I'm old enough to remember when thinktanks were a benevolent force making a useful contribution to the development of policy in Britain.

Pursuing a career as a public policy journalist in the early 2000s, I had a real fondness for thinktanks. They were full of policy nerds, keen to think through the implications of ideas that MPs and civil servants didn't have time to explore and make their findings available for public debate. Their presence seemed to signal the existence of a flourishing democratic society and their staff, knowledgeable and enthusiastic, made great interviewees. Naturally, each organisation had its own political leaning and pet interests but, operating from outside the political system, overall they seemed to function as independent bodies focused on the public good.

But these days I'm more inclined to think: in whose interests are thinktanks working?

Working for whom?

The reason for this shift in perspective is the very odd trend that has developed in recent years. Increasingly, it looks as if thinktanks are becoming conduits for agendas promoted by powerful interests, recommending policies that increase state control and benefit corporations.

Take, for example, one of the UK's oldest and most influential left-leaning thinktanks, the Institute for Public Policy Research. In a blog from October 2024, Mark Lloyd argued that the “sugar tax” he had helped to develop as a civil servant should be extended to all foods the state deems unhealthy. The “unhealthy food levy” would work by translating a “traffic light” labelling system into a tax charge depending on the product's levels of sugar, salt and fat.

“The tax should explicitly exclude fruits, nuts and veg that are fresh, dried, frozen or unprocessed … roasted salted peanuts might be liable for the tax, whereas a packet of unprocessed cashew or walnuts would be exempt,” explained Lloyd. “The same could go for processed and unprocessed meat (e.g. a chicken breast fillet vs a chicken burger)”. Exemptions should be limited, he added: “do expect a wrangle about cheese”.

Notice how the tone resembles the way you talk (if you're a certain kind of parent) to or about children. It epitomises the shift we saw under Covid when government and their assorted experts and allies used behaviour management techniques to get the population to do what they wanted. The justification for the “unhealthy food” levy echoes the logic of lockdowns – people must be confined in order to “reduce the burden on the NHS”. In substantive terms, such a policy would effectively create a state-mandated diet – except for those wealthy enough to buy as much cheese as they liked.

A report by another left-leaning thinktank, the New Economics Foundation, argues for the introduction of a frequent flying levy across Europe. Individuals would be allowed one return flight a year “free”, but thereafter would pay a mounting surcharge for every additional trip, and higher rates for long-haul flights. The benefit of a frequent flying levy, argued its advocates, would be a reduction in people taking flights. Behaviour change and useful additional tax revenue for the authorities. What's not to like?

An enthusiasm for recommending tax rises as a way of increasing revenue for government is a marked feature of thinktanks in New Britain.

That brings me nicely onto a report about inheritance tax by another left-of-centre thinktank, Demos, published in the summer of 2024. For the months, the UK has been raging – and I chose that word knowingly – with protests about the government's plans to impose the tax on farms. Applying to agricultural property worth over a £1 million (not much given the value of land here) the new tax will put a significant number of farms out of business, further jeopardising food security in a country which imports most of its food. The government is presenting it as a necessary measure to rebalance the public finances. But, given that the estimated £500 million the tax will raise is only equivalent to what the government has allocated to farming projects overseas, this explanation doesn't stand up.

Enter the Demos report. It enthusiastically argues that the UK “could raise more revenue” from inheritance tax and identifies the exemption for agricultural land as an area for change. In doing so, as this piece in the Daily Sceptic points out, it neatly outlines the very policy the Chancellor announced in the Budget three months later.

The more you look, the murkier things get. The report was funded by the Financial Fairness Trust, a charitable foundation endowed by asset management, one of the biggest land owners in the UK. In a 2018 report, the company bemoaned the fact that agricultural land tended to be owned by families which presented a “challenge” to “purely financial owners” wanting to acquire it.

Britain is increasingly a mishmash of state and corporate interests, with so many agendas and aspirations intertwined that it's hard to be sure exactly who is doing what for whom and why.