Adam Lent's Archive 
Adam Lent was Head of the Economic and Social Affairs Department from late 2007 – early 2011 and is now Director of Programmes at the RSA.
Adam Lent
It’s the census next year and there’s always some debate about what religions should be monitored. In 2001, of course, thousands of people described their religion as Jedi Knight. But after listening to Mark Littlewood, the Director of the Institute for Economic Affairs on the Today programme, this morning, I’m thinking it’s time to start tracking the rise and fall of ‘neo-liberal’ as a religious identity.
Adam Lent
Download the 3rd Economic Report
The TUC’s latest Economic Report contains the usual round-up of the latest data plus a detailed briefing on public deficits, debt and what the cuts could mean for individual departments and welfare.
Adam Lent
The Chancellor has just announced in the Commons that the OBR will have new terms of reference to ensure its independence. It will also be located outside the Treasury and the Treasury Select Committee will have a veto over the appointment of the three members of the OBR. This body might become a serious organisation with proper credibility now although a key issue is whether it will have the resources to develop its own analytical approach distinct from the Treasury.
Adam Lent
According to the Office for National Statistics, public sector pay rose in line with private sector pay over the past year. The appearance of much faster rises in the public sector – so noisily protested by the right-wing tabloids and think-tanks – is almost entirely due to the nationalisation of Lloyds and RBS and distortions in the way data was collected (now changed by ONS). Somehow, though, I doubt the Mail and the Telegraph will be splashing this particular story across their front pages.
Adam Lent
It is very widely assumed that the cuts will be the issue that makes the political weather for the lifetime of this Parliament. But could this be overlooking one of the other major effects of the Crash ? The FT is reporting tonight that an intensification of the current “currency war ” looks likely as a meeting of the IMF ended with a sharp exchange of words between the US and China rather than any steps towards agreement on how to defuse the dispute over the value of the Renminbi.
As I’ve pointed out before, this sort of post-crisis tension, should worry us all. It should also leave us wondering whether the biggest political debate of coming months and years might not be austerity (or at least, not austerity alone) but how the UK should react to a round of competitive devaluations and, more widely, how it should respond to the rise of China. It might be wise for Labour to start considering its response now.
Adam Lent
I feel I’ve been sorely misled. I thought the aim of reforming public sector pensions was to end the brutal “pensions apartheid” that so unjustly stains our nation. Instead it turns out, according to uber-Thatcherite think-tank reform, that it’s all designed to let private companies grab lucrative bits of the public sector for themselves while acting as a launch-pad for an attack on the really big injustice – the state pension. I’ll never trust them again.
Adam Lent
The news from Ireland just keeps getting worse. It has just been announced that the Irish economy shrunk by a full 1.2% in the second quarter of this year. All the things that very tough austerity was supposed to bring – market credibility, lower interest rates, economic growth – have proved illusory. The UK’s position is not entirely the same as Ireland but it is striking that Osborne’s script is remarkably similar to Cowen’s (including heavy use of the trick of blaming our problems on the public sector). Let’s hope it doesn’t result in the same implosion of financial credibility and stability.
PS. It is worth noting that the response of at least one influential policy maker to Ireland’s problems has been to say that austerity has not yet gone far enough. Note to the UK’s future: never assume that abject failure will deter a deficit hawk!
Adam Lent
Andrew Rawnsley has a great piece in yesterday’s Observer about how ministers are just becoming aware of the massive political risks associated with their cuts programme. But it was the passage below that struck me as the most interesting – ministers suddenly realising that all the think-tank talk of excessive waste in the public sector and in quangoes was hyped-up propaganda and that public sector workers are actually decent people with kids to care for and mortgages to pay. Who would’ve guessed it?
Adam Lent
Is this Clegg’s “green shoots of recovery” moment? I’m sure he will not be allowed now to forget Norman Lamont’s infamous phrase nor the fact that the Conservatives laid in to Shriti Vadera when she used the phrase herself. It does look rather odd following so closely on the heels of a very worrying Nationwide Confidence Index (PDF) not to mention all the other weak confidence surveys.
Adam Lent
So common has it become for the White House to blame all bad news on the last administration that a Washington joke claims that Obama is planning to name a newly discovered trench deep under the US, “Bush’s Fault”.
Much more of this sort of stuff from the Coalition and maybe we’ll soon see Gordon’s Fault opening up somewhere under Whitehall.
