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AbstractThe eightieth anniversary of the Beveridge inquiry is a timely moment to consider how the landmark report is used within contemporary UK politics. Calls for a 'new Beveridge' reflect a desire for a rupture with the past and the creation of a radical new welfare consensus. But this reflects a misunderstanding: Beveridge's approach was organic in nature, building on decades of experimentation, politically contested rather than consensual, and intellectually pluralist rather than moored to a single ideological worldview. The real insight Beveridge offers us today flows not from his substantive agenda—which was rooted in a particular set of historic circumstances—but as an approach to securing social reform. Successful welfare advances over the last generation have drawn on these 'Beveridgean instincts'. Rather than calling for a new twenty‐first century blueprint to be handed down from above, reformers should build on experimentation and successful incremental change, from within the UK and abroad.

Lessons from New Labour's asset‐based welfare strategy

Gavin Kelly and Nick Pearce argue that progressive politics must seek to understand long‐term social and economic trends and the electoral shifts that will come in their wake. Today's politicians mustn't let political short‐termism and the fallout from the Brexit crisis deflect them from the work of understanding how these forces will shape the politics of the 2020s.

Seeking to provoke serious debate on a credible social democratic agenda for the coming decade, Gavin Kelly and Nick Pearce set out the magnitude of the economic and fiscal challenges facing Britain in the next parliament and beyond, and offer ideas for rising to them.

Shareholder value is assumed to be the ruling idea in Anglo‐American corporate governance. This paper first reviews the historical origins of the idea of shareholder value in the UK and the particular theoretical assumptions about the company which underpin it. It assesses the reasons why it was subjected to so little subsequent political challenge, and contrasts this with US experience. This historical and theoretical context is then used to explore the current debate on stakeholding in the UK, whether the UK system of corporate governance needs reform, and if so in which direction. Four main positions on stakeholding are identified – property rights, enlightened managerialism, active shareholders, and corporate pluralism. The paper concludes with an assessment of the political and legal pressures for reform of the UK model of corporate governance and the prospects for any significant change.