Given that just last week Will Hutton’s Work Foundation (formerly the Industrial Society) went into insolvency and had to be bought out by a third-rate university, it seems a little odd that they are still managing to sponsor events. Pitched as “the leading independent authority on work and its future”, the think-tank’s future is far from secure and Hutton, it’s well paid head-honcho, is just about still in work. The Foundation has a £27m black-hole of unfunded pension liabilities, which makes Hutton’s claims that the country’s debts are not a problem a little hard to swallow.

Given the particularly miserable breed of lefty is now a government advisor on high pay, will he be pointing out that his own vast salary couldn’t have made life easy for the ailing think-tank? A while back Guido reported that Hutton was earning more than £180,000, there’s still no sign of an up to date set of accounts, but last year’s figures highlight the irony and hypocrisy of the whole situation. If Hutton wants to keep his job, he should probably consider a pay cut…

During the detoxification phase of the Cameron Project to get the Conservative Party re-elected they re-branded themselves as “progressive”, which is the opposite of conservative. It disarmed critics at the cost of ideological coherence.

All parties now say they are committed to welfare reform, even Red Ed says he agrees with IDS that it should always pay more to work rather than stay at home on welfare. Yet whenever a practical reform to this end is advanced a chorus goes up from the left-wing think tanks, Labour politicians, the Guardian and the BBC that it is not “progressive”. Guido does not seriously dispute the methodology or accuracy of the IFS analysis of the Spending Review, no doubt the bottom decile will be marginally worse off in proportion to other population deciles as a result of the Spending Review. Guido questions how we can move forward without, in aggregate, the lowest decile losing out.

The lowest income decile in this country is comprised largely of welfare transfer recipients, these people receive money largely from the working poor and the squeezed middle, quite simply that decile’s welfare payments come from the taxes of the rest of us. The only way that reforms can be made to fit the “progressive” template that would please the progressive choir would be to pay the unemployed more money taken from the working poor and the squeezed middle. That might be “progressive” but it won’t lead to progress.

It is in no one’s interest to increase the poverty trap by increasing the payments to those who aren’t working at the expense of those who are working. It isn’t progressive, it is divisive.

One example of a reform which struck Guido as common sense yet raised the hackles of “progressive” lefties; Osborne announced in the Spending Review that single claimants aged under 35 will be limited to claiming housing benefit for the equivalent of a room in a shared home, rather than for a one-bedroom flat.  Almost everyone working in the private sector who is single is unable to afford their own home in London, sharing is the norm. Is it fair that young single welfare-claimants are paid enough for a flat of their own which their working peers can’t afford? “Progressives” are campaigning against this fair reform.

Osborne’s “progressive” phase was a tactical necessity during the detoxification phase, it is a hindrance to real progress now. Attempting to solve the problems we face using policies that pass an arbitrary “progressive” bar will fail. It is time the Liberal-Conservative government abandoned the pretence to “progressivism” to move the country forward.

See also : Don’t Fight on a Battlefield of Your Enemy’s Choosing

It was Henry Kissinger who said student politics is vicious because the stakes are so low, that logic applies to think-tanks. Over at the Bow Group the mother of all squabbles is raging and Michael Howard, one time chairman of think-tank back in 1970, has been called in to settle their increasingly vicious internal battle.

Rival factions in next month’s internal elections are briefing against each other as to whether the candidate for chairman, Brian Cattell, is eligible to stand. His opponent Craig Rimmer says that Cattell is over the Bow Group’s age limit of 36. The current Chairman, Annesley “Action” Abercorn seems to have upset pretty much everyone with his efforts to scrap the age limit to allow Cattell to stand. Abercorn denies he is backing Cattell but repeatedly referred to “the other side” when referring to Rimmer on the phone to Guido earlier.

Kwasi Kwarteng MP, a long time Bow Group figure, sent furious emails to other members describing “Annesley’s latest piece of madness … the worst type of student politics”. Opponents of the move include the MPs Sam Gyimah, Andrew Jones, Peter Lilley and Chris Skidmore. One rather bitchy new member said the change risked turning the Bow Group into a “failed candidates’ association” with chairmanship of the Bow Group seen merely as a way to revive flagging parliamentary ambitions. Abercorn, and his bus, gave a spirited fight in LibDem seat Hazelgrove at the election and Cattell stood in Leeds in 2005.

In August Abercorn chose a poorly attended meeting of the Bow Group Council in Brent to call an Emergency General Meeting to discuss raising the age limit to allow three members of the Council to be older than 36. Fewer than thirty people turned up to the meeting and it was declared inquorate. Abercorn then declared the EGM postponed and at another meeting a few weeks later, the motion was passed, clearing the way for Cattell to stand. Guido asked to see the minutes but apparently it was “private”. The whole drama spilled out onto Facebook at the weekend with both factions seizing the Bow Group account to get their version of events across to the membership. The world waits with baited breath for Michael Howard’s adjudication at a meeting scheduled for tomorrow…

Nic Boles made his name as an über-Cameroon when at the helm of Policy Exchange, pushing the party in a pinkish direction and de-toxifying the Tory brand. He was half-successful, the Tory frontbench now kow-tows to Cameroon language and thinking but neither the backbenchers or the rank and file really trust him as “one of us”.  As talented as Bolesy is, he knows he’s a lightning-conductor for those who distrust the whole Cameron project. MPs are also sniffy that this newbie MP seems to work out of Downing Street with the rest of the “beautiful people”.

