JEREMY Corbyn’s success last weekend is the biggest victory for democracy in England for decades, generations, maybe even a century. In my lifetime, I’ve seen a million people march in London against the Iraq War, hundreds of thousands protest cuts in Parliament Square, thousands more occupy London to stop university fees. I know because I was often there with them. But while those demonstrations felt empowering, parliament never seemed to change. Politicians simply plugged their ears and blocked out the noise. We all went home feeling fired up but a little let down.

Now, 313,000 Labour members, registered supporters and trade unionists have demanded that the politicians who serve in their name should listen to their voice. Despite a horrific whispering campaign, extraordinary intimidation tactics, the scrubbing of voter rolls and bureaucratic interference, party democracy has prevailed. Corbynism is a movement that stood up to everyone who said there is no alternative, and said, yes, there bloody is.

Since David Cameron became prime minister, we’ve had three referendums that have revolved around questions of power; who has it, who should have it and where it should lie. It began with the Scottish independence referendum in 2014. Then we had the EU referendum this year. And, lastly, we’ve got Corbyn’s second victory last weekend. This was, essentially, another referendum based on the question, ‘who runs our parties, parliament or the people?’ And in that sense, Corbyn’s victory follows a pattern of events since Cameron and Nick Clegg began to impose austerity in 2010. Millions no longer trust the old political elites. But they’ve gone beyond apathy, beyond even protest, to punish those who imposed austerity on the poor while letting the bankers off with murder.

What’s clear is that Scotland’s politics obeys its own rules and its own logic. That’s why Corbyn’s revolution is largely English in character. Exit polls suggest that 60 percent of Scottish Labour voted for Owen Smith. Now, don’t get me wrong: my family are Scottish Labour members, have been for decades, and like thousands of others, they voted for Corbyn. The methodology of these polls is also limited. But their findings build on earlier data showing that Scottish Labour branches were far, far more pro-Smith than English branches. Overall, it’s clear that Scottish Labour has fallen behind the English movement.

The reason for this is straightforward. If you take away Labour members who have joined since May 2015, Owen Smith would have won this election by a decent margin. There’s no shame in saying that. Corbyn’s victory is built from people who wanted to punish political elites for imposing austerity or bombing Syria or helping out corporate pals without any concern for the human consequences. In Scotland, that energy went into the independence movement. That history can’t be undone. We’ve taken different paths and we’re on different journeys.

Our three referendums are connected, regardless of our views on them. There’s a revolt going on against a certain type of political alienation. People are finding new ways to punish complacent old elites. That’s happening worldwide, of course, but Britain’s political institutions are breaking apart in the most fundamental ways because we’ve imposed austerity on the most radical scale.

In this new political era, the Left doesn’t have a right to lead. We’ve got to win trust across the country and earn that. Corbyn’s critics are right to make that point. But of everyone in the Labour Party, Corbyn, and the movement he represents has the greatest chance of appealing to the great mass of disenfranchised people in England. To the ears of voters, New Labour is old, a broken record, and they want to hear some new tunes.

Across the UK the Left is scared of talking about Englishness. In England, they are often terrified of any association with Englishness, because in their eyes, it signifies racism. And it’s not just the Left. English liberals talk about Britain, rather than England, even if that means invading other countries for oil.

Here’s my entry in the competition for understatement of the century: British identity isn’t uniformly left-wing or even progressive. In the name of Britain, we conquer other countries, salute monarchs and flags, and call for political action to stop refugees at the border. The Union Jack, even more than the flag of St George, is a symbol of racism and division.

Yes, there’s a progressive story of Britain too. There’s 1919 and 1926 and 1945. There’s a working class whose protests gave us clean houses and decent jobs and political rights. There’s a welfare state that sent our parents to university and gave security to the sick and disabled. Sure, I get that. The problem is, in Scotland, people look to the SNP to save everything good the British state ever did. Maybe, soon enough, telling the progressive story of Britain won’t be an option. Maybe Corbyn will have to tell the progressive story of England.

If he’s forced down that direction, would it be so terrible? When E.P. Thompson wrote about the most radical working class movements in the history of this island, he wrote about a distinctively English radicalism. England, of course, has a more interesting radical history than Scotland. You’ve got Shelley and Shakespeare and Tom Paine and the Levellers and Charles Darwin and the Tolpuddle Martyrs and Mary Wollstonecraft and victims of the massacre at Peterloo. Yet people are happy to sign that history over to the political right, and instead talk only about the story of Britain.

Do we need a national story? Broadly speaking, I think the answer is yes. It’s easy to tubthump about internationalism, but the honest answer is that nations are part of democracy, and that even the concept of internationalism implies the existence of nations speaking to one another. However, inside every nation, there are two other nations, that of the rulers and that of the people, and we should have two competing stories. Our job is to give the majority the resources to tell their own stories.

Speaking as an outsider, my message to the English Left is simple: don’t be afraid to talk about England. England is abysmally governed, it has almost no democracy and its institutions are fundamentally corrupt. Meanwhile, the political right are reaping rewards by talking to people about their identity. Britishness is simply papering over these cracks, as long as Britishness lasts. Let’s make sure it doesn’t last long.