The big Downing Street change around continues. There has been much speculation that policy head James O’Shaughnessy was on his way out. With the re-jigging of Ameet Gill to replace Tim Chatwin as Head of Strategy, plus the arrival of Julian Glover in the speech-writing team, Guido has been waiting for the expected announcement. To no avail…

Guido tried calling O’Shaughnessy’s extension to be greeted by a confused staffer who first claimed that James was on “annual leave”, when Guido asked if the policy wonk was ever coming back from his “holiday” they said they didn’t know what was going on. Other Downing Street sources are refusing to deny O’Shaughnessy has left the building. Guido understands that a civil servant, Chris Brown, is running the policy unit.

Shades of dysfunctionality in Downing Street…

Younger readers will not know that “Guilty Men” was a book written by Michael Foot,  Frank Owen and Peter Howard, published in 1940, attacking the leading establishment figures of the day for their appeasement of Nazi Germany in the 1930s. As denunciations go it is the classic and an equal to Émile Zola’s J’accuse. Peter Oborne and Francis Weaver have entitled their new pamphlet to be published by the CPS tomorrow “Guilty Men“ in a conscious echo of that great score settler. It is a coruscating attack on those who would have entangled Britain in the disastrous euro.

Their premise is that “Very rarely in political history has any faction or movement enjoyed such a complete and crushing victory as the Conservative Eurosceptics. The field is theirs. They were not merely right about the single currency, the greatest economic issue of our age — they were right for the right reasons.” This is not a mere opus of a gloat, they name and shame the establishment figures who shamelessly exaggerated, lied and eulogised on behalf the euro and the European Project and have yet to apologise for the disaster they would have wrought. The institutions who are guilty include the CBI, BBC and of course the Financial Times. The guilty men include the shameless pundits who smeared their opponents, for example David Aaronovitch, who compared David Owen to Oswald Moseley and Enoch Powell because the founder of the SDP had become sceptical of the wisdom of the euro currency. Andrew Rawnsley, Chris Patten, Tony Blair, Peter Mandelson, Michael Heseltine, Ken Clarke, Charles Kennedy, Danny Alexander and from business Niall FitzGerald, Adair Turner and David Simon figure among the guilty men. It is instructive and amusing to remind ourselves of the hysterical claims and wild accusations made by these europhiles. Though this isn’t referred to in the text, it occurs to Guido that many of the same guilty men are currently making the same kind of hysterical claims about global warming.

Oborne has employed his usual panache in delivering the charges. It is well worth reading if you enjoy the thought of europhiles squirming guiltily. 

The best policy idea to come out of LibDem conference was Danny Alexander’s call for tax thresholds to be raised to £12,500, effectively taking minimum wage earners out of income tax. Reversing Gordon Brown’s complicated tax – the – poor – and – pay – them – benefits strategy. Brown effectively and deliberately made those in work on low earnings recipients of welfare benefits. Brown wanted everyone to be on state benefits (welfare “universalism”) for purely political reasons so as to maximise buy-in from all classes into the welfare state. Hence the cynical Brown/Balls attachment to child benefit for millionaire mums and winter fuel allowances for Michael Winner.

Raising the tax threshold is simple, has popular appeal and will benefit those on low earnings proportionately more than those on higher earnings. It will take some pressure off the “squeezed middle” and won’t increase the welfare trap. It isn’t a perfect policy, prominent Orange-booker Mark Littlewood, a wonk the Institute for Economic Affairs, is wary that it will result in millions of voters being unaffected by the basic rate of income tax who therefore won’t be incentivised to vote for parties and policies that favour lower taxes. He fears that low-earners will have no reason to buy-in to tax cuts if they are taken out of the income tax bracket entirely.

The organised opposition to this policy however is coming from the left-wing, EU-funded think-tank IPPR. The IPPR was founded and funded by the unions back in the Kinnock era to drag the Labour Party to the centre, in the post New Labour era and under new management it is dragging the Labour Party away from the centre towards the left. IPPR is arguing against raising tax thresholds because it won’t help the poorest who are on benefits and not working. This criticism cuts no ice because tax cuts, by definition, are designed to help taxpayers. IPPR argues that targeting benefits, sprecifically towards childcare, would be more effective and cheaper. It is as if they are speaking a different language, the problem of welfare dependency won’t be solved by paying out more benefits.

Nevertheless Guido wishes IPPR well, their wonkish sophistry may well appeal to Ed Miliband. If in 2015 the coalition parties are standing on a platform of reducing taxes on the working poor with the Labour Party standing on a platform of taxing the poor, Miliband will be on the wrong side of the dividing line. “Vote Labour and tax the poor” is a winning campaign slogan – for the coalition parties.

