The scandals of Northern Rock, Royal Bank of Scotland, British Home Stores, Carillion and many other corporate failings highlight what can go wrong, given the largely undemocratic and unaccountable nature of our economy. Without any serious checks and balances, bad decisions in the boardroom pass unchallenged, often with dire consequences for hundreds of thousands employees and consumers.

Britain is, in effect, an economic dictatorship, with an extraordinary concentration of economic power and wealth. At the level of individual enterprises, a small elite of directors, managers and major shareholders decide everything, to the exclusion of employees, consumers and the wider public.

It is, in part, this lack of economic democracy and accountability that brought Britain to the brink of catastrophe in 2008 and has left the country vulnerable ever since.