And there are smaller firms, such as Baxi, the boiler manufacturer, in which 100 per cent of shares are owned by employees.Labour doesn't want all companies to be like this, but it does want them to involve more of their workers through share ownership. What does it mean in practice? What would stakeholding mean for the economy?The first thing Blair means by it is tackling unemployment: giving people a stake in the economy, on thiscount, basically means giving them a job. And Labour has a long list of policies for the long-term unemployed and the young unemployed, ranging from new training to subsidies to private employers that take them on. If Labour's policies could really achieve all they promise, a stakeholder economy would be one in which no young person remained without training or work - and hence without a stake - for more than six months.Q Jobs.

Is that all? What about giving people a greater stake in the company that employs them?Stakeholding can mean anything from good communication to sharing the financial spoils through employee share-ownership schemes or workers' councils, depending on how radical you are. Stakeholding is meant to encourage people to stand on their own two feet. It is not meant to be a recipe for more state intervention.In Singapore, Blair said: "If people feel they have no stake in society, they feel little responsibility towards it and little inclination to work for its success."Q It still sounds very waffly. The first is that government policy must be aimed at giving everyone opportunities to work, to learn, to train and to improve themselves That gives them a stake in society. The second theme is that, in return, people must take more responsibility for themselves. So Blair pinched the idea from management books?No, Blair's version of stakeholding includes ideas picked from all over the place, and he has been mulling it over for a long time. In his leadership manifesto 18 months ago, he lamented that social cohesion and a sense of responsibility were undermined when millions did not have a stake in society.Blair is using the stakeholding as a phrase - not a catchy one - to sum up these ideas.

Having a stake means owning something and being able to decide what to do with it.The term has become fashionable recently partly because the term "stakeholder capitalism" was popularised by Will Hutton, the Guardian's assistant editor, in his best-selling book The State We're In. Other exponents of similar ideas include John Kay, chairman of London Economics, and Charles Handy, the management guru, who have applied the idea to the way companies work. They say successful companies do not just serve their shareholders, but they also look after everyone who has a stake in the company's success: workers, managers, customers and suppliers as well as shareholders.Q. Where did it all start?The Oxford English Dictionary doesn't shed much light on the origins of stakeholding. It describes a stakeholder as a bookmaker - "an independent party with whom each of those who makes a wager deposits the money". A more evocative image of a stakeholder is one of the brave New World settlers, staking out their territory and building new lives. So what does it mean?That's the problem; no one is quite sure.Q.