As we tried to get our heads around events outside the cafe, uninvited pictures were taken of us by what appeared to be paparazzi. Obviously, we weren’t celebrities but our Caucasian skin probably led to the presumption that we were American and maybe “grieving Americans in Oaxaca” was thought a picture worth having. Our picture, though, didn’t appear in the local newspapers that we bought and which somewhere, probably my parent’s house in Cumbria, I’m fairly sure I retain as a piece of local perspective on an epoch defining event.

For the most part, the Mexicans with whom we had contact were shocked and respectful. I remember a conversation in Spanish in our hotel reception coming to a hushed silence as we returned. The receptionists looked at us, looked at the reports from New York on the TV behind them and looked again at us. We didn’t speak much Spanish and they didn’t speak much English, but their body language communicated a bewilderment and concern that we, as assumed Americans, might be more directly impacted (which, thankfully, we weren’t).

My friend and I graduated from Durham University a few months before and I’d been a know-it-all, smart-arse presence in politics tutorials. In these tutorials, I had a (probably conceited and almost certainly naive) answer to any point of view. As we reflected on events, on the balcony of our hotel room, overlooking the city, with its rich Spanish Empire-era architecture, I had no answers. I had barely anything to say. This strike against the great power of our time was utterly beyond my ken.     

The next day the main square of Oaxaca was packed with farmers, with their traditional dress, pitchforks and placards. Primarily, they seemed to be protesting some local issue. The placards that jumped out, though, were those that featured pictures of the attacks on the Twin Towers and the words “a strike against Yankee imperialism” (which even our Spanish was able to decipher). Those pitchforks suddenly seemed more menacing. We left before anyone turned them on us.

Given that the hotel TVs broadcast Spanish language stations and that sitting in an internet cafe all day would have cost a small fortune, our news flow remained relatively patchy over coming days. We’d quickly descend on any TV we came across, seeking out nuggets of information on any developments. The news we were dreading was America letting loose some kind of Armageddon. The possibility of massively violent retribution seemed real.

Between protesting farmers and foreboding about what America might do next, we seemed to have descended to a much more polarised and uncertain world. In this sense, we succumbed to being small cogs in the giant wheel of someone who I had never previously heard of, Osama Bin Laden. Mercifully, his master plan now seems much less on track.

Blue Labour seems less in fashion than previously. It was never the answer to every challenge facing Labour. But it does have contributions to make to Labour’s renewal. Whatever it is, blue Labour seems defiantly rooted in our country and the traditions which have shaped and continue to comfort and inspire its people. Global and jet-set it isn’t.

It feels odd, therefore, to see the core motivations of a creed as unabashedly Anglo-Saxon as Britpop reflected back in the protests convulsing India and Israel. These protests, like blue Labour, are, fundamentally, about rejecting contemporary materialism for the perceived morality and communality of exalted past eras: the dignity of Gandhi’s India; the solidarity of the Israeli kibbutz; and the warm embrace of the Labour party before the middle class dilettantes stole it from the working class. It’s easy to be cynical. There were, of course, no golden ages. But it’s what blue Labour and the protests say about the present that is most interesting.

Tobias Buck recently observed in the Financial Times that 250,000 Israelis have taken to the streets calling for social reform. He described them as ranging “from students to pensioners, and Holocaust survivors to taxi drivers” and as “perhaps the most serious challenge yet to the government of Benjamin Netanyahu”. He went on: “Many Israelis, regardless of their wealth and social status, say they still long for a return to the years when the country was less materialistic and more egalitarian. Even in cosmopolitan Tel Aviv, the ideals of the kibbutz live on”.

Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption protests have evoked the spirit of the independence struggle. Jason Burke explained in the Observer that his “asceticism – he eats yoghurt for breakfast, chapatis and a single portion of vegetables for lunch and has just a glass of lemon juice for dinner – has a deep resonance in a time when unbridled materialism is the dominant social ethic”. The bigger question, according to Burke, that Hazare has posed is: “What is this new India that is being created with its 8% year-on-year economic growth rates”?

