I’m no great sportsman. But London 2012 was something different. It might just have been the event at which Great Britain stopped looking back; the date when it looked forward with confidence for the first time in my lifetime.

In so many ways since WWII my country has dwelled on nostalgia; a yearning for a grand past that would surely return. Maybe to the 1908 Olympics which the British not only hosted but probably tried to run single-handed. “Only we knew how to play the game!”

We, or at least many of us, hated the loss of certainty that change brought. Small ‘c’ conservatives? Reactionaries? Empire Loyalists, etc, etc. They have new badges today. I won’t mention them.

They hated the loss of India. They were afraid of the arrival of the Empire Windrush at Tilbury also in 1948. They resisted the NHS; it disturbed privileges. 

That all happened when GB last hosted the Olympics. Yet in 2012 we loved those changes, as the adulation for the opening ceremony showed. We aren’t afraid of social change – apart from the odd MP and right-wing journalist. We rejoiced at medal winners, whether born here, migrated to here or still native to another country.

We threw off our pessimism – and that includes me over things like security bad management.

The Olympics in London were a massive success because it was a true partnership of the voluntary and private sectors within an umbrella of finance and planning by the state(s). The state is not bad; it is needed for success.

The voluntary sector will (and did) respond when it is given a lead. The private sector doesn’t always get it right, does it, G4S? An unaccountable state is a tyranny.

The Olympics got the balance right. Our young people flourished as a result. The same lesson needs to be followed with local youth services, which the state (county council) is abandoning. Let’s have a bit more Spirit of the Olympics!