The services were privatised long ago and the companies negotiated long-term contracts that extend well beyond the time local elections are held

The services were privatised long ago and the companies negotiated long-term contracts that extend well beyond the time local elections are held. Councils can change, but the contracts still apply.The same applies to the collection of street litter. There is no way a group of supposedly empowered citizens could do so.This is one of the understated scandals of modern times and a reason why voters feel disengaged. They can scream about the state of their virtually non- existent and rural bus services, and yet are powerless.

The messy, rushed, municipal privatisations of the 1980s mean that a newly elected council cannot remove a poorly performing private company. As Miliband appreciates, one of the reasons why England has only one world-class city now is the powerhouses lack much power.One of the reasons for the powerlessness also prevents the greater empowerment of individuals that Miliband seeks. In an essay in the autumn of 2000, Miliband hailed a book by the historian Asa Briggs, Victorian Cities, and noted the productive virtues of what he called the great municipal powerhouses. He envisages central government devolving power to councils which will hand it over to communities, and gives some precise examples as to how this might work. But Miliband knows that the astonishing rise of Britain’s cities in the 19th century was largely the result of a vibrant municipal culture.I know he knows this because he wrote as such when he was still functioning behind the scene in Downing Street.

In doing so, he starts out on the long journey towards proving that a modern state can be enabling and liberating rather than a threat. This is an argument that must be had and can be won.The great gaping gap in Miliband’s vision as expressed so far is the need for revived local government. It was the growing problems of bankruptcy, inefficiency and patchy provision within the third sector that necessitated the emergence of a “welfare state”.Here is the dividing line with the Conservatives, who tend to portray the state as a wrecker of innovation in the past and an obstacle in the future Miliband argues that the opposite is the case. He stressed the voluntary sector tended to flourish at a local level in partnership with an active state: “Nations with more generous state support, such as in Scandinavia, have higher levels of social capital and trust than those with smaller states. Meanwhile, in the US, states with a more activist governmental tradition, such as in Minnesota, have more vibrant voluntary sectors than those with the small-state tradition.In the 19th century in Britain, it was the inadequacy and, in some cases, decline of friendly societies that resulted in the expansion of the state, not the state which squeezed out the cooperative movement. I can exclusively reveal that it has no future, as the Primrose Hill set does not exist.