The financial crisis brutally forced Iceland to confront its national purpose. Sam Knight wrote of this in August’s Prospect. He was told by an Icelandic campaigner: “Everyone said, ‘Let’s go back to fishing’”. Another Icelander said: “It (fishing) is a strong part of our identity”. The ideals of the kibbutz and the asceticism of Gandhi also persist as powerful parts of Israeli and Indian identity. This is in spite, or perhaps because, of the pervasive materialism of these societies.

Globalisation is man-made but, as its pace ever quickens and all that is solid melts into the air, it feels beyond human control. This leaves ever more people in circumstances that seem perilous, arbitrary and unfair. This leads them to questions of belonging and identity. I’ve written previously that the rise of the English Defence League is not the only instance of the search for identity turning ugly. In different ways everything from the birther movement to the success of the True Finns and Thilo Sarrazins can be seen through the same prism.

There are two lessons for the left.

First, without retreating to an unhelpful protectionism, actions need to be taken that re-claim globalisation for what it is: less arbitrary and more man-made. Globalisation isn’t some indestructible genie unleashed from the bottle, leaving us only with its wreckage. If we don’t like this globalisation – tax havens for the few; squeeze for the many – we can have another, so long as we have the political will and imagination.

Second, while talk of another globalisation isn’t fanciful, it is technocratic. Tumultuous times demand more visceral consolations. This can produce the ugly fear of the other, as in the birther movement, True Finns and Thilo Sarrazins, or it can celebrate the past glories of the kibbutz, Gandhi and fishing villages. The left can be more comfortable with the latter than the former, but shouldn’t be uncritically so. Eagerness to return to the Icelandic fishing villages of yore is leading to misguided reform to the Icelandic fishing quota system, while the authoritarianism of Hazare is troubling.

The point remains that people now require reassurances in ways that were denied them by New Labour’s narrow and shrill emphasis on the chill winds of global change. If romanticising aspects of national folk stories provides this, then we should be romantics. At the community level, romance means preserving the things that people want to see preserved, while fighting for change where it’s needed. The romance of preserving that with collective meaning should be as much of Labour’s lexicon as the hard-headed rationalism of confronting change.

While his views on immigration are as batty as the Icelandic fishing quota reforms, Maurice Glasman is quite the romantic. Globalisation can be re-made by human agency, but humans must be at ease and up-lifted in their hearts if their heads are to achieve all that they can. Let us be romantic, so that we may be rational.

The world has looked perplexed upon the UK this week. Not standing up for justice, but reduced to”violent consumerism“. Clapham Junction isn’t Tahrir Square. We don’t need the international media to tell us something is profoundly wrong after such a debilitating implosion.

We did it to ourselves and that’s what really hurts. Whatever we call this – a Jacquerie (Gabriel Milland), an intifada of the underclass (Andrew Neil/Danny Kruger) – it’s a self-inflicted wound that must rank as one of our country’s darkest episodes in my 31 years. We don’t need to weigh the grief against the miners’ strike (a civil war in which both sides, at least as far as they were represented by Arthur Scargill and Margaret Thatcher, were wrong), Hillsborough (a football match where 96 people died) and 7/7 (mass murder of Britons by Britons) to know this is a bleak and pitiful watershed.

Over a longer horizon than my lifetime, however, the past week might seem less exceptional. Many times in the past, such as in 1780, 1816 and 1936, London saw riots arguably more violent and sometimes just as ostensibly inexplicable as now. The persistence and power of our capacity to descend to disorder and glory in anarchy should be taken as a lesson from this week.

This sits ill, though, with the vaguely whiggish sense of history defaulted to by much of the left. We like to think we’ve progressed since 1780. And, of course, in lots of ways we have. Many people have blackberries now, for one thing. 1780 was no less bloody for want of blackberries. The importance of the state’s capacity to uphold law and order is as fundamental now as in 1780 or in 1651 when Thomas Hobbes wrote the Leviathan.

