{"id":589,"date":"2015-07-07T17:37:23","date_gmt":"2015-07-07T17:37:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/?p=589"},"modified":"2024-04-06T17:07:55","modified_gmt":"2024-04-06T22:07:55","slug":"think-tanks-and-the-uk-general-election-who-lost-who-won-and-who-decided-not-to-play","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/articles\/think-tanks-and-the-uk-general-election-who-lost-who-won-and-who-decided-not-to-play\/","title":{"rendered":"Think tanks and the UK general election: who lost, who won and who decided not to play?"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>[Editor\u2019s Note: This post was originally published at\u00a0Think Tank Review.<\/em><em>\u00a0This reflection on how think tanks\u00a0did in the UK General Election 2015 is a valuable contribution to On Think Tanks\u2019\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/wp.me\/pYCOD-1Mj\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">series on think tanks and elections around the world<\/a>,]<\/em><\/p>\n<p>The\u00a0Prospect prize for Think Tank of the Year was\u00a0awarded on Tuesday. In preparation for the event, I prepared\u00a0a\u00a0delayed assessment of how think tanks\u00a0did in the election. First, a caveat: unlike the Prospect awards,\u00a0these rankings are for comms only. How and why policy came about and who influenced it is very hard to say, and except in very specific cases I\u2019m not even sure if the think tanks know themselves. You can claim as many\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.adamsmith.org\/blog\/tax-spending\/we-think-well-chalk-this-up-as-a-win\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">\u201cpolicy victories\u201d<\/a>\u00a0as you like, but that doesn\u2019t make it true. (Although when the Conservative manifesto was announced, it did seem like most of it had appeared previously on the Policy Exchange website\u2026) Anyway back to the ranking. Rather than making a full league, I\u2019ve split the\u00a0think tanks\u00a0up into four different groups. Then we\u2019ll finish with a top five, and the winner will be the Institute for Fiscal Studies.<\/p>\n<h2>Group One: \u201cVoluntary Purdah\u201d<\/h2>\n<p>Elections are tricky times for think tanks. You\u2019d think they\u2019d be in their element, but very often they struggle to know what to do.\u00a0All the policy decisions have been taken, at least officially. (Either that or they\u2019re being cobbled together at the last minute by small cohorts\u00a0of\u00a0\u201cintellectual allies.\u201d) Politicians are out shaking hands and taking selfies with babies. Everything, but everything, is postponed until \u201cafter the election,\u201d that magical time when meetings will be had, emails will be answered, and organisation will reign once more. But\u2026 it\u2019s the most political time of the year, the one time when people are really paying attention, so you\u2019ve got to something. At least, you\u2019d think you\u2019d have to do something\u2026<\/p>\n<div class=\"embed-twitter\">\n<div class=\"iframe-container\">\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"500\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">In accordance with charity regulations, Reform will return to the public debate after the General Election on 7 May.<\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Reform (@reformthinktank) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/reformthinktank\/status\/583558746791641088?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">April 2, 2015<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p>That was Reform\u2019s last message, before they went dark \u2014 for the entire campaign. Not a report, not a tweet, not a blog post. Total shutdown. And they weren\u2019t the only ones. Lots of other think tanks took a similar approach, although without quite Reform\u2019s monastic devotion to silence. Two weeks into the campaign,\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/us9.campaign-archive2.com\/?u=3c4f6e5b05cc55109609d1652&amp;id=db53e69cf2&amp;e=c7c62ea5ba\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">we complained that<\/a>\u00a0\u201cat the one time people are most engaged in politics, think tanks are eerily silent.\u201d\u00a0Think tanks\u00a0perked up a bit after the manifestos appeared, but almost without exceptions this was a period of limited output.<\/p>\n<p>By the way, on that Reform tweet:\u00a0think tanks aren\u2019t prohibited by election law from taking part in the campaign, merely from making statements that could be construed as party political. (For a more detailed explanation\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.linkedin.com\/grp\/post\/4735403-5990453726064705540\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">see this discussion<\/a>.) Reform were making a tactical withdrawal, as deputy director Richard Harries confirmed when I spoke to him. Having assessed the rewards of being involved in the campaign versus the risk of annoying a potential partner, Reform simply decided that, on balance, it was better to stay quiet.<\/p>\n<h2>Group Two: \u201cDoing It Our Own Way\u201d<\/h2>\n<p>Conventional wisdom says there\u2019s no point releasing a report during the campaign. No-one\u2019s listening\u2026\u00a0it\u2019ll get swamped\u2026 no-one reads them anyway (not that that ever stopped anyone.)\u00a0But it might actually be an excellent time, if only because no-one else is doing it.<\/p>\n<p>Leading the charge for this approach: Centre for Policy Studies, who received excellent coverage for their\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cps.org.uk\/publications\/reports\/real-finnish-lessons-the-true-story-of-an-education-superpower\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Real Finnish Lessons: The true story of an education superpower<\/a>, despite the fact that it was released right in the middle of the campaign.\u00a0It can be done.<\/p>\n<h2>Group Three: \u201cDipping A Toe\u201d<\/h2>\n<p>The thinking: \u201cWe have to get involved with the election, but\u00a0we don\u2019t want to piss anyone off. Let\u2019s do something big picture. Visual too. Something with data\u2026?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Cut to:\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nesta.org.uk\/news\/political-futures-tracker\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Nesta\u2019s Political Futures Tracker<\/a>. Working with the University of Sheffield, Nesta employed \u2018ground breaking language analysis methods\u2019 to\u00a0provide bite sized summaries of the top themes in the manifestos.