Who is running the government’s ‘growth school’ for civil servants? The answer surpassed my worst fears
F
orgive me if I’ve got this wrong, but I seem to recall the country voting the Tories out last year. Part of the reason, if I remember correctly, was their staggering incompetence and insouciance, epitomised by Liz Truss’s mini-budget. That catastrophe was, like Truss’s political career, formed and steered by the neoliberal junktanks of Tufton Street.
But now I begin to doubt my recollections. We booted them out through the front door, right? Yet they still appear to be in the house. Perhaps they came round the back. After taking an interest in the Department for Business and Trade’s “growth school” speaker sessions for civil servants, I sent a freedom of information request. Given that Keir Starmer, like Truss, has placed his growth “mission” at the centre of policy, and that this department is responsible for delivering it, the instruction given to its officials is crucial to the economic and political direction the country takes.
Who, I wondered, would be speaking at these sessions? The answer surpassed my worst fears. Among the external instructors used by the department’s “growth school” so far are no representatives from trade unions, social justice, human rights or environmental groups, and no representatives from left or liberal thinktanks such as the New Economics Foundation or the Institute for Public Policy Research. But there are four who work or have worked for the Tufton Street junktanks that surrounded Truss. They are Samuel Hughes from the Centre for Policy Studies, Ben Southwood, formerly of Policy Exchange and currently a senior fellow at the Adam Smith Institute, Sam Bowman, research director at the Adam Smith Institute, and Sam Dumitriu, formerly head of research at the Adam Smith Institute and now head of policy at Britain Remade.
