It is a quirk of the British political system that the leader of the opposition goes from inhabiting cramped parliamentary offices to rubbing shoulders with leaders of the free world within such a short time. Sir Keir Starmer looked at ease at the Nato summit this week. But he faces a difficult new role as champion of a troubled global centre-left.
Political parties love a winner. And centre-left parties around the world are hungry to learn how Labour defeated the long-dominant Conservative party. Next week, the European contingent will gather at Blenheim Palace for the European Political Community meeting. Starmer would do well to use the time to learn from the problems besetting his global colleagues.
In many other countries, centre-left parties are incumbents facing difficult re-elections under pressure from a revived far right. Opposition is high: a majority of voters in every EU country except Poland, which changed government in 2023, think that their country is headed in the wrong direction, according to research by Datapraxis for the Progressive Governance summit in Berlin recently.
2024 has been one of the busiest years yet thus far for PPI internationally.
From our work with the UK Labour Party & Claire Ainsley Project on Center-Left Renewal to Tamar Jacoby’s impactful New Ukraine Project, to attending the Progressive Governance Summit in Berlin, PPI Down Under and much more.
The Labour Party’s thumping victory in Britain’s general election seems to have bucked the trend of declining support for social-democratic parties, particularly in the face of fervour for the populist right. The left and centre in France have only staved off a triumph of the far right by standing down candidates to form a united front. In Germany the main party in the ruling coalition, the SPD, finished third in the European Parliament elections in June, behind the far-right Alternative für Deutschland. Those elections saw an overall shift to the political right in Europe.
Labour’s success is all the more striking because of the speed of the party’s turnaround under Sir Keir Starmer. When he was elected leader in April 2020, Labour had been defeated by the Conservatives for a fourth consecutive time, with Boris Johnson’s Tories winning a comfortable majority that included dozens of seats the party hadn’t won for decades, or ever.
The election of a Labour government after 14 years of Conservative rule is a shot in the arm for the global centre-left. But it is vital to understand why and how Labour won, before taking any comfort that this marks the start of the centre-left’s comeback.
Becker will be placed within the Blue Dog Coalition for one year
WASHINGTON — Today, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) announced that Kevin Becker has been hired as a Congressional Policy Fellow to support the work of the Blue Dog Coalition. Becker will be placed within the office of U.S. Representative Mary Peltola (D-Alaska), Blue Dog Coalition Co-Chair for Policy and Legislative Strategy, and will provide critical policy, communications, and administrative support.
“I am looking forward to working with the Blue Dog Coalition to promote common-sense solutions and provide tangible results for the American people,” said Kevin Becker. “My prior time in Representative Mary Peltola’s office provided me with an admiration for a progress-centered approach to public policy and I am eager to work with the coalition to promote those ideals nationwide.”
A native of Glenview, Illinois, Becker attended American University in Washington, where he served as public relations director and staff writer for the investigative journalism publication American Way of Life. Becker interned with Rep. Peltola for nearly a year before joining Capitol Hill Consulting Group as a full-time legislative intern during his final semester.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org.
The Blue Dog Coalition is an official caucus in the U.S. House of Representatives comprised of fiscally responsible Democrats, who are leading the way to find commonsense solutions. The Blue Dogs are dedicated to pursuing fiscally responsible policies, ensuring a strong national defense for our country, and transcending party lines to get things done for the American people. Learn more about the Blue Dogs by visiting https://bluedogcaucus-golden.house.gov/.
I’m not sure what made me do it. Living in a war zone, you get used to the emotional ups and downs. But there’s growing uncertainty here in Ukraine, and finally, something prompted me to act.
I woke up one morning a few weeks ago with a new sense of dread and urgency. What if things really were going sideways? What if the Russians managed to break through in Chasiv Yar, a pivotal battle on the eastern front that could unleash a cascade of additional Russian wins further to the west? And what, if anything, could I do to make a difference? What was the point of writing another op-ed piece?
So I started calling around. Did friends have any ideas? A few hours later, I decided to buy a drone for a unit fighting in Chasiv Yar.
FACT: Panama Canal worker mortality down 99.9% from the 1906-1914 project to the 2006-2016 expansion.