\u00a0It was solid work,\u00a0but for all the fancy software,\u00a0it didn\u2019t feel\u00a0very different from that old comms classic, the word cloud. And from the point of view of the election, it seemed to be dabbling at the edges rather than getting stuck into the muddy waters of the debate.<\/p>\n<p>A similar hesitancy could be seen in the blogposts of those two grandees of the left, Nick Pierce of IPPR and Matthew Taylor of the RSA.\u00a0Much of the appeal of these excellent commentators is their ability to step outside the narrow frame of policy and politicking, but during the election their blogs were more abstruse than usual. Pierce\u00a0wrote a piece about the SNP\u00a0which reached all the way back to 1885. Taylor largely ignored the election and even called (not unreasonably) for the campaign to be\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.thersa.org\/discover\/publications-and-articles\/matthew-taylor-blog\/2015\/3\/lets-call-the-whole-thing-off\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">suspended for two months<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Both Pierce and Taylor used\u00a0to work for the Labour Party, but both\u00a0head up independent think tanks \u2014yes, IPPR is officially independent \u2014 so they couldn\u2019t exactly come out and say, \u201cVote Labour.\u201d But what were they to do instead?\u00a0This is the question think tanks have to answer in an election year. The ones that\u00a0came up with a developed response are the ones that did best in\u00a0the campaign.<\/p>\n<h2>Group Four: The Winners<\/h2>\n<p>Now things start to get interesting\u2026<\/p>\n<p><strong>5. \u00a0Local Government Information Unit<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 Bit of a sneaky one this, as they didn\u2019t do much on the general election, but they did cover\u00a0the \u201cother\u201d election. Remember the local election that also happened on 7 May? If you wanted information on that, LGIU was the place to go.\u00a0Maybe I\u2019m biased, because Think Tank Review works with LGIU, but for me this is exactly the kind of public service I like my think tanks to provide.<\/p>\n<p><strong>4. Institute for Government<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 Fourth, but could do better. They have the resources, the expertise and the standing to really shape the debate, but they restrict themselves to commentary on constitutional matters. As IFS showed, you can be respected and opinionated.\u00a0Still, if you want to understand\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.instituteforgovernment.org.uk\/blog\/11067\/the-not-so-fixed-term-parliaments-act\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">the precise ramifications of the Fixed Parliament Act<\/a>,\u00a0there\u2019s no better place than IfG.<\/p>\n<p><strong>3. Demos<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0Is Jamie Bartlett the most interesting think tanker in the country? He writes brilliant books, he\u2019s satisfyingly wonky, and he\u2019s Director of the\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.demos.co.uk\/projects\/casm\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Centre for the Analysis of Social Media<\/a>\u00a0(CASM), whose tweet-counting dashboards were all over this election. Now we know the result, it turns out that Twitter is even worse at predicting elections than traditional polls \u2013 but from a comms perspective this was a triumph. It turned the general interest in politics into a funding stream for an exciting data experiment, and won CASM yards of coverage and a feature-sized slot in The Sunday Times. Very few\u00a0other think tanks could have done what IfG did, but in theory any think tank could have produced a CASM.\u00a0Demos, and Jamie Bartlett, actually did \u2014 and to my mind that\u2019s more impressive.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2. Full Fact<\/strong>\u00a0\u2013 If they aren\u2019t a think tank, then what are they? They may not be offering policy prescriptions themselves, but if they wanted to they could hardly be in a better position.\u00a0Many think tanks do explainers (King\u2019s Fund did an absolutely spectacular infographic one on the NHS) but on immigration in particular\u00a0Full Fact became essential reading \u2014 you would go to their website as a matter of course, expecting to find the facts checked and explained in clear, impartial language.<\/p>\n<p><strong>1. Institute for Fiscal Studies<\/strong>\u00a0\u2014 Last time round, the IFS dominated the campaign to such an extent the government poached its Chief Exec. I wonder what Robert Chote was thinking, as criticism of the Office of Budget Responsibility rumbled away in the background, while\u00a0his successor Paul Johnson assumed the kind of\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/politics\/2015\/mar\/30\/ifs-boss-paul-johnson-counts-general-election-institute-for-fiscal-studies\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">high priest status<\/a>\u00a0normally afforded to American Presidents and presenters on the Today programme.\u00a0This is what the kids call killing it. Even the Telegraph wrote them love letters. And it\u2019s not as if they were pulling their punches either: they criticised all and sundry, and the parties meekly accepted it.<\/p>\n<p>Can they do it again? Well, most think tanks are still debating whether or not to join the race. As any politician would tell you,\u00a0to win, you have to take part.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Rowland Manthorpe from Think Tank Review provides an insightful analysis of the different strategies (and impact) of think tanks during the recent British General Election. It is a good companion to this year&#8217;s Prospect&#8217;s Think Tank Awards.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_relevanssi_hide_post":"","_relevanssi_hide_content":"","_relevanssi_pin_for_all":"","_relevanssi_pin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_unpin_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_keywords":"","_relevanssi_related_include_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_exclude_ids":"","_relevanssi_related_no_append":"","_relevanssi_related_not_related":"","_relevanssi_related_posts":"","_relevanssi_noindex_reason":"","footnotes":""},"tags":[184,181,241],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2842505,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions\/2842505"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/onthinktanks.org\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}