You can read the press release here.

And download the report here.

You can read his speech explaining the findings here:

ACEVO COMMISSION ON YOUTH UNEMPLOYMENT – REPORT LAUNCH

DAVID MILIBAND, OPENING REMARKS

6TH FEBRUARY 2012

Welcome everyone and thanks very much for coming. I want to start by thanking the commissioners who have put a lot of time and thought into this report for the last four months. It has been a challenging and broadening experience for all of us.

I am here for three reasons.

First, because I see in my own constituency how long term youth unemployment is again haunting a generation of young people.  More young people are doing better at school and college, but more are long term claimants.  In South Shields, there has been a 210 per cent increase last year, bringing the total number of those out of work for six months or more to 485.  I want to make a difference …

Labour needs comradely and serious debate. So it should be with the former deputy leader Roy Hattersley’s recent article (with Kevin Hickson) “In praise of social democracy” for the Political Quarterly. Roy has been pretty consistent in his views over 40 years, even if the framing labels in the party (right, left, new, old, radical, conservative) have swivelled around him. His commentary on politics is born not of self-promotion but out of belief. But that doesn’t mean he is right.

In his article Roy sets out to make three arguments: that policy needs to be built on a consistent and coherent idea; that the only tenable ideological position for Labour is a social democratic commitment to greater equality and the freedom that is its product; and that Labour should eschew “news value” in favour of ideology. He is convinced that there exists an obvious instrument for putting social democracy into practice – the central national state, whose strength has been underestimated, he argues, in …

I have seen the work of the Trust in my own constituency, where it organises school visits and educates young Ambassadors for the values of Anne Frank.   There’s a personal link in that my aunt met Anne Frank’s father Otto when he came to Britain in the early 1950s in connection with the English …

One taster is worthwhile highlighting.  John (Lord) Kerr who became Head of the FCO in the 1990s and worked for John Major at Maastricht as the UK’s EU Ambassador in Brussels talked us through the contrast between the achievement of the Euro opt-out under the Major government and the car crash in December under the Cameron government.  John Major got his opt out by strenuous alliance building with Helmut Kohl; by setting out in the UK that he supported the further development of the EU; by …

Former Foreign Secretary, David Miliband on his concerns about western strategy in Afghanistan – The World at One, BBC Radio 4 (mp3)

When I gave a lecture at MIT in April, entitled Afghanistan: Mending it not just Ending It, I made some disobliging remarks about the preparation for the summer Kabul conference, and the December Bonn Conference.  I immediately received an angry letter from one of the chief organisers of the Bonn conference saying how wrong I was.  I replied that I was pleased to hear this, and looked forward to a successful conference.  Unfortunately this has not come to pass.  Suffice to say that the new word on the street from people in Afghanistan and outside is “wait for Chicago” – a reference to yet another conference, this time in Chicago, in the middle of next year.

As far as I can see the Bonn conference has …

It was humbling to meet the surviving daughter, Miriam Finkelstein, at the event.

Brian Cathcart has written that the Wiener Library is a Chamber of Horrors, but it has also proven to be a Sword of Truth.  It helped to fight the war, get prosecutions at Nuremburg, and now educates new generations.  The new premises guarantee not just its future but its accessibility and world leading position.  The move is especially timely.  I was born in 65, with the Holocaust a recent memory for my parents’ generation.  But today the Holocaust is closer to being 100 years ago than twenty, so it is receding into history.  The evidence in the …

My concern is increased when I look at a specific area that I have been working on as part of the ACEVO commission on youth unemployment.

The Chancellor’s new Youth Contract policy draws on various previous policies. But the devil, as ever, is in the detail. He’s proposing a wage subsidy for 53,000 jobs – not a job guarantee – and one thing we know about wage subsidies is that it is very difficult to incentivise employers to take the government up on the offer.

I asked the Chancellor what measures he was taking to ensure he wasn’t repeating the historic failings of subsidies for …

The evidence was pretty clearly one way.  No agreement for 12 years; declining confidence among Palestinian and Israeli populations; settlement building in defiance of the road map and the law; divided Palestinian leadership between Gaza and West Bank; American (and European) leadership focussed elsewhere; and so on.   The products of Oslo, notably a Palestinian Administration in West Bank, are there, working to improve livelihoods, delivering institution-building lauded by funders, and security that the Israelis rely on.  But no one thinks a breakthrough is around the corner.

