This week I received a letter from the Communities and Local Government Secretary Hazel Blears commiserating with me over my failure to win a seat at the Local Elections.

It also announced her forthcoming white paper on the subject of ‘community empowerment’ and asked the question ‘how can labour pass more power to local people?’

The easy and comfortingly cynical answer would be to say the party could start by passing some meaningful power back to its grassroots members; the trouble with cynicism though is that it often prevents you from taking a proper look at the situation in which you find yourself.

For example, last week the long awaited report of the governance commission noted a deep seated malaise in the political life of Stoke-on-Trent, however questionable the other conclusions drawn by the commission might be that fact is painfully obvious.

Why else would the BNP have nine councillors in Stoke and be confident enough to consider standing in every ward next time round?

Grumbling is not the answer; it changes nothing, but getting out of the committee rooms and onto the street just might though.

Doing so won’t, of course, be a comfortable experience, local party members will have to listen to a great many things they won’t like, that’s why we should be out there doing it in the first place.

If it is truly serious about empowering communities, and I sincerely hope it is, the government as a whole will have to have a similar experience between now and the next election.

You can rig a focus group, but you can’t rig genuine contact with the public, a big conversation where you do most of the listening.

What you can get though is some honest answers about how people feel, what concerns them and what you can do to help.

After the tribulations of the past few months what Labour needs more than anything else is honest answers to awkward questions.