BRADLEY WIGGINS, Chris Froome, Geraint Thomas — who would ever have imagined Le Tour would be subject to such a British invasion. 

Yet despite the hype generated by such elite sporting success across Europe, Great Britain only beats Malta ad Cyprus for the fewest number of journeys taken by bike.

To change this, for the good of the nation’s health and the planet’s survival, we need La Revolution might. Or as Trotsky once put it a “transitional programme” in his case from capitalism to socialism, in mine, more modestly from four wheels to two. 

1. No VAT on Bikes

Remove VAT on bicycles. A 20 per cent reduction to use tax gathering as a tool to actively shape lifestyles. Something that will be required more and more by any government seriously committed to a sustainable economic strategy. 

2. Socially Useful Bicycle Production

In the past few years there has been a spate of car factory closures. This is unlikely to slow down, consumer habits are changing, the urgent need to upgrade every couple of years is coming to an end. And electricity is coming to replace the petrol in the tank.

Good, but where does the electricity come from? If not renewables while pollution may be reduced, the impact on climate change much less so (same applies to E-bikes).

Those factories could be taken over by the state, used to churn out cheap but well-made bikes. 

Rather than front-wheel suspension, which is entirely unnecessary for the vast majority of journeys, lightweight steel is what improves the quality of any ride. 

Focus on this for a line of nationalised, not-for profit children’s and adults’ bikes. Those centres of car manufacture are unlikely ever to recover, certainly not on the scale they once had, but what if they became centres of bike manufacture? 

3. Bicycles on trains

The average British car journey is just 8.5 miles. Of course many car journeys are considerably less. 

Most of us, depending on any hills getting in the way, could do those 8.5 miles on two wheels in a shade under an hour. In big cities that will be quicker than by bus, and no wait for the next train either.

But for some the journey to work is considerably longer. Why then does commuting by train actively discriminate against those who’d take a bike to complete the journey? 

The only ones permitted have the expensive “second bike” option, the fold-away. And at the weekends it’s no better, a ride in the country for city-dwellers made all the more difficult because the train ride to get there has next to no space for bikes. 

None of this applies on the continent where it is not uncommon to find entire carriages given over to cyclists and their bikes.

What new train design in Britain has even begun to address this?

The answer is the total opposite with ever-decreasing provision for carrying bikes. 

4. A bike shed for every workplace

OK, 8.5 miles is going to leave most of us a tad sweaty. If of the all-weather cycling variety quite possibly soaking wet and caked in mud too. 

No way to start the working day. 

Every workplace needs to be kitted out with a bike shed, changing room, showers. Instil this in planning regulations for new workplace builds, interest-free grants for all existing workplaces to add this provision. 

5. The cyclists’ road to socialism 

In the early years of socialism “Clarion Clubs” of socialist cyclists would take body, soul and the message for change from city to countryside. 

A late 1980s version was the annual Oxford to London Nicaragua Solidarity bike ride that thousands would take part in every year. 

Despite the supposed frailty of Jeremy Corbyn being challenged by pictures of his regular Islington to Westminster cycle-commute it is a culture largely absent from the left nowadays. 

Yet mass cycling has the potential to provide the means and confidence to generate the day-to-day ride as a matter of course. 

Such events are hugely popular, organised by commercial outfits for the major charities. But as a day out, entirely disconnected to any ambition to transform the way we live our lives and consume the world’s ever-decreasing resources. 

A left cycling culture could help generate instead what the writer Lynne Segal has described as moments of “collective joy” — a day out yes, but with a world, not just a wheel, to change too.

I could add of course safer cycle ways and paths — these are certainly needed, fear remains a major impediment to the revolutionary growth in cycling to our individual and collective benefit I am advocating. 

Yet the overwhelming emphasis on this serves only to produce a self-fulfilling prophecy. If it’s that dangerous, which it isn’t, and nothing is being done about it, which it hasn’t, why bother?

Like any decent manifesto for a revolution mine is the advocacy therefore of hope, not despair. 

Liberte? Yes. Egalite? Of course. Velocite? Why not. Driven not by profit or an economic system driving our planet to destruction but by ourselves. 

A revolution in anybody’s language. 

Mark Perryman is co-founder of Philosophy Football. Their Liberté, Egalité, Velocité T-shirt is available from ww.philosophyfootball.com