New think tank 'The Britain Project' aims to help Liberal Democrats prepare for government

LONDON — Britain’s Liberal Democrats are dreaming of a return to government. A new think tank wants to help.

The Britain Project — a newly formed group offering liberal policy ideas — will officially launch at the party’s conference in Brighton on September 21.

It comes as divisions on the right of British politics make the idea of a progressive pact involving the Liberal Democrats at the next election more likely, even as their poll ratings stagnate.

The think tank is not formally affiliated to Ed Davey’s party, but at least 50 of his 71 MPs attended a presentation promoting its work during one of their regular parliamentary meetings in July — with many indicating they want to get involved.

Tim Leunig, the group’s policy director, who recently became a Liberal Democrat peer in Britain’s unelected House of Lords, said: “We are here to help them.”

“But we’re also here to ask them tough questions because: who knows? They might be a minister one day, and then the civil service will ask them tough questions.”

While in public the Lib Dems refuse to countenance any future deal with Burnham’s Labour, in private their MPs are frank that the opinion polls — which anyone can read — point to the two parties’ combined seat totals being an obvious route to a post-election majority.

Luke Tryl, executive director of More in Common, a think tank which tracks public opinion, said the “ever more acrimonious” battle for the right now makes a pact between the Conservatives and Nigel Farage’s Reform UK “less likely.”

“The Burnham bounce and consolidation of the progressive left vote makes a Lib-Lab pact a more likely prospect,” he said.

“If the Lib Dems can demonstrate their traditional staying power and Burnham’s lead remains at the narrow end, the prospect of them holding the balance of power — and almost certainly choosing to favour Labour — becomes very real indeed,” he added.

Prepare for government

Talk of a coalition usually sends a shiver down a Lib Dem spine. The party was left with just eight MPs in 2015 after five years in government with the Conservatives.

The slow recovery from its 2015 nadir means that the vast majority of the party’s MPs were elected for the first time two years ago, so the party does not have a depth of parliamentary experience.

“We have a lot of people who haven’t spent the years that some people have spent thinking about policy,” Leunig, a civil servant for more than a decade who recently served as a government policy adviser across multiple departments, including under the Tories, said.

The Britain Project aims to provide “decent ideas that can be given to the civil service to implement” and ensure parliamentarians “understand what tough choices look like in government,” he added.

The Starmer administration — which collapsed after two years in government — was “caught like rabbits in a headlight” soon after entering Downing Street, he said.

Papers please

The Britain Project will also publish regular policy papers with a specific focus on economic growth and public services.

“We don’t want to try and be all things for all people at this stage,” said another person closely involved with the think tank, granted anonymity because they are not currently authorized to speak publicly. “We really want to focus on what are the really key issues for the country at the moment,” they added, citing the cost of living as a priority.

The think tank wants to show “you need a vibrant economy in order to be able to support social justice,” that person said, adding “liberalism endorses a national confidence” alongside being proudly internationalist.

“What we want is people who are specialists in their area who’ve done a lot of deep thinking,” the person added. “We can support them with research, but [they] will have a lot of experience themselves to draw on.”

Through the scrutiny of the policy process, Leunig says he is optimistic they’ll create ideas that are both acceptable to the public and can be implemented.

“I want us to be publishing things that people say: ‘Hey, that is worth thinking about,’” Leunig said, pointing out that he proposed the furlough scheme to stop mass unemployment when he was economic adviser to then Chancellor Rishi Sunak during the Covid-19 pandemic. “What I don’t want to be doing is just saying exactly what everybody else has said.”

Shoestring affair

The Britain Project is funded by individual donors. Though the group would not disclose names, it will not have a physical office to save money.

The Britain Project will be set up as a charity with an advisory board and a corporate board. While the advisory board won’t only have Lib Dem members, there will be a clear crossover with the party.

“We want to work with a range of people because it’s about the ideas. It’s not necessarily about the party membership,” the anonymous person quoted above said.

Tempting fate

Lib Dem parliamentarians have welcomed the Britain Project.

One peer, granted anonymity to speak candidly, said it should “help flesh out policies to fill the big gap between ‘worked out enough to do a press release and survive a question from POLITICO’ and ‘ready to put into action.’”

However, some MPs are nervous about giving the impression the party is already thinking about joining a governing coalition.