Progressive renewal: The Global Progress Action Summit

The question that hangs over us is: what replaces it? The urgent need for a compelling answer to this is why we at IPPR – alongside the Center for American Progress and Labour Together – are hosting the Global Progress Action Summit in London today. 

Set up in 2009, Global Progress is the largest gathering of progressive leaders and thinkers in the world. It brings together leading progressives from over 40 countries, to exchange ideas and make connections that will drive progress across the world. 

At this conference, which has an overarching theme of 'governing for working people', we are delighted to be hosting world leaders such as Sir Keir Starmer, Anthony Albanese and Mark Carney alongside diverse and interesting thinkers – and politicians from across the political spectrum including labour, liberal, green and progressive conservative parties.

This summit comes at the most consequential political moment of modern times. Citizens across the world are increasingly rejecting mainstream politics. As IPPR’s newly published ‘anti-establishment index’ shows, the share of voters either voting for populist parties, or not voting at all, across advanced countries has doubled (to 44 per cent of citizens) since the 1970s.

But it’s not just at the ballot box where the populist right is resurgent: they are also now dominating the battle of ideas as well. Whether it is what the state is for and how it should be governed; who gets to be a citizen and what rights and responsibilities come with this; and how nations should relate to global markets and the wider world: the populist right is reshaping the debate.

They have moved political contest from policy debates which take place within the bounds of consensus (on the centre-left and centre-right), to ideological debates which reject those bounds and attempt to remake them in their own image. Their answers to these big political questions threaten much of the progress we have made, whether on fundamental human rights, our democratic systems, open and free debate, or shared prosperity. 

This means that progressives need to renew: to suit up for this contest and engage in a battle of ideas to shape the future. 

Without new ideas, progressives risk reaching back for old ones and defending a status quo that people have lost confidence in. Or trying to imitate their opponents, only to heighten the divisions on which they flourish. The challenge is to address the changes and grievances populists speak to - because people are right to be angry - but to come up with distinctly progressive arguments and ideas. 

In this context, one resource is more valuable than all else: political imagination. The populist right wields it with ruthless effect. This conference will show that progressives can do so too - but only if they engage more creatively with the big issues of the time. We must recover our faith in our capacity to shape what lies ahead; our confidence to make big arguments and take people with us. 

This is what this conference is about. We, at IPPR, hope it is the start of a progressive reinvention – that drives a fairer, more prosperous and more sustainable world.