David Miliband attacks David Cameron's 'muscular liberalism'

David Miliband has made a rare intervention into frontline British politics to warn David Cameron his recent attack on state multiculturalism risks pushing people with concerns about race and immigration into "latent hostility or active enmity".

In a Guardian article, the former foreign secretary says the prime minister's "muscular liberalism" offers little to people who are craving what he calls a "greater sense of security" in an ever changing world.

Miliband, defeated by his brother Ed for the Labour leadership last year, makes his criticism of the PM as he endorses a report by the Searchlight Educational Trust into race, multiculturalism and identity. The report, in which 5,000 people were surveyed by the Populus polling organisation, found Britain is now divided into what it called six social "tribes":

• Confident multiculturalists, comprising 8% of the population, who are most likely to be graduates and entirely comfortable with Britain's multicultural society.

• Mainstream liberals, 16% of the population, who are educated and "see immigration as a net benefit" to Britain and only differ from the first group in their enthusiasm about multiculturalism, according to the report.

• Identity ambivalents, 28% of the population, who come from less affluent backgrounds and include black minority ethnic groups. "They are more likely to be working class, to live in social housing and to view immigration through the prism of its economic impact on their opportunities and the social impact on their communities," the report says. This group tend to identify with Labour.

• Cultural integrationists, 24% of the population, who are older and more prosperous. They are likely to have concerns about the "impact of immigration on national identity and about immigrants' willingness to integrate". They are more likely to identify with the Tories.

• Latent hostiles, 10% of the population, who are more likely to be older and not educated to university level. "For them, immigration has undermined British culture, public services and their own economic prospects," the report says.

• Active enmity, 13% of the population, who tend to be unemployed and unskilled. They tend to be "opposed to all ethnicities or religions other than their own", the report says.

In his Guardian article, Miliband says Cameron's recent speech on multiculturalism was aimed at the "cultural integrationists" who, according to the former foreign secretary, "accept diversity as long as there is an integrated national culture, the rule of law, and respect for authority". In his speech, the PM said that multiculturalism, which had started out as a well meaning attempt to ensure that immigrants were able to preserve traditions, had ended up encouraging division.

But Miliband warns that severe spending cuts and Cameron's speech were in danger of leaving key groups feeling neglected. "A long period of low wages, casualisation of work, unemployment, higher prices, fiscal cuts (many are receiving tax credits), VAT and fuel duty increases will refract into greater identity anxiety," he writes.

"David Cameron's 'muscular liberalism' has little to offer in giving identity ambivalents the greater sense of security they crave. The risk is that significant numbers in this group leap-frog to latent hostility or active enmity."

The PM outlined his concerns about multiculturalism when he told the Munich security conference on 5 February: "Under the doctrine of state multiculturalism, we have encouraged different cultures to live separate lives, apart from each other and apart from the mainstream. We've failed to provide a vision of society to which they feel they want to belong. We've even tolerated these segregated communities behaving in ways that run counter to our values."

Miliband calls for what he calls an "accepting pluralism with a common core of shared values". He writes: "Compared to some other European countries, we in the UK can consider ourselves relatively lucky in our experience of extremist politics. There have been hard fought battles. But serious extremist parties have not got a grip. However, research published today on behalf of the Searchlight Educational Trust shows how people can become lured towards more aggressive forms of identity politics. It shows we can't complacently assume we are exceptional in the European context. We are not."