Policy Exchange

Policy Exchange is a neoconservative orientated think-tank with close ties to Conservative leader David Cameron. It was launched in April 2002 by Francis Maude and Archie Norman with Nicholas Boles as its founding director. It is part of the Stockholm Network.

Origins and launch

Policy Exchange was established by a group of Conservative MPs who had backed Michael Portillo’s 2001 campaign in the 2001 Conservative leadership contest. Portillo, who had recently admitted having had homosexual experiences, advocated a shift towards more liberal social attitudes, whilst maintaining a commitment to right-wing economic policy. Dubbed ‘Portillistas’ by Westminster commentators, Portillo’s backers saw themselves as modernisers of an out of touch party which had put off potential voters through its negativity, xenophobia and social conservatism.

Portillo withdrew from the Conservative leadership race on the evening of 17 July 2001 and subsequently announced that he would leave politics. According to the Independent the eleven Shadow Cabinet colleagues who had backed him were subsequently dubbed ‘the living dead’ in Westminster.

Only days later, one of the ‘living dead’, Archie Norman, told the Daily Telegraph’s Rachel Sylvester that he and other Portillo supporters were planning to set up a think-tank saying: ‘I came into public life to help transform the Conservative Party so it can win again, and that's what I'm still about.’ On 21 July The Daily Telegraph ran a front page headline, ‘Portillo supporters to fight on’. Archie Norman was quoted as saying:

We've got hundreds of thousands of people who don't want to lose what we were creating, we've got financial support from people who wanted to invest in this as the future of the party and we would like to find a way of channelling that and harnessing it.

That August the Daily Telegraph published a letter from the ‘Portillistas’ in which they said they planned to establish ‘a new forum, firmly rooted within the party, devoted to developing the ideas that will form the basis of a genuinely modern Conservative Party.’ The letter was signed by Francis Maude, Archie Norman, Tim Yeo, Andrew Mackay, Peter Ainsworth, Theresa May, Edward Garnier, Peter Lilley, Damian Green, Nicholas Soames, Julie Kirkbride, Stephen Dorrell and Nicholas Gibb.

In early October, a week before the Tory Party Conference, the party’s new leader Iain Duncan Smith reportedly met for private talks with Francis Maude, and the latter agreed to delay the launch of the think-tank until after the party conference. The truce was cemented with an offer from the ‘Portillistas’ that Iain Duncan Smith would be appointed Honoury President of the think-tank – an offer which apparently came to nothing.

The logos for 'XChance', Policy Exchange was originally branded in 2001, and the affiliated group Conservatives for Change or 'CChange'. The two were presumably kept seperate to allow Policy Exchange to apply for charitable status as a non-partisan organisation.

The limited company that became Policy Exchange was incorporated that week on 3 October 2001. In the planning stages the think-tank was referred to as Conservatives for Change, but it later adopted the names CChange and XChange, which one report suggest were to be the names of the planned forum and think-tank respectively. The aforementioned company formed in October 2001 became XChange Ideas Ltd that November. In December the group set up the websites cchange.org.uk and xchange.org.uk for people to register their interest in the project prior to the launch of the full website.

The full website <http://www.policyexchange.org.uk> was registered on 28 January 2002 and went live a few months later. Policy Exchange was officially launched at the Tate Gallery in Central London on the evening of 29 April 2002.

External Resources

• Neocon Europe Policy Exchange

Address

Clutha House
10 Storey's Gate
London SW1P 3AY
Telephone: 020 7340 2650
Fax: 020 7222 5859
Email: info@policyexchange.org.uk