David Cameron’s progressive conservatism speech said: “With every decision government makes, it should ask: does this give power to people, or take it away?” All politicians are explicit in their desire to give people more control over their lives; what this means in practice is often more opaque. However the question of control at work is the crucial measure of power here and, given both Tory and Labour’s rush to embrace

mutualism, provides a real test of whether progressive political posturing will come to anything in practice.

The test:

Creating more equitable models of the firm is a key route to empowering people in the work place. If this was really a political priority, it ought to possible to quadruple the paltry 2 per cent of UK firms that are currently employee-owned. By 2014, a progressive government should use a range of tax incentives, advice support and venture capital funding to increase the current figure by at least four fold to 8 per cent of the economy.