 But to imagine that the Leviathan of the state can be brought low simply by social media is as much of a misreading as to contend that someone loots a plasma TV because they lost their EMA. To respond to a national calamity with such pure category errors is hardly what the occasion demands. Nor are we meeting these demands by rushing to explanations heavily infused by pre-held ideologies.

For the right, this means a lack of authority in general and from fathers in particular and the destructive impacts of welfare dependency. For the left, resentments fostered by inequalities, a pervasive culture that not only tolerates but actively encourages, at many levels and countless ways, the doctrine that greed is good and that responsibilities to others are simply hindrances to be got around, not the very stuff of humanity.

Neither right or left is wholly wrong in these claims; but can we really only look deep enough into our hearts as to bleat about the same old hobby horses?

The perversity and inadequacy of this is underlined by the failure of anyone to argue in these terms beforehand. No one on the right, to the best of my knowledge, warned that absent fathers risk riots. No one on the left seriously thought the shoplifters of the world would actually unite and try to take over (although, Morrissey took that song title from a Marxist magazine, as I recall).

The plain fact is that, at least for the vast majority of us, events have blindsided us. Out of nowhere we have been exposed to primal urges and a cultural underbelly that are at once both completely alien and utterly human and of our society. The kids in Lord of the Flies were all too human and so are our looters. The difference, of course, is that those that have behaved so irresponsibly this week are, sadly, not fictional. They are our fellow citizens.

Legally and morally they must face the full consequences of their rejection of even the most basic responsibilities. It is as crass to suggest otherwise as to attempt to make cheap political hay out of events. This goes well beyond party politics. It’s about what we are as a country, as a people, as human beings. And it is an immense failure in all of these respects to have amongst us so many so detached from even the most fundamental responsibilities. We should recognise our collective failure and be open to any means, from right or left, which will best correct it.

Picasso said that destruction is the first act of creation. We’ve had the destruction. If we all now really look into our consciences, and draw the right lessons, the creation can yet follow. If we recognise the immense dignity of Tariq Jahan, and have any pride in our country and its people, we would do nothing less.

What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you use it? To whom are you accountable? How do we get rid of you?

Tony Benn wants these questions to be put to any powerful person. If Sepp Blatter retains any self-awareness whatsoever, which is doubtful, then he must cringe to have these questions applied to him.

He has great power as the president of football’s global governing body, FIFA. Following the “temporary exclusion” by FIFA’s ethics committee from football posts of Mohamed Bin Hammam, who was challenging Blatter for this post, he was yesterday re-elected, unopposed, for another four year term. The coronation of Blatter came from a body that has seen nine of its 24 executive committee members accused of corruption in recent months. While FIFA’s motto is “for the game, for the world”, the power bestowed in Blatter may not always further such high-minded ends. He seems accountable only to the executive committee, who exclusively appear able to remove the man in charge of a game loved with passion by billions.

Anthony Painter describes the tactics of Rafa Benitez as Soviet. This might better characterise the labyrinthine obscurity and obfuscation that sustains Blatter. Part of the beauty of football is in bringing diverse people together. The beautiful game is a unifying force. Now we are united in being locked out of Blatter’s politburo.

The question is whether or not we simply shrug our shoulders and return to the bread queues that ask us to fork out ever more for match tickets and the trappings of fandom. FIFA is no more legitimately a vanguard of the proletariat than is the governing party of North Korea. The fans need no such institution and, even if they did, that certainly isn’t what FIFA as it is presently constituted amounts to.

We should now be asking: why can’t the fans game be run by the fans for the fans?

This might seem hopelessly naive and idealistic. And, maybe, it is. But, as that great pragmatist Rahm Emanuel knows, a crisis should never be allowed to go to waste. FIFA is in crisis, which creates an opportunity to ask fundamental questions about its purpose.

