Exchanging think-tanks, Mr Cameron?

Allister Hayman, Regeneration & Renewal, 22 August 2008

Liverpool: residents were furious following publiaction of Cities Unlimited

Redolent of the 'managed decline' mentality of the Thatcherite era, the report mined a deep vein of resentment in the North, where people still remember the Iron Lady's Two Nation brand of Toryism. For this reason, it was David Cameron's reaction that was most interesting.

Cameron wants to be seen as the new Blair, leading the progressive party with fresh ideas. Policy Exchange - which was founded by shadow schools secretary Michael Gove - has played a crucial part in this makeover, doing for Cameron what the centre-left think-tank the Institute for Public Policy Research did for Tony Blair.

But the two had an acrimonious falling out last week. Published as Cameron embarked on a two-day tour of nine marginal North-West seats that the Tories are trying to prise from Labour, the report's timing could not have been worse. Project Cameron depends on convincing the electorate that the new Tories are as different from Thatcherism as New Labour was from socialism.

Nowhere does this matter more than in the North. Hence Cameron's fury that his tour of the North had been needlessly hijacked by ideas more akin to those of the Thatcherite Tory right. The report had "nothing to do with the Conservative Party", he said. "I think the idea that cities can't regenerate themselves, they were built for one purpose and can't do another purpose, is just nonsense," he went on. In a reference to the report's editor Dr Oliver Hartwich, he added: "I gather he's off to Australia. The sooner he gets on the ship, the better."

As disavowals go, it couldn't have been stronger. But think-tank and party are often awkward bedfellows. As a charity, a think-tank must not be too partisan. Indeed, only last month Policy Exchange escaped censure from the Charity Commission and was spared the spanking administered to Gordon Brown's favourite thinktank, the Smith Institute, which was told it was "inappropriately" party political. Despite its strong links to the Tories, Policy Exchange must not appear to be naked Tory cheerleaders. So if the report was an attempt to assert the think-tank's rightful independence from the Tories, then it certainly worked.

The report also gave Cameron an opportunity to distance himself from the market dogmatism implicit within the report. "Conservative Party policy will continue the good work of regenerating cities right across England," he said. This is good news for regeneration and good news for the North. But exactly how Conservative policy will do this is unclear. It's all very well to tell us what he isn't, but there will come a point where the Tory leader will have to tell us what he is.