As a Labour candidate during the 1980s, I must have knocked on hundreds of doors on estates where people were enthusiastically purchasing their own homes under the Tories’ ‘right to buy’ legislation. In conversation after conversation, I encountered disbelief and incomprehension that, by opposing the policy, Labour appeared intent on frustrating the aspirations of many of its lifelong supporters.

Alongside the ‘Tell Sid’ privatisations, and the wave of building society demutualisations, council house sales were critical in allowing the right to create a politically compelling vision of ownership, one centred on the notion of a mass property and share-owning democracy.

It was a vision to which Labour failed to provide a modern, attractive alternative. Hobbled by the old clause IV, which had become synonymous with central state control, we clung to an outdated notion of ‘public ownership’ – remote, Whitehall-run nationalised industries and town hall-run municipal housing.

But while the right had correctly identified the public’s desire to seek new ways to exercise control and ownership, its agenda turned out to be flawed in so many respects. Indeed, the demutualisation of the building societies symbolised the very attitude – the prioritisation of short-term gains over long-term consequences – that caused the banking crisis.

In part sparked by that crisis, a new debate is now emerging about ownership, one that I am convinced that progressives can shape and win. And we can do so by recognising that just as demutualisation reflected popular sentiment in the 1980s, so mutualism – with its principles of trust and reciprocity, common ownership and co-operation, and the premise that ‘everyone has something to contribute’ – can capture the mood of these times.

Indeed, in the wake of the credit crunch, the public have made it very clear that they are unwilling to put their trust in large organisations that they feel are not run in their interests and operate too far outside their control.

Moreover, the other great crisis of the past 18 months, the expenses scandal, has added to the public’s demand for wideranging reform and greater power over the issues that matter most to them. Thus public support has shifted towards organisations with values; those in which long-term social returns are put ahead of short-term gains and which are accountable to those with a stake in their success.

It’s no surprise, therefore, that this month a mutual, John Lewis, was, once again, named ‘Britain’s favourite retailer’ – demonstrating the public’s desire to get behind a company with a ‘partnership’ model that promotes greater engagement, loyalty and co-operation among staff and thereby generates trust in its customers.

So, in the post-banking crisis, post-expenses Britain, people want to feel a sense of ownership and control: something which both free market fundamentalism and remote and centralised statism are unable to meet.

Public services will not be immune from this mood, either. And, as we look to the future, it is important to remember that New Labour won the argument about the importance of public services, not simply by closing the gross underinvestment gap built up under the Tories, but also by focusing on the needs and demands of citizens, rather than on whether the provider of the service is from the public, private or third sectors.

Our reforms over recent years have demonstrated that public services can learn a lot by importing lessons from the private sector. In particular, the focus on citizens as consumers – with the right and the ability to exercise choice over the services provided to them – has played an important role in driving up standards, and making services more flexible and citizen-focused.

The nature of demand for public services has therefore changed, with the loosening of old constraints and the habit of accepting whatever is on offer declining. But on the supply side, we now need to do far more than hold up the model of the traditional PLC. We need, therefore, to look at other successful ways of delivering goods and services.

The reason is simple. Instead of an approach that implies that service providers alone have the responsibility for services, the challenge of engaging citizens is to achieve the opposite: to build shared responsibility for services and improve them by harnessing the efforts of both professionals and those they serve.

That’s why I believe that there are important lessons to be learned from studying mutual models such as the Co-operative and John Lewis – companies owned, respectively, by their customers and their staff. After all, public services are owned by the public, so the public must have the right to influence how those services are delivered.

And mutualism is perhaps uniquely placed to deliver real practical benefits in our public services. By bringing users, employees, and other stakeholders together as members of the same establishment, it transforms the organisational culture, embeds real democratic accountability and offers the opportunity for greater individual empowerment and community responsibility.

Around the country, the mutual model is already proving its worth. Whether it’s the parents and staff of the new co-operative trust schools; the PCT staff who are taking over the running of the services they deliver; or the 1.3 million members of the 122 NHS foundation trusts across England.

But by tradition, and by its very nature, mutualism is driven by, and relies upon the commitment and active participation of, the people involved. It is not something government can, or should, impose. Governments can, however, create the conditions in which new social movements can thrive.

And, today, the opportunity exists to create a new social movement that can ensure citizens and communities can choose mutualism as and when they see fit. We’ve already made progress in health with foundation trusts and in education with co-op trust schools. Now we will explore how we might encourage the further development of mutualism in other areas like Sure Start, social care and housing, where the Co-operative party in particular has been setting out an exciting agenda for change.

Above all, though, mutualism is a model which offers a new sense of common ownership, one which marries collective action and individual aspiration. And this point is crucial, because the biggest challenges we will face in the years to come – from preventative health to climate change – require a delicate calibration of collective and individual action.

This is something that the Tories, who continue to peddle the fiction that there is some inherent conflict between an active state and a strong society and that the former necessarily crowds out the latter, simply don’t understand.

But, despite this, the Tories are now attempting to lay claim to mutualism. After their part in the demutualisation of the 1980s, it is not hard to see why. The level of their commitment is, however, demonstrated by the fact that, unique among co-operatives, the Conservative Co-operative Movement, launched with such fanfare by David Cameron over two years ago, does not yet contain a single member.

By contrast, mutualism is in Labour’s DNA, for it was out of the mutual tradition – the co-operative shops and ‘labour exchanges’ founded by followers of Robert Owen; the burial societies and savings banks; credit unions; and, of course, the friendly societies – that the modern Labour and co-operative movement emerged.

And while we are seeking to learn lessons from the Co-operative and John Lewis, Tory local authorities – which Cameron offers as a model for how the Tories would govern – have decided that their model of public service delivery is the budget airline.

Under the Tories the principle this appears to encapsulate is that ability to pay should determine the level and quality of the service. But this is not how most people think care of the elderly or children’s services should be delivered.

It is also far removed from the principles of mutualism – of collective action as a means to fulfill individual aspiration, of equity, democracy and accountability. The reason is a simple one: the values of mutualism are inherently Labour values.

Which is why, driven by values which reflect the public mood, progressives now need confidence, clarity and conviction. Unlike 30 years ago, the debate about ownership with which this new decade begins is one that will be fought squarely on our territory.