the wonks at the Adam Smith Institute, could match that performance.

The ASI report can be downloaded here. Where’s Gordon?™ tracks Gordon’s campaign trail as he tries to shore up the Labour vote.

Propeller-Head Wonk Watch: A well place co-conspirator emails to say he has seen Robert Gould, from the PM’s Downing Street Strategy Unit, thumbing through a copy of Wasting Police Time, the book of the blog by everyone’s favourite plod, PC David Copperfield. The police minister, Tony McNulty, reckons the book is “more of a fiction than Dickens.”

Strange that one of the top wonks in Downing Street is reading fiction the week after Nick Herbert, the talented Tory shadow police minister, put forward some interesting policy ideas. Perhaps it is just holiday reading.