He knows that if he wants to progress to high office he has to secure his right-flank, which is basically most of the Conservative Party.

Guido thinks his new book “Which Way is Up“ should be seen in this context. Boles is incredibly ambitious – he was Dave’s preferred candidate for London mayor until illness intervened – he knows he needs to reposition himself to make peace with the Tory right. This morning he is getting plaudits from the Daily Mail,  the Tory press on the whole is ecstatic; the Express and the Speccie heap praise on him for his get tough on immigration stance – he wants immigrants to pay £5,000 before they can even use public services and their numbers capped at 20,000 – 90% down from what it was last year. It has worked, even John Redwood is impressed with “Enoch” Boles…

Guido is off to tonight’s launch of New Direction, a new free market think-tank seeking to modernise the structures of the EU. He will be avoiding Gerald Howarth for obvious reason, and will hopefully get to ask the keynote speaker Liam Fox how he managed to leak that letter.

Though the star of the show will no doubt be Maggie…

Nick Boles, the Cameroon insider and wonk turned newly elected MP, has put the cat among the pigeons ahead of the party conferences by advocating in his new book “Which Way is Up“ a formal electoral pact between the Tories and the LibDems. The tribalists among the pinstripes and the sandalistas will choke on their respective Full English and muesli at the thought.

Others, like Guido, are positively salivating at the thought of driving the Labour Party into third place. Guido will be at the LibDem conference on Sunday speaking at the Liberal Vision fringe meeting, telling the Orange Bookers why it is their destiny to destroy the Labour Party as a party of government.

Now if Guido could only convince the Tories that independence for Scotland and Wales would guarantee a prosperous, low tax, free England for ever more…

The appointment of Robert Chote to the OBR is widely regarded as a clever move. One way to silence a powerful critic. But should it have been quite so unexpected? Especially with Osborne’s whizz kid Chief of Staff Rupert Harrison around. Old Etonian Harrison has given Chote  a very big job.

Could it have anything to do with the very big job Chote gave him at the IFS when he was fresh out of Oxford in 2002…

The was some speculation that the Office of Budget Responsibility deputy Graham Parker was looking to fill the gap that the still mysterious departure of Alan Budd created, but given the headache the IFS caused the government with their report into the “regressive” budget it is a shrewd move to steal their head honcho and bring him in close. Poacher turned gamekeeper…

UPDATE: The FT’s Alex Barker has more.

The whole argument about whether or not the budget was progressive was a foolish one for the Coalition to engage in. The left defines a “progressive budget” as one that benefits those on lowest incomes most. Since the population decile on the lowest incomes is overwhelmingly composed of those on welfare it means that no tax cutting budget, even if  it disproportionately benefits the lowest paid by raising thresholds, can ever be “progressive”.

The only way the budget could be progressive would be by raising welfare payments to those who spend their days sitting on the sofa watching daytime TV. The corollary of the argument advanced by self-described progressive wonks is that we should pay the unemployed more to be unemployed, exacerbating the welfare trap.Fairness is a better battlefield to fight on. Is it fair to expect the minimum wage office cleaners, dustbinmen, burger flippers and night security guards who work long hours getting up whilst those on welfare sleep, to pay higher taxes to support those who don’t work? Effectively transferring income from the working poor to the workless poor.  What is fair about higher taxes for the lower paid?

Intergenerational fairness is going to be a big issue as our population ages. Not only will our children have to pay taxes to pay for more and more unfunded public sector pensioners, they will have to pay the interest on the debts run up by those same pensioners when they were working in the public sector. The deficit financing of Labour’s years of prolifigacy isn’t fair either, it puts the debts of the old on our children and on our children’s children. There is nothing fair about mortgaging our children’s future taxes to pay for Labour’s past mistakes.

“A fair deal for all” is a better slogan than “higher welfare payments for the unemployed”. Steve Hilton should send out one of his famous memos instructing all to replace “progressive” with “fair” in their vocabulary.

Tomorrow’s Sunday Times will carry the news that Matthew Elliott, founder of the Taxpayers’ Alliance, has been headhunted to run the No-2-AV campaign.

From the beginning of October, Matt Sinclair will take over the day-to-day running of the TaxPayers’ Alliance and Eliott will stand down as CEO to concentrate on the new, yet to be officially launched, campaign.

Assuming the enabling legislation passes in September the campaign will then kick off in earnest to determine the outcome of the May referendum. Pollsters and punters make the No-2-AV side the underdogs, and there was some disquiet that opponents of the Alternative Vote system didn’t seem to be getting their act together.

Elliott has the experience and ability to build a campaigning machine, he set-up the TPA in 2004 and after 5 years it become a fearsome media machine, with 55,000 supporters.

With the pro-AV campaign likely to be run out of Cowley Street, or at least by LibDem proxies, it seems wise to choose someone who is not a Conservative Party figure, not least because he will have to win Labour and union support for the campaign as well as keep some of the more ambivalent Tories onside. The aim is to assemble the strongest, broadest based campaign possible to oppose AV regardless wider of ideological differences.

Elliott took soundings before taking the job and has been assured that, despite the Coalition, Cameron will not be neutral on AV.