If the left and our political leaders - above all the Labour leadership - do not come forward with loud and explicit demands for serious democratic reform in England and Wales, including radical devolution, an English parliament with real powers, conversion of the Welsh Assembly into a full parliament, Proportional Representation for the House of Commons, and a radical programme of participatory democracy in local government, then the people will not believe that we have any credible plan to end austerity or represent their interests in any other way.

Just proposing an economic programme - which is all Corbyn and McDonnell are talking about - will not work, because people will not believe that we will implement it. The left only captured the political mainstream in Scotland by attaching its economic and social programme to a radical programme of democratic reform. If we don't do the same then we will continue to sound like just another bunch of politicians making promises, and we will lose.

The residual vulgar Marxist belief that all this stuff doesn't matter, that all people care about is jobs and housing, is a huge problem here.