There were three important themes.  First, the Arab Spring has opened up regional politics, but not yet broken through in a coherent way …

In April of this year I had a problem with my mobile phone account, and rang the customer service number.  The person on the other end of the line had a foreign accent, and I asked where they were. “Egypt” the man said. So I couldn’t resist asking how the revolution was going.  It was interesting. He told me that he was proud and excited. “Free to think” was how he put it.

I am in the Middle East at a conference on the future of the region, and one aspect we have discussed is what people are thinking. Polling evidence from a 6,000 strong sample is suggestive …

Philip has been described – and maligned – as a pollster, because in the 1980s he brought a dose of focus group reality to Labour’s other-worldly musings about the state and future of the country. I suppose the professional category is “political consultant”. But he was much more than that. He was a sociologist and strategist, always trying to …

Here are the article’s seven deadly sins:  1. The comparison of the UK with Spain and Italy – when our economy, bond and debt structure are different not similar. 2.  No mention of innovation, skills or reform of the financial sector.  3. One of his headline ‘announcements’ was to welcome a decision by BT, which last time I looked was no longer the responsibility of government.  4.  The idea that what has been lacking in international trade discussions is “single-mindedness”.  5. The gall to say “we still boast some of the best universities in the world” when his is the only government in the world abolishing subsidy for the humanities in higher education,  trebling …

The pictures on the TV of Israelis and Palestinians (all factions) celebrating the prisoner exchange yesterday were remarkable.  The joy for the Shalit family is obvious and personal.  There are personal stories on the Palestinian side too, no doubt, but there is also big politics at play.  Hamas had been wrongfooted by President Abbas’ popular moves at the UN, and this was their way of getting back on the scene.  The overall effect in my view is of a deal which weakens precisely the Palestinians who are leading the drive for a Palestinian state.   That carries long term dangers.  Of course there is a process of Palestinian ‘reconciliation’, but let’s see if that goes anywhere.  Daniel Levy has written an interesting ten point commentary on the deal here.

The Shalit deal was just one of the issues I discussed with George Mitchell at Chatham House on Monday.  You can watch the video above.  Senator Mitchell is a remarkable public servant (and very good politician).  He is eloquent here about the …

On Saturday I met, addressed, discussed with and learnt from 100 young Egyptian leaders.  These are the Tahrir revolutionaries of the Egyptian middle class who effectively brought down Mubarak.  They were brought together by Amr Khaled as part of his ‘Lifemakers’ programme – which trains young Egyptians to work in poor areas of the country on literacy, tackling drug abuse, and building micro-finance.  It was a wonderful event – and not just because of the location, at a hotel on Lake Fayoum, North of Cairo, where Churchill met Roosevelt (and I think Stalin) during the Second World War.

The young people were all highly educated high achievers.  They had almost all been in Tahrir Square for the revolutionary days earlier this year.  They were honest that they didn’t know that they would be creating a revolution when they started in January.  They thought they were making a noise about the direction of their country.  …

I am going to catch up with some old and new friends – I have been going to conference for over twenty years – and am looking forward to the Movement for Change fringe meeting.  When you are in opposition it is especially important to tap into the dynamic sources of energy in national life (Graeme Cooke makes this point in his recent, insightful and …

The University is extraordinary.  $1.5 billion budget, 60 000 seater football stadium, pretty staggering fees too.  But the quality of the students was remarkable.  There were thirty in my class, with a range of backgrounds (half foreign, from all round the world), and all very focussed but also very collaborative.    They wanted stories of the real thing in diplomacy,  but they also wanted to understand why the multilateral system doesn’t work, whether values can really play a role, how America positions (and mispositions) itself, how the rising powers will engage.

Every day there …

I said on Question Time that the failure to establish a Palestinian state living alongside a secure Israel was the greatest diplomatic failure in forty years. I feel that as a matter of security and justice – for both peoples. The drama in New York – public and private – this week will reflect that failure, and the mistrust it has engendered.