Guido had a bit of a dig at the three-houses-owning, multi-millionairess, anti-poverty campaigner Polly Toynbee last week. She responded that Guido was laying the charge of ”Champagne socialist” against her, something which Guido has yet to do. More on the money was this part of her rebuttal:-

“…you say we should be Gandhi-like saints and give everything away before we can advocate being taxed more. The point about tax is that’s it’s collective – it’s an “I will if you will” deal. I see no hypocrisy in any of this – but no doubt you will go on spreading ad hominem empty spite – instead of engaging fairly with the substance of the argument.”

Engaging with the substance of her argument, Guido asks, why is progress towards her social democratic utopia an “I will if you will” deal? If it is conditional on reciprocation from the likes of Guido it will never happen. Millions of us already feel over-taxed, like her employers we’re going to hold on to every tax break and tax haven we can come hell or Edward Balls. If she thinks she is under-taxed she can do something about it tomorrow, pay the Treasury more, they really do accept donations to bring down the deficit. Polly could give her own self-defined “unjust rewards” – for that is how she describes her own income – to charity and live more like the common people. Instead she chooses to keep the rewards that put her in the top 1% of income earners.

The home in London worth a million-and-a-half, the house in the country, the villa in Italy, the sheer inequality of it all must play on the conscience of a progressive social democrat. Her get out for keeping all is that she won’t make the sacrifice unless the likes of the greedy and privileged bankers in the neighbouring villas do so as well. Do you see the flaw in this aspiration?

Polly’s excuse for educating her children in private schools is that the state schools were crap at the time. The exact same reason the Fawkes girls go to schools whose existence Polly Toynbee now campaigns against. Another case of “do as I say, not as I do”.  

Meanwhile the next generation of progressives is lining up to be no less hypocritical than the last. Will Straw commends Tory MPs Matthew Hancock and Nadhim Zahawi who in their new book “Masters of Nothing“ argue that the banking crisis was partly due to a lack of women in trading rooms. Too much testosterone contributed to the debt crisis apparently, well that and a lack of pay transparency among other things.

Will is a wonk at the IPPR, the key policy and propaganda think-tank of the progressive soft left. So how does IPPR do on the gender equality and pay transparency front? Guido asked Will, IPPR’s associate director, how much he earns he refused to say or even give an average for associate directors at the IPPR. Pay transparency is only for bankers, not policy makers it seems. 

On gender equality the IPPR has 9 male serving directors out of 12 at the top. At the bottom 7 out of 8 operations staff are female. Another progressive case of “do as I say, not as I do”.  

Yesterday Guido tweeted that he “Would bet that the majority of the homes of those looting youths are fatherless”. Andrew Neil chimed in pointing out that “Surveys suggest that in areas like Tottenham as many as 80% families have absent/no fathers. Similar to worst ghettoes in US… Pointing out most underclass families are fatherless [is] different from blaming single mothers”. The progressive twittersphere went spare, as if this observation was somehow controversial.  

It is self-evident that the welfare state has fundamentally undermined the family, enabling and actually encouraging fatherless families to become commonplace. This is a social disaster. Welfare incentives are powerful nudges in a negative direction. Downing Street wonks should understand that “nudge theory” works two ways, not always in a positive direction.

The scale of the problem is immense, in a generation since the sixties the percentage of births outside marriage has risen from 5% to 40%. Some of those are in co-habiting couples – which unfortunately are more fragile than traditional marriages – however the majority are brought up in fatherless households. A Civitas study found that children living without their biological fathers are more likely to get into trouble at school, to have adjustment problems and eventually go to jail. Iain Duncan Smith can’t solve deep social problems with welfare reform alone. Society needs to reverse decades of failed “progressive” thinking about the family and social norms. A culture which makes no value judgements about how we raise our children is creating tomorrow’s looters and rioters.

Couple of  jokes in Dave’s Policy Exchange speech, the best of which was:

Cameron @ PX summer party "Historic day with Queen and Prince Philip visiting Downing Street, Steve Hilton wore a suit AND shoes".—
Guido Fawkes (@GuidoFawkes) June 21, 2011

Dave also cracked a joke at Clegg’s expense, saying this was the first time he had seen the deputy-PM’s school (the party was in the grounds behind Westminster). Though it was surely not the first time Sir Michael White (in attendance) has seen the school to which he sent his kids. In the spirit of coalition, Miriam Clegg’s law firm, DLA Piper, sponsored the drinks. Muchas gracias.

Outgoing chairman Charles Moore, having slipped the surly bonds of of wonkery, passes the chairmanship to Danny Finkelstein, who is not giving up his secret day-job behind the Times paywall to lead the think-tank closest to Downing Street. Fink is a former head of the Social Market Foundation, so he knows the Westminster wonk world well. At PX he will be able to continue his ideological mission…

Charles Moore is going to concentrate, he says, on his Thatcher opus. Unfortunately Guido didn’t attend the night’s competing party launching the Mehdi Hasan and James Macintyre opus, “Ed“, the biography of the Labour leader. Oh well…

Summer Party season is upon us. So Guido was shocked and, to be honest, a little hurt when he was told on the phone that he wasn’t to come along to tonight’s book launch for James Macintyre and Mehdi Hasan’s “Ed”.  What did they think Guido was going to do, take the mick? 