THE NUMBERS: Panama Canal shipping –
Ship Transits
Cargo
2023
14,080
511 million tons
2015
13,874
331 million tons
1965
11,834
71 million tons
1915
969
5 million tons
WHAT THEY MEAN:
To build the Panama Canal, 56,000 workers dug a trench 41 feet deep across 48 miles of peninsula, including a rock ridge 275 feet high and 8 miles across. Over eight years, they moved 177 million cubic meters of earth and rock weighing half a billion tons. When it opened at the end of June 1914, the Gatun Locks — the largest concrete structures ever built until the 1930s — could lift and float ships up to 965 feet long and 106 feet wide. This meant nearly all world shipping, and transit time from New York to San Francisco fell by half. As a quick table shows, the Canal opening by itself equaled the logistical effect of replacing sailing ships with steam a generation earlier, and maritime technology has needed a century to halve passage time again:
Clipper ship record, 1854
89 days
Pre-Canal steamship record, 1900
59 days
Panama Canal average, 1920s
30 days
Current
15 days
A century later, with the Canal grew too narrow and shallow to accommodate for the world’s largest ships, the Panamanian government’s $5.2 billion expansion project moved another 52 million cubic meters of earth and stone. Its conclusion at the end of June in 2016 deepened the navigation channels and opened new locks on the Pacific and Atlantic (180 feet wide and 60 feet deep, as compared to Gatun’s 110 and 42). The result hasn’t had quite the epochal shipping impact of the original, but has raised cargo volume by about 60%, from about 300 million tons of cargo a year in the early 2010s to 510 million tons a year since 2016. Before the re-digging, the largest ship the Canal could handle was a “Panamax” vessel of 52,500 deadweight tons; now it’s able to handle LNG tankers en route to Asia, and 14,000-TEU container ships coming east.
Another aspect of the two excavations, and the century separating them, illustrates not only logistical progress and engineering achievement but human progress.
Visionary 19th and early 20th-century projects took a large toll. The initial French attempt to build the Canal in the 1880s, before the discovery of the mosquito vector for yellow fever, proved beyond the reach of 19th-century technology and failed at the cost of 22,000 lives. The successful early 20th-century American effort wasn’t much safer: 5,609 of the 56,000 workers — mostly recruited from Barbados, Jamaica, and other Caribbean islands — died over the eight years of construction. The Canal Commission’s 1910 report, as a typical example, records 548 employee deaths, including 376 from disease (especially yellow fever and malaria, despite energetic efforts to control mosquito breeding), and 164 from industrial accidents including dynamite explosions, railroad accidents, electrocutions, drownings, and “accidental traumatisms, various.”
The expansion program’s record, telescoping a century’s worth of public health and worker-safety policy development, is a remarkable change. We haven’t found a detailed worker mortality report of this type for the last decade’s expansion program, but (a) an online source of uncertain reliability, quoting an official at the 2016 conclusion ceremony, says there were seven, and (b) an ILO workplace death and injury table suggests that the whole of Panama averages 4 to 6 workplace deaths a year among its 2 million workers. Sometimes things do get better.
* TEU: “twenty-foot equivalent unit,” the acronym used to describe the number of twenty-foot shipping containers a vessel can carry.
FURTHER READING
Today:
The Panama Canal Authority has current cargo statistics.
The Canal Commission’s massive labor recruitment on Barbados is said to have brought 40 percent of the island’s working-age men to Panama, and cut the population from 200,000 in 1900 to 172,000 in 1910. The total workforce added 12,000 from the United States, 16,000 from other Caribbean islands, and 8,000 from Europe and Latin America to the 20,000 Barbadians. A tenth of them died during construction – 5,609 people, including 4,290 Caribbean workers – of yellow fever, malaria, landslides, explosions, railway accidents, and other illnesses and workplace injuries. By country, the Canal Commission’s 1910 death toll included 167 workers from Barbados, 113 from Jamaica, 49 from Martinique and Guadeloupe, 60 from other Caribbean islands, 48 from Spain, 36 from Colombia and Panama, and 31 from the United States.
“We Were Giants” — Barbados remembers the 20,000 at the 2014 Canal centennial.
