When privatisation came together with deregulation (epitomised by Thatcher’s sweeping overnight deregulation of financial markets in the ‘Big Bang’ of 1986), the very idea of the state was remade to fit the Consumer Story. What could be provided for consumers by businesses would be, with government getting out of the way as much as possible. From i

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in the early 21st Century, the Consumer Story is collapsing under the weight of its own contradictions, and the Citizen Story is emerging. People are dissatisfied with being mere Consumers, yearn for deeper agency even though we lack the words to express it, and have an innate if imprecise sense that authentic participation holds the key to a brigh

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America’s fabled frontiers offered freedom, limitless growth, and abundance to its rugged individualists and lone rangers, not just geographically but economically and socially. Limits and scarcity were Old World ideas. Liberation, independence, potential, self-reliance, choice: these constituted the American Dream. They were also the chief selling

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