The media-led assault on the British aid budget represents all the worst aspects of populism, David Miliband will say on Wednesday, warning of the dangers of falling victim to the virus of fake news and blaming others for Britain’s problems.

The president of the International Rescue Committee and former Labour foreign secretary will also lambast Donald Trump for his executive order banning refugees, describing it as “a pernicious smoke signal sent to the world that humanitarian values are on fire”.

Miliband will say in a speech in Oxford that the US president’s ban has been a propaganda coup for Islamic State: “The last thing that Isis and other hatemongers want is for the US and Europe to be a beacon of tolerance and compassion in the world.”

Anti-populist forces must get out of their “defensive crouch” and provide answers before global migration tears western societies apart, Miliband will add.

“The danger is clear: that nationalist walls define the first half of the 21st century in the way that the iron curtain defined the second half of the 20th century. The danger is doubled because the biggest problems in the world – climate change, nuclear proliferation, refugee flows – are never going to be solved by a retreat to tribalism. Far from remedying the vagaries of globalisation that will compound them.

“The alternative to this retreat requires not just new political messaging – different threats, different villains, different heroes – but also a new policy agenda.”

Miliband will say that attacks on the UK’s aid budget “repeat the familiar tropes of fake news”.

“Just as leaving the EU was trumpeted as a way to raise money for the NHS – money which is now shown to be fictitious – so a raid on the aid budget is offered as a salve for an NHS in crisis. Yet the aid budget is one-tenth the NHS budget; and the problems of the NHS are not born of largesse in foreign aid.

“The truth is, aid spending works out to be £290 per person in the UK between the ages of 16 and 64 per year. That is less than the average citizen spends on food they never eat.”

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Miliband will criticise the UK government for ending its commitment to house thousands of child refugees. Photograph: Louisa Gouliamaki/AFP/Getty Images

Miliband believes ministers have so far stood firm in the face of this assault, and deserve praise for doing so.

But he will warn it is deeply shaming that the UK government has decided to end its commitment to provide a safe haven for thousands of vulnerable lone child refugees in Europe, after only 350 were brought to Britain.

“The expectation was that 3,000 children stranded in Europe would be helped, but the government seems set to have paused the programme with a little over a tenth of that number arrived in the UK.”

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“Our country is more than capable of helping these children, who are desperate and vulnerable. At a time when the US is questioning its historic role as a leader in refugee resettlement, the EU should lead in shoring up the foundations of the global humanitarian regime. Sixty thousand refugees shut out of American resettlement have been left in limbo. The EU should not be adding to that pool of misery; it should be cutting into it.

He will add: “The US has effectively foregone its moral authority to call upon other countries doing the bulk of refugee hosting – Jordan, Lebanon, Turkey, Pakistan, and Kenya – to keep their borders open and provide shelter.

“If these countries close their borders or force returns to countries in conflict, the regional instability and insecurity that results will have global consequences, including for Europe.”

Miliband, a candidate for the Labour leadership in 2010 when he was defeated by his brother Ed, will also warn that the politics and economics of global integration, for a long time in harmony, are now in conflict: “The global economy is boosted by migration; the politics of migration is tearing western societies apart.”



He will point to a new impasse in politics caused by globalisation. “While global economics is boosted by open trade, local politics is in revolt. Global economics demands investment in the the young and the retraining of the middle aged, but local politics is driven by the high voting rates of the old. Global economics leads to a gradual reduction in global economic inequalities. Seventy-two per cent of the world’s population were in extreme poverty in 1950 compared to 10% today, but local politics is more concerned with inequality within nations than between people across the world.”