Perspective from Smithsonian Magazine on labor recruitment, segregation in the Canal project , and health policies.
And as a primary source, the Isthmian Canal Commission’s 1910 report; see Appendix P for statistics on worker health, mortality, and disease control.
ABOUT ED
Ed Gresser is Vice President and Director for Trade and Global Markets at PPI.
Ed returns to PPI after working for the think tank from 2001-2011. He most recently served as the Assistant U.S. Trade Representative for Trade Policy and Economics at the Office of the United States Trade Representative (USTR). In this position, he led USTR’s economic research unit from 2015-2021, and chaired the 21-agency Trade Policy Staff Committee.
Ed began his career on Capitol Hill before serving USTR as Policy Advisor to USTR Charlene Barshefsky from 1998 to 2001. He then led PPI’s Trade and Global Markets Project from 2001 to 2011. After PPI, he co-founded and directed the independent think tank ProgressiveEconomy until rejoining USTR in 2015. In 2013, the Washington International Trade Association presented him with its Lighthouse Award, awarded annually to an individual or group for significant contributions to trade policy.
Ed is the author of Freedom from Want: American Liberalism and the Global Economy (2007). He has published in a variety of journals and newspapers, and his research has been cited by leading academics and international organizations including the WTO, World Bank, and International Monetary Fund. He is a graduate of Stanford University and holds a Master’s Degree in International Affairs from Columbia Universities and a certificate from the Averell Harriman Institute for Advanced Study of the Soviet Union.
This weekend, something shifted in the public mood in Britain.
There were no street parties or jubilant scenes greeting the new Labour government, unlike the last time the Labour Party broke a long period of Conservative rule, an occasion marked with a dawn party at London’s Royal Festival Hall in 1997. But as the new Prime MinisterKeir Starmer took to the steps of Downing Street to offer a new kind of leadership, and broke party traditions with a slew of expert appointments as incoming ministers, it’s like a weight has lifted.
People don’t expect miracles in this age of tight finances, but they have given change a chance. As a neighbor commented with a wry smile, “It’s a start.”
How did the United Kingdom go from electing a fourth consecutive Conservative government led by Boris Johnson with an 80-seat parliamentary majority in 2019 to electing a Labour government in a landslide less than five years later? And can this victory offer the Democratic Party hope that there is a way to defeat the political right and win big?
WASHINGTON — Today, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is leading an open letter with nearly 30 other organizations calling on the Senate Finance Committee to advance site-neutral payment reform through the Site-based Invoicing and Transparency Enhancement (SITE) Act, a bipartisan bill introduced by Senators Maggie Hassan (D-N.H.), Mike Braun (R-Ind.), and John Kennedy (R-La.). PPI has long been supportive of site-neutral payment reform and legislative efforts to address this issue.
Medicare, and in many cases, commercial insurers, pay hospital-owned facilities higher rates than independent medical practices and other outpatient facilities for the exact same services. These higher payment rates actually create an incentive for hospitals to acquire these independent practices, resulting in higher prices charged to patients and taxpayers. The SITE Act would promote fairer billing by both ending dishonest billing practices that occur when a hospital acquires a doctor’s office and charges hospital prices despite performing services in the same location, and it would enact site-neutral payment reform to ensure Medicare reimburses providers at the same price for the same service.
Millions of Americans and their families are deeply concerned about the high cost of living and struggling to afford medical care. Every dollar that is spent on high out-of-pocket costs means a dollar less to pay for food, clothing, and other necessities for themselves and their families. This leads to difficult decisions about prioritizing immediate financial needs over preventive or ongoing medical care.
“Ending harmful billing practices like the policies suggested in the SITE Act is crucial in reducing the financial strain that comes from irrationally high medical costs,” said Erin Delaney, PPI’s Director of Health Care Policy. “It is critical that the Senate Finance Committee move forward with this important piece of legislation.”
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Find an expert at PPI and follow us on Twitter.
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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org
As for Ukraine’s future security arrangements, U.S. and European officials say they hope to hammer out a statement at the summit promising an “irreversible” path to NATO membership for Kyiv.