Many hold up the transition undertaken by the IOC from the late 1990s onwards as a benchmark to which FIFA should now aspire. This would certainly bring gains of transparency, integrity and accountability. But would a modicum of democracy be too much to ask? And wouldn’t this do more than anything to ensure genuine transparency?

Members of “club england“, and equivalent bodies in the other 208 national footballing authorities recognised by FIFA, could vote to elect a delegate or two to an assembly that would appoint and scrutinise the executive body of FIFA. The executive would, of course, be composed of people seemingly capable of delivering upon such organisational challenges as are involved with FIFA world cups, but they would be directly answerable to the representatives of fans from all around the world. As a democratic institution to make the UN blush, it would bring fans together in the governance of football.

We should be realistic on FIFA and demand this supposed impossibility. Some – even Guardian writers – would contend that fans are uninterested in this democratisation. But, somehow, fans have been able to stop stuffing themselves with pies for long enough to organise a campaign for FIFA to be changed and football given to the people. Labour politicians often speak of “giving people power over the things that are important to them”. If football isn’t important to people, then I’m Leo Messi, and if this campaign doesn’t constitute a plea by fans to be given power over their game then my old man is Johan Cruyff.

Messi’s Barcelona did not just beat Manchester United on Saturday. They opened a vista onto a paradigm that is, sadly, terra nullius to English football. They sent not just Manchester United but the whole footballing culture from which they are hewn back to the tactics blackboard and training pitch as comprehensively as Hungary did when they demolished England on the same pitch in 1953. So absolutely does English football need to rethink itself that homegrown players truly capable of competing with Barcelona may be a generation away.

But what Barcelona achieved amounts only to the actualisation of Ron Greenwood’s maxim: simplicity as genius. Passing, moving, passing, moving. The basics that we – even in a country such as this where we are so quick to have kids graduate to large, muddy pitches – preach to young players. Only faster.

The best football will always be simple. It will be best run when a simple rule is applied. It’s the fans’ game and it should be run by them. This has been well understood at the fans co-operative that is FC Barcelona for a long time. The rest of football should break down the Berlin wall of FIFA and catch up.

I wrote this recently for Labour Uncut when I was on holiday in the USA.

“I know America to be a forward thinking country because otherwise why would you have let that retard and cowboy fella be president for eight years? We were very impressed. We thought it was nice of you to let him have a go, because, in England, he wouldn’t be trusted with a pair of scissors”.

With such jokes, Russell Brand, as host of the MTV awards, initiated what is becoming an Anglo-American tradition: the cheeky Brit at a major American award ceremony. Ricky Gervais followed up at the Golden Globes this year. These comedians aren’t short of lines ripping George W Bush, but what assurance can we have that the British head of state can be trusted with a pair of scissors? Or even know what scissors are?

We can, of course, have no such guarantee. Birth right determines our head of state, irrespective of their abilities with scissors or other qualities. In contrast, the commander-in-chief is subject to the most gruelling of recruitment procedures. This fundamental difference between our monarchy and their republic convinces me that no matter what wise cracks Brand may make and how many William and Kate themed souvenirs American tourists may buy, ultimately, Americans are laughing at us. The idea of Donald Trump being president is preposterous, but selecting our head of state by birth is infinitely more so.

The royal couple competes with Lady Gaga for coverage in American tabloids. Cat Deeley vomits at the prospect of fronting the US TV coverage of the big event. Such is the nerve inducing size of the audience. Every major US TV and news network had teams in London well in advance. “It’s all so royally romantic”, a CNN anchor cooed.

All of which means they are interested, right? Well, certainly. But largely in the way that museum artefacts fascinate without tremendous contemporary relevance.

Americans are fiercely proud of their constitution. Their forefathers crossed the Atlantic to enact and enjoy its rights. The royal wedding is a throwback to the world they left behind. Not a world they want to return to. They are peering through their TV screens and digital cameras at the crazy Brits. But that doesn’t mean they want to be us or see us as being especially important. Some of them are enticed. All of them are, at core, pitying. We are crazy, after all.

