Aditya Chakrabortty

Put bluntly: yes, Britain is mired in a democratic crisis. But it is one that is older, wider and deeper than this week’s debacle over Brexit and parliamentary sovereignty, and it features across our everyday lives.

The spirit we need is that summed up by the librarian who rhapsodises to Klinenberg about his branch: “The library really is a palace. It bestows nobility on people who can’t otherwise afford a shred of it. People need to have nobility and dignity in their lives. And, you know, they need other people to recognise it in them too.”

And for those desperate to preserve a spark of hope in a political system that feels so hopeless, let me suggest this: watch Preston.

The solutions to this crisis will not be handed down from a mountain top to the grateful hordes: they will rely on us taking power for ourselves. Three decades after Reagan, the nine most laughable words in the English language are: “I’m from the elite and I’m here to help.”

Spread across Britain today are people and places united by a common condition: they are largely powerless. Their economies have been emptied out, their services cut to the bone, their incomes under threat.