David Miliband has issued a stark warning that centre-left parties like Labour risk being perceived as “defending the status quo even as voters say it is failing”.
The former foreign secretary’s comments come in a foreword to a landmark report by the Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), which urges progressive parties to “reinvent or die” in the face of rising support for the populist right.
Miliband, who began his storied career at IPPR, argues that Labour is in danger of being seen as the protector of a “status quo” that the public believes is broken.
He also suggests that the intense pressures of governing can “squeeze the time and space for thinking, brainstorming, debate”, making it harder to develop the fresh ideas needed for renewal.
“Get it right and you get a virtuous circle of social, political and economic renewal, in which security and opportunity reinforce each other”, Miliband writes, pointing to the Labour governments of 1945 and 1997, the latter of which he served in across several roles.
During Tony Blair’s first term in office (1997-2001), Miliband worked at the heart of government as the head of the prime minister’s policy unit in 10 Downing Street. During this period, Miliband was reportedly nicknamed “Brains” by Blair’s Director of Communications, Alastair Campbell.
He entered parliament at the 2001 general election and quickly rose through the ranks of the Labour parliamentary party. He was promoted to his first cabinet role, chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, in 2004.
Miliband later served as environment secretary (2006-2007), before his elevation as foreign secretary (2007 to 2010) under prime minister Gordon Brown.
Politics.co.uk is the UK’s leading digital-only political website. Subscribe to our daily newsletter for all the latest news and analysis.
Despite his prominence in the New Labour governments and common association with the “Blairite” label, Miliband is plain that recycling old political formulas will not work. “The policies of those periods are time-bound; no one is suggesting those policies should be regurgitated”, he states. “But the lessons in how new ideas can power new politics are important.”
Miliband’s warning comes as IPPR, the think tank commonly associated with helping to shape New Labour’s agenda, launches an 18-month project entitled “Decade of National Renewal”. The project aims to replace the “third way” with a new modern identity to drive the next generation of progressive politicians and thinkers.
Announcing the new programme, IPPR voiced its plan to reimagine “the progressive project, from reconceptualising the role of the state in the economy to redefining citizenship and reinventing the social contract.”
The project’s inaugural report reveals that since the 1980s, the share of votes in Western Europe and North America for centre-left parties has fallen by more than a quarter (from 33 per cent to 24 per cent), while the share for populist parties increased two and half times (from 12 per cent to 30 per cent).
One key factor behind this shift, the think tank posits, has been the decline of working-class support for the centre-left, with those in such jobs now making up only 7 per cent of the British left’s voter coalition, down from 40 per cent in 1980. Across Europe, they make up 10 per cent of the left’s coalition, down from 30 per cent.
This development has given the populist right an opening to steal the left’s historic claim to be for the many, not the few, IPPR’s report states.
The report also notes that people who have not been to university, historically associated with left-leaning parties, increasingly align themselves with the populist right — while the opposite is true for graduates. In the 2024 general election, Reform’s vote share was more than double in the 50 constituencies with the least education, training and skills compared to the 50 most.
IPPR also highlights concern among progressive parties about losing the young vote. More than one in five young people (age 18-30) in France are voting for populist radical right parties, the think tank’s data shows, while in Italy 70 per cent of young men and women supported populist parties in the 2010s.
Alongside the “third way” or New Labour perspective, the think tank also criticises other schools of thought associated with Labour — such as Blue Labour — which IPPR says fail to respond to how the world has changed or “provide modern, distinctive ideas and prescriptions.”
The report identifies a need to respond to three “grand challenges”: the reassertion of national borders, a broken faith in markets, and the erosion of a social “common ground”.
With regard to the first challenge, IPPR states that “a quarter of the electorate across liberal democracies now support anti-immigration parties, [that] the number of trade restrictions imposed annually since 2016 had increased sixfold even before Trump took office again, and [that] armed conflicts and conflict-related deaths are at a three-decade high”.
On the second, a broken faith in markets, the think tank notes: “Since Labour last took power, shareholder payouts as a proportion of profits have tripled in the biggest British firms and the share of working households in poverty has increased 27 per cent, meanwhile half of 18 to 34-year olds now live with their parents, up 30 per cent since 2003.”
As for the third, a lack of “common ground”, IPPR adds: “Half of adults are now using social media as their main news source as regular newspaper readership halved three times in the last three decades, while the share of Britons who are part of a church (33 per cent), union (63 per cent), or social club (77 per cent) has declined across the board since 1995.”
Commenting on IPPR’s new project, Dr Parth Patel, an associate director at IPPR and head of the think tank’s Decade of National Renewal programme, said: “Progressives are losing ground not only in the battle of votes but the battle of ideas against the populist radical right.
“They are stealing the left’s claim as the go-to people to change society. Progressive parties are seen as defenders of the status quo instead of vehicles of change.
“The problem is that the progressive engine of ideas seems to have run out of steam. When leaders don’t appear to have new ideas, they reach back for old ones, or imitate their opponents. That will not work at a moment of great change and challenge.
“This project is trying to find the thing that replaces the Third Way. We will offer a sense of what progressive parties could stand for in the future, not the past: a new left for a new age.”
Miliband stated: “The policy and political environment both at home and abroad is in dramatic flux. The danger for all parties, but perhaps especially centre-left parties facing right-wing populism, is obvious: they are perceived to be defending the status quo even as voters say it is failing. This exacerbates a challenge that any government faces: the pressures of government squeeze the time and space for thinking, brainstorming, debate.
“The questions being asked in this IPPR report open up discussion in a way that should help those with the power to shape the country’s future. As someone who got their start at IPPR, I am delighted that the organisation continues to be a home for creative thinking.
“Get it right and you get a virtuous circle of social, political and economic renewal, in which security and opportunity reinforce each other. That is what happened after Labour was elected in 1945 and 1997, and what is needed again.
“The policies of those periods are time-bound; no one is suggesting those policies should be regurgitated. But the lessons in how new ideas can power new politics are important.”
Josh Self is Editor of Politics.co.uk, follow him on Bluesky here.
Politics.co.uk is the UK’s leading digital-only political website. Subscribe to our daily newsletter for all the latest news and analysis.