We’re crazier than Arabs who recently seemed so separate and peculiar. Where once the terrain was deemed too arid for freedom and democracy, now Egyptians proclaim the same rights to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness as have always defined Americans. We, on the other hand, remain subjects, not citizens.

The Arab spring is as inspiring as the Gettysburg address, but its outcome remains uncertain and, as with an increasing amount of things, beyond America’s control. America still wants to be the shining house on the hill. But it knows the world is changing. And it is worried.

Whatever else is achieved by William and Kate, they will not encourage the US to see the new allies that they need in the UK. The wedding reinforces the perception that the key global axis no longer exists in the Atlantic but in the Pacific. Europe is ageing, uncompetitive and stuck in a past exemplified by the royal wedding. Asia is rising, assertive and in command of events. Millions of Europeans flocked to Barack Obama even before he was president, but he is deeply pragmatic. He has limited emotional attachment to Europe and wouldn’t allow himself to be distracted by one even if he did.

He might think more of Europe if we were able to punch our weight in military and economic affairs. While the euro threatens to collapse amid its contradictions, European states struggle to muster a credible military response to a crisis happening on the other side of the Mediterranean. Just because the UK isn’t in the euro-zone and is one of the more militarily capable European states (though, one whose military ambitions threaten to outstrip our capacities) doesn’t mean we should congratulate ourselves. Instead of leaving an empty chair at the negotiating table – David Cameron’s style – the UK should be leading in Europe. On Friday, rather than taking such steps as will be necessary to create a Europe fit for the twenty-first century, the prime minister will be eulogising the hereditary principle.

The continued application of this principle distorts what we think of ourselves and what others think of us. So long as it is applied it won’t be possible to bring up children in the UK and truly tell them that they can ascend to any station, nor will others see us as fully engaged in modernity. The Arab word has boldly embraced the future (in spite of our endorsement of the past by having the crown prince of Bahrain attend the Royal wedding). So should we.

There is a piece of land registered on Landshare in every postcode in the UK. If you stacked every film shipped weekly by Netflix in a single pile, it would be taller than Mount Everest. The value of goods traded annually on ebay is more than the GDP of 125 countries. Bike sharing is the fastest-growing form of transportation in the world.

Something is going on here. And Rachel Botsman and Roo Rogers think they know what it is: collaborative consumption. Defenders of the big society have latched on to the decentralised, networked mega-trend that Botsman and Rogers describe in their book, “what’s mine is yours – how collaborative consumption is changing the way we live.”

After Botsman gave a version of her stump speech at the RSA last month, I asked whether this trend contains any lessons for Labour. She was, understandably, reticent to politicise her baby. The big society shouldn’t be owned by any political party, nor should collaborative consumption, she told me.

Of course, she’s right. The civic institutions that are supposed to make up the big society were around long before David Cameron tried to destroy them. And collaborative consumption is too nebulous a concept for any politician to convincingly declare it their passion. I’m not even sure that it adds up to a unified idea. There are, however, elements of Botsman and Rogers’ argument that hit upon some truths that Labour should absorb.

They claim that people are sharing again and creating three distinct kinds of consumption: product service systems (PSS), redistribution markets and collaborative lifestyles. Both what we consume and how we consume are changed by these systems. But do not worry. We are not all turning into hippies. Self-interest remains the prime driver, with improved social outcomes a mere by by-product.

Netflix is a popular PSS model because people want to watch films, not collect DVD boxes. Access is the privilege; ownership is the burden. As Robin Chase, founder of Zipcar, another PSS variant, says: “It’s the car your mother said you could never have. When you are not using it, it is someone else’s problem, and who cares”. As well as being more fun, access tends to reduce carbon emissions. Think of the carbon saved from all the DVD boxes not manufactured for Netflixites and cars un-owned by Zipsters.

