How can we build an economy for people, not profit? It can be done from the bottom up, as new businesses are set up; and it can emerge through transformation of existing private businesses, many of which already recognise the strong social benefit of trading but don’t yet self-identify or promote themselves as social businesses.

But what about those organisations or services currently in public ownership, which are expected either to be closed down or transferred into some sort of private ownership? Or recently “spun-out” public services, currently struggling to find their new identity after a process which left them insufficient time to think it through previously, or time to allow staff, users and local communities to have a voice or play an appropriate role?

Does the co-operative sector have a vision, even an ambition for a co-operative or democratic approach to public ownership: something “owned by people and for people”?

Writing in the Observer in 1917, the author of the Labour Party’s constitution explained that his use of the phrase common ownership in the old clause 4 intended to encompass everything “from the co-operative store to the nationalised railway”. Sidney Webb clearly had a broad or pluralistic understanding of common ownership, and his intention was to include any such approach to democratic or people-based ownership and governance as was appropriate in the circumstances.