I was impressed the interview in Total Politics with Neil O’Brien, director of Policy Exchange, the other day. He identified the most important item on my long and eagerly awaited list of things that Tony Blair did wrong:
When Britain was in this incredibly hubristic phase, going around lecturing the rest of Europe on being more like us, we thought we had full employment – or that is what the government was implying and the media would have had you believe. But actually you had about five million people on unemployment benefits all the way through the debt-fuelled years. I would say my main political obsession, and this has been true throughout the last decade, is unemployment because it is the root of all social evil. It screws up everything else you can think of, every other kind of health or well-being indicator.
There is lots more interesting stuff in the interview, about the weird language of the “squeezed middle” (about which Ed Miliband was going on again yesterday) and social mobility, about David Cameron’s qualities and the health Bill.
Policy Exchange is one of the best think tanks around at the moment and I notice that O’Brien doesn’t answer the question about his parliamentary ambitions. Get that man in the House.
Eagle Eye 