The publishers have subsequently emailed to say Guido can come, if he behaves, and doesn’t upset James Macintyre. Unfortunately we have a prior appointment.

Guido is off to the Policy Exchange party to drink Pimms in the sunshine, with the Prime Minister…

Guido likes Matthew Taylor, he is a smart operator, shares Guido’s view of Gordon Brown and now runs the Royal Society of Arts. He is unfortunately turning this august institution into a third-way “progressive” think tank. He shouldn’t, hard as it might be for Tony Blair’s former Chief Adviser on Political Strategy and a former director of the IPPR to depoliticise himself, he really ought to separate his personal agenda from the RSA’s mission.

The Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce has a mission to “embolden enterprise, enlarge science, refine art, improve our manufactures and extend our commerce”. Past members have included Benjamin Franklin, Adam Smith, William Hogarth, Charles Dickens and Guglielmo Marconi. That is a great heritage.

Last year ahead of the AGM one Fellow, Angus Stewart, challenged the RSA, claiming that

“The real problem with the RSA is its management. It’s a political body. The title should go and it should be hived off to be a consultancy firm. The same thing happened to The Industrial Society. There is no validity here, everyone is uncomfortable, and management are uncomfortable as they know they are not liked or admired by the ordinary Fellows. In terms of quality thinking this society has no standing anymore.”

Will Hutton notoriously ran the Industrial Society into bankruptcy, the RSA is financially solid, however it is becoming intellectually bankrupt, an ideologically narrowed think-tank reflecting only Taylor’s hobby horses. Matthew will no doubt cite the invitations to George Osborne to speak and the chairmanship of right-leaning Luke Johnson. It doesn’t really deflect the central charge.

Another Fellow, Kevin Cahill, Chair of the South West Region, also challenged Taylor, arguing

“We have a perfect mandate and a simple mission, there is nothing in our mandate about reforming society or changing humanity, those are the wild utopian missions of the person in charge.“

Last Thursday Taylor gave his annual keynote speech to the RSA. It was an attack on the profit motive and Milton Friedman in particular. Taylor will no doubt argue that this is perfectly in tune with the RSA mission – he has argued this before to Guido face-to-face. The Charity Commission may take a different view if he is going to turn the RSA into the IPPR Mark II. More importantly the Fellows of the RSA may not stand for it much longer. Many of them are closer in their thinking to former members the free marketeers Benjamin Franklin and Adam Smith, than to Taylor’s “twenty first century progressivism”.

See also: Matthew Taylor is Ruining the RSA, February, 2009

Steve Hilton’s cipher-wonk Phillip Blond is often a good gauge of what is going on at the no shoes, blue skies end of the Downing Street operation.  There was the briefest point back in 2010 when it looked like some of the more “progressive” bunch might back “Yes to AV” and Phillip, in his position as pope of the Tory wets, set out the reasons that “Conservatives should not fear AV“ 

“AV or not the Tories will still be able to win that game gain a majority and govern from a position of strength” he declared, after furiously attacking First Past the Post.

But with the winds of change, a new haircut, and a surge in the polls for the “No to AV” campaign, Phillip has spent the morning furiously backtracking and fighting AV all over Twitter. Guido didn’t see any “No I believe 1st preferences count more than 2nd or 3rd – and I fear government by 3rd preference” in the old report. The new haircut must have bought new sense.

In 2010 the left-wing think-tank IPPR was vociferously arguing against the Alternative Vote system, putting out pamphlet after pamphlet decrying AV. IPPR boast that it prides itself on “rigorous and innovative research… based on sound evidence”.

Their research conclusions were blunt: “IPPR does not believe AV is the right option for the UK.” AV they concluded was “significantly flawed” and would not “deliver results which are sufficiently proportional”.

“Simply put, AV would not remove the bias of the current system towards the largest party or parties and in some instances it would further reinforce the status quo”.

IPPR made a clear evidence based case against AV.

In 2011 the Yes campaign funders, the Joseph Rowntree group of organisations dominated by LibDems to such an extent that they bunged over £2 million pounds to the party before the last election, gave the cash-strapped IPPR £70,000.

Now, by coincidence, IPPR argues in an astonishing about turn that “AV will make elections more competitive.” “AV goes with the grain of contemporary British politics.”  They have even spent money on push-polling and, unusually for a supposedly apolitical charitable think-tank, they have thrown themselves fully behind the Yes campaign politically. Odd when only last year they claimed: “Changing to a system which could deliver even more distorted results than FPTP is surely not the answer for those looking for genuine reform.” Guido wonders what made them change their mind?