A Decade of National Renewal

Our programme of work exploring how we can usher in a decade of national renewal.

A quarter of the way into this century, change is in the air. People want out of the status quo. But into what? The progressive engine of ideas seems to have run out of steam: we seem nervous of making moral arguments and disconnected from people’s lives. When we don’t have new ideas, we reach back for old ones or imitate others. Neither of these approaches will work at a moment of great change and challenge. 

This project marks a new chapter in IPPR’s history of helping to renew the progressive project. Our programme asks who the state is for, how it should be governed, what its relationship to markets and the world should look like, and where the threats are coming from. 

We’re convening thinkers and practitioners across disciplines and inviting external voices to develop imaginative but practical answers to the big questions of our time. We are trying to offer a sense of what progressives could stand for in the future, not just the recent past. The collapse of conventional ideas makes this a time of great political openness: we should be meeting that with imagination, not intimidation.