My view is that the use of the UN is a smart tactical move by the Palestinians. My reasoning is that nothing else has produced any give in the situation. In fact there is no peace ‘process’ to speak of. Equally, however, tactics are not the same as strategy. So the Palestinian side need to ensure that this move is not an end in itself, but a jump start to internationally backed – and timetabled – negotiations. President Obama’s domestic fix on the issue is a real constraint, but I see real danger in the argument that nothing …

Sadly it was a wasted 10 minutes. Ministers who can’t stop attacking the previous government always betray to me a sense of insecurity about themselves. The Foreign Secretary has had a year and a half to make a serious stab at what British foreign policy is for. Yet today, he spent the first half of his speech reheating his critique of thirteen years of Labour rule. But when you’re in government, point-scoring is pointless. People want you to do something. If the moving of a library from the Foreign Office to King’s College University is the headline Hague was looking for – and that was the headline on the BBC – it shows a remarkable lack of vision at a time of huge change around the …

 David writes for Project Syndicate:

Ten years after 9/11, the instant history is being written. In the French newspaper Le Monde, a highly intelligent commemorative supplement dubbed the period “The Decade of Bin Laden.” But is that right?

In the ten years since 9/11, the combined GDP of Brazil, Russia, India, and China (the BRICs) rose from 8.4% of the global economy to 18.3%. Anglo-Saxon-style capitalism crashed.

Moreover, it was the decade when Internet access went global – from 360 million people in 2000 to more than two billion people today. It was a time when the war in Iraq divided the world, but also when a civilian surge for freedom finally hit the Middle East, as millions of Muslims turned for inspiration to democratic governance, not global jihad.

None of this was the doing of Osama bin Laden. To be sure, Al Qaeda was (and is) a new …

I attended one of the Movement’s training days in the North East over the bank holiday.  It was one of the best four or five hours I have spent in the party.  People came from all backgrounds – Union Learning Fund organisers, science PHD students, experienced councillors, new members.  The day was structured around an introductory discussion of why we all joined the party.  That was more than an ice breaker.  It unearthed the emotions and motivations of people.  Then a real life situation about how people power takes on officialdom.  Then strategising about how to change our local parties.

It was moving, passionate, interesting, forward looking – everything you want from a political party.  And it was interesting to see how the discussion of Keir Hardie’s life – drunkard father who beat him, trapped down a mine at …

Call it basic but just look at the components of growth. Private consumption is depressed, not just by a few days off with the Royal Wedding, but by the substance of declining real wages and extra saving (the latter is one reason that it is foolish to argue that first quarter low growth cannot be blamed on Government policy, on the grounds that the squeeze hadn’t really started; the truth is that the Government went out of its way last year to frighten the living daylights out of people, and succeeded, with the result that spending …

“I remember my first day at Haverstock School as if it was yesterday. The year was 1978, I was 13. My trousers were flared. The haircut too long. The grin toothy  -  braces had not yet been applied. My parents had moved to London from Leeds, and I joined the North London comprehensive school in what was then called the third year (now Year 9).

I thought I would be able to handle myself. But this school had no uniforms, no briefcases and no whacks with the old plimsoll everyone called the ‘slipper’ (unlike the grammar school-turned-comprehensive where I had been in Leeds)…” You can read the full article here.

…

The best of journalism ventures where many fear to tread. War zones and corridors of power can be penetrated by the best of journalism.

So it is ironic that some of the best of journalism should this time have exposed the worst of journalism – and there couldn’t be much worse than hacking the phones of murdered teenagers, and grieving relatives of bomb victims or our forces serving abroad.  There has been an unwritten rule that newspapers covered for each other – including in defence of the weak Press Complaints Commission.  You have to say hat’s off to the Guardian for pursuing the story.

Truth is most politicians took it as given that we lived in a brutal media culture.  As Harold Wilson said sailors shouldn’t complain about the sea and politicians shouldn’t complain about the media. I’ve used that defence when at meetings members of the public have asked me about the media.

But there is a …

The Customs House Youth Theatre outside London's National Theatre

 …

Since last year I have tried to keep up my interests in foreign policy, with some speaking and teaching.  I am also trying to make a difference around the country by founding a leadership academy for community organising, to train 10,000 community leaders.  I am the Vice Chairman of Sunderland Football Club, which has an amazing community programme in the North East.

I have had a bit more time for the family the last nine months!   But my work is definitely not 9 to 5.  And I find it a struggle to stay in touch with the boys when I am abroad or when I am in the constituency without the family.

The …

Britain and China obviously have different political and legal systems. I raised human rights on visits to China, and got some push back.  Equally we have both been winners from globalisation, and work together in a range of fields, economic and political.   On my visits to China, I have found real respect for the UK, but also great national pride (not confined to China’s history since the Revolution), and a sense, reflected in Premier Wen’s comments, that we and the West generally do not know enough about Chinese history and culture, nor do enough to study them.  I hoped that the vast number of Chinese students coming to the UK would help in that, but it needs British students going the other way …