Skip through the cvs of the recently promoted and appointed in the Labour government and a pattern emerges. Torsten Bell, the boyish pensions minister, now has the unenviable task of helping pull together a painful budget. Before entering Parliament, Mr Bell spent nine years as the chief executive of the Resolution Foundation (RF), a centre-left think-tank. Minouche Shafik, a former deputy governor of the Bank of England, is now Downing Street’s economic adviser. She was the co-chair of rf’s The Economy 2030 Inquiry. Dan Tomlinson, an even more boyish mp and a former economist at RF, is now a Treasury minister. Overseeing this reshuffle? Vidhya Alakeson, the deputy chief of staff in Downing Street and formerly rf’s deputy chief executive.