LAST week Labour leadership hopeful Rebecca Long Bailey raised the issue of “progressive patriotism” as part of her pitch to the party members and affiliated supporters.

For some of us in Scotland this sent us into cold sweats with flashbacks to Jim Murphy’s tenure at the helm of the Scottish Labour Party.

Murphy, fresh from his Irn Bru crate tour of Scotland during the independence referendum, secured the leadership defeating Sarah Boyack and me in the process and soon thereafter delved into the new Labour recipe book to propose a new Clause IV for the Scottish party constitution, inserting the following phrase: “We work for the patriotic interest of the people of Scotland.”

I recall Murphy taking this change to our Scottish conference and demanding that I speak in favour of it in the main debate in the conference hall — I refused as did my fellow shadow cabinet member Hugh Henry.

However, the clause was passed and remains in our constitution today. Politically and electorally it changed not a thing, it was meaningless, tokenism — we were hammered at the election and soon thereafter Jim, and the Scotland football shirt he wore at a press event to show just how Scottish he was, were gone.

I recall this as a word of caution to the current leadership candidates. I am not suggesting Rebecca intends repeating the mistakes of the past but simplistic slogans like “progressive patriotism” mean little. I regard myself as politically “progressive.”

I am proud of my class and our culture, I love where I live, the people, the landscape, the humour, the friendship and yes, being Scottish but I reject Scottish exceptionalism or the view that just because we are Scottish we are uniquely more progressive, tolerant or “left wing.”

I do not like politics wrapped in any national flag — my flag is red. However by raising this issue, Ms Long Bailey may have inadvertently done the Labour movement and the country a favour because she touches on wider issues that simply must be addressed — the Labour movement cannot ignore these a second longer. The issues of democracy, accountability, devolution and regional and national identity.

If we look across the UK we see Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland with their parliament or assembly, the Greater London Authority, metro mayors, county councils, district councils, unitary authorities, metropolitan districts, London boroughs, town and parish councils, not to mention the Houses of Commons, Lords and European Parliament.

This myriad of different levels of government, each with different powers and responsibilities governed by politicians elected under different voting systems (well not the Lords — they don’t bother themselves with anything as offensive as voting and democracy) is a dog’s breakfast.

If we are going to give, particularly the regions of England, the powers to develop their regional economies, build their own public services to meet local needs and enhance and promote regional culture and identity then we need not just constitutional reform but also local government reform in England.

I have many friends across the UK — Geordies rightly proud of their heritage, accent and city, Scousers proud of the great city of Liverpool, its music, its football and humour and Londoners who celebrate its diversity, vibrancy and global importance.

In every corner of the UK people are proud of the place they call home and they have a desire to make life better for all their fellow citizens but they need to tools to do that. Labour has done too much talking about federalism, it now needs to act and have a credible plan so that when in government it will be delivered. We have five years to make this a real and credible prospect.

We should be giving the nations and regions of the UK the powers needed with a major programme of democratic reform — no ifs, no buts. Democracy, devolution and subsidiarity should be the driving principles and powerful regional and national governments will then have the tools required to build strong, vibrant, regional and national economies, promoting their own culture and identity within a democratised UK.

The basic premise on which this should be built is “that all powers should be devolved to the lowest possible level unless there is a logical and  overwhelming reason not to do so.”

So for example, drugs policy should be devolved to Scotland to address our appalling drugs deaths rate but the UK border agency should remain at a UK level since it makes little sense to create a border or borders within a small island nation.

If we work through all the powers available the natural level of government for those powers to lie become largely self evident.

There will of course be debates and disagreement about where some powers lie and this will be part of the substance of the debate to come but come it must.

Rebecca might call it “progressive patriotism” — I call it democratic socialism.