But that language may not be enough to secure Ukraine’s place in the NATO alliance if Trump is elected, said Tamar Jacoby, the Kyiv-based director of the New Ukraine Project at the Progressive Policy Institute think tank.
“If you want to be in the West, you have to be tied to the West, and indeed, you have to be ultimately protected by the West. And so, in a way, NATO membership is the most important thing that Ukrainians are fighting for,” Jacoby said.
WASHINGTON — For Democrats to restore their competitiveness outside urban centers and build durable majorities, they must improve their standing with working-class voters. Historically, Democrats have thrived when advocating for the economic aspirations and moral values of ordinary working Americans. However, with former President Donald Trump winning significant support among working-class Black and Latino voters, Democrats face an urgent challenge to regain the trust and support of these critical demographic groups.
Today, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) released a new poll commissioned by YouGov to aid Democrats in crafting more effective appeals to working-class voters. PPI President Will Marshall offers detailed findings and analysis in the report, titled “Campaign for Working America: A PPI/YouGov Survey of Working-Class Voters.”
“Despite falling inflation and rising wages, working-class voters remain deeply pessimistic about the economy, with illegal immigration ranking as their second-highest concern. The poll highlights a profound sense of alienation among these voters, who feel their government is more responsive to the wealthy and the college-educated than to people like them. On a positive note for Democrats, few non-college voters support outlawing abortion, and many are skeptical of the Republican initiative to use taxpayer dollars to subsidize private schools,” said Will Marshall.
“This PPI/YouGov poll provides Democrats with a roadmap for regaining the trust of working Americans by urgently addressing their economic anxieties and offering pragmatic and sensible solutions to our nation’s toughest challenges.”
This survey also informs the work of PPI’s Campaign for Working America, launched in partnership with former U.S. Representative Tim Ryan (D-Ohio). The campaign aims to develop and test new themes, ideas, and policy proposals to help center-left leaders offer a compelling economic message to working Americans, find common ground on cultural issues, and rally support for maintaining America’s global leadership.
The poll surveyed 6,033 working-class voters, including 902 in a national sample and oversamples in seven critical battleground states: Michigan, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Georgia, North Carolina, Wisconsin, and Nevada. The respondents were registered voters without a four-year degree.
Key findings from the national poll include:
• Although the U.S. inflation rate has fallen below 3% and wage gains are growing faster, working Americans still rank the high cost of living as their top concern.
• This poll confirms a profound disconnect between the Biden administration’s economic record and public perception. Working-class voters believe Biden has given low priority to what the White House regards as its signature themes and accomplishments, such as creating more manufacturing jobs, building modern infrastructure, promoting green jobs like building electric cars, and delivering high-speed broadband to rural Americans.
• Non-college voters blame their economic woes mainly on the increase in illegal immigrants taking their jobs and raising costs. By a large margin, they believe the Biden administration is too soft on border security.
• Working Americans feel alienated from their government, viewing it as more responsive to wealthier people (75%), college-educated people (70%), whites (62%), urbanites (62%), and liberals (61%) than to “people like me” (41%). Less than half say the government is responsive to parents, religious people, and conservatives, and only about a third see it as responsive to rural and poor people. Working-class voters, especially in Arizona, Michigan, and North Carolina, don’t trust the federal government to do the right thing.
• A plurality of working-class voters (47-42%) support U.S. political and military support for Ukraine and worry that cutting off that aid would embolden Russian ruler Vladimir Putin to threaten Europe.
• Non-college voters are skeptical of a precipitous rush to end fossil fuel use in America, as well as the Biden administration’s pause in constructing natural gas export facilities.
• Working-class voters have made the connection between high housing costs and exclusionary zoning. By nearly 2-1 across the key battleground states of Georgia, Wisconsin, Nevada, and Pennsylvania, these voters support eliminating zoning regulations to enable the construction of more multifamily dwellings and drive down housing costs.
• A majority (52-42) of non-college voters believe abortion should be legal in all or most cases. They trust Democrats more (53-47) to ensure families have access to reproductive health care. Working-class support for outlawing abortion altogether is negligible, with just 6% of working-class voters supporting a full ban.