Ebay, freecycle and craigslist are well-known illustrations of redistribution markets. It is the desire to buy, sell and swap used goods which creates these markets. But, as this occurs, carbon is saved that would otherwise be emitted in manufacturing new goods. These markets also build trust amongst strangers, because market participants know that their behaviour today will affect their ability to trade tomorrow. Ebay buyers, for example, want to buy from sellers with positive feedback ratings, so negative ratings limit the ability of sellers to trade.

TimeBanks USA, an enabler of collaborative lifestyles, has been described by its founder as “a time machine taking us back to an age when we knew each other and trusted one another”. Time banks exist all over the world and all apply the same principle. For every hour you spend doing something valued by someone in your community (cleaning their gutters)  you earn a credit to be banked at an online portal and spent on things you value (Spanish lessons). Participants are incentivised by accessing something they want. But 72% of time bankers report that participation gives them a stronger sense of community.

Irrespective of the collaborative consumption model, people are sharing because it serves their self-interest. Our bread should never depend on the benevolence of bakers. Enhanced sustainability, trust and community spirit can, however, be achieved, as people follow their self-interests through consuming collaboratively. This isn’t to say that people are completely uninterested in these social outcomes, as the MyBO activity tracker illustrates.

This tracker was designed by Chris Hughes, a co-founder of Facebook. He only works on projects that will have “far-reaching social and life-changing impact but that are also fun, modern and smart”. Those who opened trackers shared a belief in a particular outcome: the election of Obama as US President. But they also wanted the fun of the interactive game that was enabled by the tracker. The more fun they had the more campaigning they did. If we want to change the world, we may not succeed unless we make the journey fun, modern and smart (does this sound like your latest Labour party meeting)? Total abstinence and a good filing system were never the right signposts.

Labour is increasingly winning the argument that the big society cannot fill the gaps left by the government’s cuts. We are right to stress that it isn’t an either-or choice between state and society, but a question of what state and society can achieve together. However, to fully win this argument we need to paint a more vivid picture of the kind of reformed state we favour.

Such a state would harness the tools of collaborative consumption and direct them towards our Labour goals. Libraries could incorporate hubs for time banks. Transport authority websites might put driving commuters in touch with others making the same commute and interested in car sharing. Sure starts could host markets for exchanging used children’s clothes and toys. Local authorities might open up public land to community groups through Landshare.

Many small changes of this sort will be required to make the state fun, modern and smart.

Blood, sweat and tears have spilt recently in Liverpool. Too much by supporters anguished at the financial plight of a great institution and the grim reality of listless defeat at Goodison Park; more by millionaires who gained control of this institution than by the millionaires responsible for this loss.

The illusion that Liverpool FC would emerge fighting fit from the Tom Hicks and George Gillett era was shattered by Everton. While the reds battled to victory against Blackburn yesterday, much needs to improve. But it isn’t only on the pitch that the lessons of recent years need to be learnt.

The promise of New England sports ventures (NESV), the new owners, to listen to supporters is welcome. Talk, however, is cheap. Fans have been left jaded after previous commitments have been reneged upon.

Now this promise should be backed up by institutional reform. This should mean, at least, a fan on the board. More ambitiously, this might mean taking up Rogan Taylor’s proposal that NESV look towards fans holding a significant minority of shares in the club; perhaps, as much as 25 percent. While the dream of full mutualisation and Liverpool FC being owned and run such that it embeds Scouse pride in a similar way to the fan-owned FC Barcelona in Catalonia may be distant, this proposal would have radical consequences.

Shareholding fans better integrate the views and interests of fans in how the club is run. The alarm bells about Hicks and Gillett are likely to have rung earlier and more loudly had fans also had shares in the club. Such shareholders would have become the focus of agitations against the ancien regime.

That’s one reason why the Taylor proposal may not be taken up by NESV. It would diminish their power. It would also dilute what profits they hope to glean from the club. In the real world, few corporate battles have ended with the victors giving their spoils to their customers.

