Is the Italian economy about to collapse? Is the Eurozone going to fall apart? I don’t know. But it is certainly creaking wildly. If it does, it will surely make the tumbling of Lehman Brothers look like relatively small fry. After cutting the bottom out of their economies, Greece, Portugal, Spain and Ireland too are looking pretty weak.

For more than a year now, many of us on the left have been predicting that another economic crisis is round the corner – that we are in a of “phoney peace” – that the credit crunch isn’t nearly over. It is conventional left wing wisdom to say that we don’t know how long they can re-inflate the bubble, but that this is all they have done – this crisis isn’t over yet. The bubble will burst again.

And it has become fashionable when discussing the inevitability of another crisis to talk about how we can ensure that after this one, we genuinely build something new and better rather than allowing the shock doctrine most of Europe has suffered over the last 3 years.

We talked about how 2008 should have been our moment – our chance. But as we talked, the right captured the moment. So goes the consensus. But perhaps that misses a point. Because if we look across British society, financial capitalism was only one of the many legs holding up our unjust system. And so, supported by the others, the elite were able to retain control while this leg was repaired.

But here’s my question: if News International are embroiled in a crisis of their own when Europe does collapse, will this dominance be maintained? Will they be able to immediately demand that we respond to the crisis by doing exactly what they say? – by selling our country to their friends? If two of the legs of corporate power collapse together, will the others be able to maintain control? Will this be our chance? We’ll see.