• Working Americans are unhappy with the quality of health care. Fully 51% of the national sample say America’s health care system is getting worse, with just 24% saying it is improving. They seem open to big changes in health care policy. Nationally, working-class voters are tied, 42-42, on whether to repeal the Affordable Care Act. In the battleground states of Arizona, Michigan, and North Carolina, they are also split on whether they generally trust Democrats or Republicans more to handle health care.
• Working-class voters are more upset about crime elsewhere in America than in their neighborhoods. Just 9% think crime in their community has gotten a lot worse recently, while 46% say crime is getting much worse “around the country.” They split evenly on whether the best solution to crime is “more police on the streets” or mental health care and social services, with about 25% supporting either approach.
• Working-class voters in Arizona, Michigan, and North Carolina are split on the subject of school vouchers. Michiganders squarely oppose them, with 38% supporting vouchers and 49% opposing. Arizonans support vouchers by a 49-40 margin, as do North Carolinians by a 46-41 margin. However, when framed as a choice between funding public and private schools, working Americans overwhelmingly (76%-24% on average across the three states) prefer improving the quality of local public schools to using taxpayer dollars to subsidize private schools.
In November, PPI released a companion poll in a report titled “Winning Back Working America: A PPI/YouGov Survey of Working-Class Attitudes,” by PPI President Will Marshall. This study delves into the opinions and attitudes of working-class voters, providing essential insights for Democratic strategies leading up to the 2024 elections.
The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) is a catalyst for policy innovation and political reform based in Washington, D.C. Its mission is to create radically pragmatic ideas for moving America beyond ideological and partisan deadlock. Learn more about PPI by visiting progressivepolicy.org. Find an expert at PPI and follow us on Twitter.
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Media Contact: Ian O’Keefe – iokeefe@ppionline.org
Since the 2016 election, the Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) has focused intently on what we believe is the Democratic Party’s overriding political imperative: Regaining the allegiance of working Americans who don’t hold college degrees. The party has suffered severe erosion among non-college white voters, and is losing support among non-college Black, Hispanic, and Asian American voters.
Non-college voters account for about three-quarters of registered voters and about two-thirds of actual voters. Basic math dictates that Democrats will have to do better with these working-class voters if they want to restore their competitiveness outside urban centers and build durable majorities. The party’s history and legacy point in the same direction: Democrats do best when they champion the economic aspirations and moral outlook of ordinary working Americans.
To help them relocate this political north star, PPI has commissioned a series of YouGov polls on the beliefs and political attitudes of non-college voters, with a particular focus on the battleground states likely to decide the outcome of this November’s national elections. This poll, taken April 26 to May 31, is the second in the series.
In addition to illuminating where Democrats stand with non-college voters, these three surveys inform the work of PPI’s new Campaign for Working America, launched this year in partnership with former U.S. Representative Tim Ryan of Ohio. Its mission is to develop and test new themes, ideas, and policy proposals that can help center-left leaders make a new economic offer to working Americans, find common ground on contentious cultural issues like immigration, crime, and education, and rally public support for keeping America strong and engaged in the defense of freedom abroad.
YouGov sampled a total of 6,033 working-class voters, including 902 working-class voters in a national sample, 843 in Michigan, 833 in Pennsylvania, 816 in Arizona, 812 in Georgia, 803 in North Carolina, 520 in Wisconsin, and 503 in Nevada. Each sample was weighted separately, with some respondents from the national sample pooled into their respective state samples for those separate weights.
Our respondents, like working-class voters in general, are disproportionately conservative and Republican in their political habits. Donald Trump won them in our national poll 47-41. Trump won working-class voters in each state in this sample by 7-10 percentage points. This includes a small but consistent gender imbalance, with Trump’s vote margin consistently 2-4 percentage points higher among men than women.
About 36% of this sample is Democratic, 38% Republican, and 26% Independent — in other words, considering Trump’s electoral fortunes among this population, this survey includes independents and Democrats who are much more likely to support Trump than voters with these partisan inclinations would be among the general population.