John W Henry, the major investor in NESV, has been reading up on his “customers”. He’s been spotted with Taylor’s book Football and its fans: supporters and their relations with the game, 1885-1995. This will have taught him that football fans are a different breed from the consumers of most goods.

While the average cost of a cinema ticket in the UK in 2009 was £5.44, the average price for an adult-sized, half-sleeved premier league replica shirt is £40.89. You can still, for now, visit museums for free. But the average ticket price across all divisions (premier league, championship, league one and league two) is now £24.84.

That the average cost of supporting a premiership club in 2007 was £1,331 is testament not only to the money to be made from owning a club but also to the loyalty of fans. This financial investment is more than matched by fans’ investment of time and emotion in their clubs.

This dedication shouldn’t be abused by unscrupulous owners. “Respect the club”, Alex Ferguson told “the boy”. He has never had any need to make such requests of Manchester United’s fans. Through wind and rain, thick and thin, football fans keep coming back. Why?

Manchester United was here a long time before Wayne Rooney and will, as Mark Lawrenson observed last week, be here a long time after Wayne Rooney leaves, no matter when this happens. Football clubs are beating hearts of civic pride nourished through the ages by their fans. It isn’t the Sky Sports hype machine, with its incessant self-congratulatory tirades about “the best league in the world”, that keeps fans coming back. It is to be part of, and to sustain, this lifeblood of social capital and meaning. There’s a Coles Corner in every town and there’s a football club. And they are there, and will continue to be so, for important reasons.

This importance resulted in the parliamentary debate secured by Steve Rotheram, the Labour MP for Liverpool Walton, on the role of football supporters in the governance of professional football clubs being one of the best attended Westminster Hall debates ever. Political engagement must be maintained. Not least because wider football governance issues, in addition to further fan involvement in the running of clubs, are vital.

Both Barcelona and Real Madrid are fan-owned, but dominate la liga both financially and on the pitch. They earned 51 percent of la liga revenues in 2008-09, largely due to an uneven split in broadcast revenues, and last season these two finished 25 points above other teams in the league. If Liverpool and Manchester United, say, were wholly mutualised, but had a similar relationship to the rest of premiership as Barcelona and Real Madrid has to the rest of la liga, all would not be happy with English football.

It is the German bundesliga, not la liga, which we should take as our inspiration. While bundesliga clubs are required to be 51 percent owned by fans, it is the extent of regulation in Germany that distinguishes the bundesliga from other leagues. Politicians should tune out the complacency of the Sky Sports hype machine, acknowledge that the turkeys of the Premiership are loath to vote for the Christmas of the Bundesliga and make efforts to take forward regulatory reforms, as well as other policy initiatives, that properly acknowledge the real reasons for and meaning of the fidelity of football fans.

First, the English team would benefit from cutting the Premiership to 18 teams and a winter break. I’d also shed no tears for the Carling Cup while we are scrapping things.

Second, we need to produce more and better young players. Why aren’t we already doing this? English kids play 11-a-side too early on large muddy pitches and are trained almost exclusively to win. In other countries, in contrast, they are trained to have skills and to have a football mind-set. “The control of the game is everything”, as Terry Venables said of the Spanish style. Kids would better learn how to control games and balls by playing more 5 and 7-a-side than they tend to in the UK on better surfaces. This wasn’t said on the Lineker show but I’m sure I heard somewhere that at Ajax kids only play on concrete pitches until the age of 14. The Dutch way doesn’t always have to be the Nigel De Jong way. Indeed, few countries in the world have more football brain per capita than the Dutch. This brain is developed by kids growing up as footballing jacks-of-all-trades; not just having the big lad being the central defender and the quick one being the winger. It’s important to develop an appreciation of the game in the round.

Third, in different ways, both Spain and Germany have been through crisis periods in the past 20 years. But they used these crises to step back and review the way they organised their football. We, too, now need to have the courage to admit where things are not going right and take appropriate action. Sadly, I fear that the English game is institutionally and culturally incapable of really doing this.