Open, Reach

If there is to be a Universal Service Obligation, as there must be, then, as with the Royal Mail, the case for the public ownership of Openreach is urgent and unanswerable.

As long ago as March, we were told there were going to be Independent Directors of Openreach. Are there any yet? If so, then who are there, and where did they come from?

Instead of protecting the powerbase of the municipal Labour Right, we need to be bypassing it and cutting our own deals for representation in the new educational order, a representation that we seldom or never enjoyed in the old one.

Instead of protecting the privileges of the most Liberal Establishment institution of all time, we need to be bypassing it and cutting our own deals for representation in the new broadcasting order, a representation that we seldom or never enjoyed in the old one.

And instead of being pitifully grateful if some Fabian or Progress grandee is appointed to one of these economically, socially, culturally and politically vital new positions, we need to be bypassing that little world and cutting our own deal for the representation that we seldom or never enjoyed in the old nationalised industries.

Theresa May at least professes to support elected workers' and consumers' representation in corporate governance. She could and should start here. Within a reformed structure of urgently and unanswerably necessary public ownership.

Be the change.