About 14% of the sample is Black, 13% of the sample is Hispanic, and the rest is white. Less than 2% of the sample is Asian or Middle Eastern. While Trump likely won less than 10% of Black voters overall in 2020 and just over one-third of Hispanic voters, this poll shows him winning almost 13% of working-class Black voters and about 40% of working-class Latino voters. These non-white Trump voters are disproportionately male, with Trump winning almost twice as many Black and Latino men as Black and Latino women.
Vladyslav Ripko’s day job is working for the Ukrainian government as a financial analyst. But in the evenings and on weekends, he and his friends make drones for the army. He calls their group an “enthusiast collective.” All 12 members volunteer their time. They raise money for drone components on a crowdfunding platform. One volunteer with a 3D printer makes small parts they cannot buy. The team assembles the components in a Kyiv workshop and sends the finished product to the front using a commercial package service.
Unlike many larger Ukrainian drone producers, Ripko’s amateur collective receives no direct help from the government. Still, he said, he benefits from the government’s campaign to support private businesses building unmanned autonomous vehicles, or UAVs, for the armed forces.
Some half-dozen government agencies, including the Defense Ministry and the Ministry of Digital Transformation, have provided tax breaks, start-up grants, and technical support, rolling back the red tape and regulation that hem in much of the rest of the Ukrainian economy. The result is that more than 200 registered companies—some industry insiders count more than 500 producers if you include smaller firms and volunteers in garages—now supply troops with hundreds of thousands of drones a month.
The UK sees its first change in government since Brexit. This episode explores how Keir Starmer will tackle relations with the EU, US and Middle East, as well as asylum policy. Andrew Mueller speaks with PPI’s Claire Ainsley, Anand Menon, Mina Al-Oraibi and Sarah Singer.
Starmer’s tenure nearly came to a quick end. In 2021 the party lost a special election in Hartlepool, a Labour heartland, to the Conservatives, which nearly prompted him to quit, aides say.
Starmer’s aides looked to other social democrats across the world for inspiration. They saw how the Biden campaign had succeeded against Trump in 2020 by promising an alternative to chaos. In Germany and Australia, staid center-left politicians, Olaf Scholz and Anthony Albanese, had won victories running tightly disciplined, unshowy campaigns, says Claire Ainsley, who was Starmer’s executive director of policy and now works at the U.S.-based Progressive Policy Institute.
“We needed to target towns and suburbs around the country,” she said. “We couldn’t just be the party of metropolitan voters in the big cities.” That meant ditching a lot of progressive policies to attract back working class voters and present themselves as a party which respected national security and business, she says.
Other attempts to expand antitrust doctrine have sputtered, too. A judge dismissed buyout shop Welsh Carson from a lawsuit against the dominant Texas anesthesiology practice it backs, undermining fledgling efforts to target private equity firms. The Republican Party faction that rejects neo-Brandeisian notions has attacked such losses with gusto. The House of Representatives recently voted to reduce the DOJ’s already-meager annual antitrust funding by nearly a fifth, to $193 million.
In terms of caseload volumes alone, the DOJ and FTC have not been especially active either. Granted, the number of deals arriving at the agencies has spiked, opens new tab, with more than 3,000 flagged in both 2021 and 2022, up around 50% from most of Trump’s term. Nonetheless, both the number of in-depth investigations of deals and challenges to them, as a percentage of those designated for scrutiny, peaked during President Barack Obama’s administration, according to an analysis conducted by Diana Moss at the Progressive Policy Institute.
It was a chaotic party under Corbyn, who hailed from the unpolished far left and enraged many colleagues. Starmer held several senior roles but also participated in a failed plot to topple Corbyn, finally replacing him in 2020 after Labour suffered a colossal defeat to then-Prime Minister Boris Johnson.
“It’s hard to overstate how much that election had damaged the party,” Claire Ainsley, Starmer’s former policy guru, said in an interview. “Morale was at rock bottom, its spirit and purpose had been broken” and it was 26 points behind in the polls, added Ainsley, who is who is now a director at the Progressive Policy Institute, a Washington-based think tank.
Supporters say Starmer’s remaking of Labour — now 20 points ahead — shows he can enact radical change. It has become a sleek, professionalized electoral force, while Starmer has cast himself as Corbyn’s antithesis.
