BRITISH democracy lets the people choose the government. A government that has denied council key workers a pay rise to match inflation.  

But British democracy doesn’t allow you to decide if the CEO of Ocado should get his £58 million pay packet. The only way you get to vote on that is to be rich and own enough shares.

That’s the question socialists must ask when talking about constitutional reform: reform in whose interests?  

Whether PR, devolution or an elected second chamber, it’s too easy to get sidetracked into questions of structures and geographies.

To quote TS Eliot, “People are dreaming of systems so perfect nobody has to be good.”  

Whole swathes of essential services and utilities are governed not by us, as citizens, but by the needs of distant shareholders.  

Abandoning people to the private market in relation to a service that affects every dimension of their basic wellbeing is incompatible with human rights requirements.

Economic democracy is a simple idea. It means the people who do the work, get paid for the work. And profits get reinvested, not extracted for financial bubbles like share buybacks.

That means more local business. A level playing field for small businesses. More co-operatives and worker-owned businesses. And an active role for workers in the management of a company, through the role of trade unions. 

That means repealing Britain’s anti-democratic trade union laws. It means bringing our public services back into public ownership — democratic ownership, where workers and service users get to shape them. It means ending tax-dodging.

It’s undeniably true that class differences in wealth and power are huge. But the spatial imbalance of power and wealth are real.  

In north-east England, GDP per capita is just 73 per cent of the UK average.  

That affects our public services, our transport, our job prospects and even our lifespans.  

It wasn’t always this way. From 1971 to 1981 we hovered at about 93 per cent of GDP per capita.  

Then it started falling, through the Thatcher years, through the New Labour years, through the coalition and austerity.  

We’re now at 73 per cent of GDP per capita. Where British working people have suffered, we’ve suffered more.  

Since 1981 there have been 51 government initiatives to restore regional growth. None solved the problem.  

That’s why I’m in favour of devolution to the level of the functional economic area. That’s the city region. 

I’m opposed to the idea of an English executive, or an English parliament.   

In Newcastle, I have more economic common ground with Glasgow and Edinburgh than the south coast or Home Counties. Subnational bodies, such as a “northern powerhouse,” should be confederal, where city regions choose to collaborate.  

English metro mayors aren’t like US mayors. Our powers are limited. A more accurate term would be directly elected regional convener. 

It’s not the model I would have chosen, but we have to start from where are.  

Through convening, and limited investment powers, the North of Tyne has been able to create thousands of jobs, smashing the target government set us by a factor of five.  

We have embedded our Good Work Pledge into every contract we make. That commits employers to ending all insecure work, such as zero-hours contracts.  

They must pay the Real Living Wage, not just the legal minimum. They must recognise trade unions, have in-work progression and maintain the TUC standards of good work.   

The end game of devolution should be the “total place” outcome, where all decisions are made at the most local level suitable.   

This involves national, and ideally global, redistribution with the objective of sustainably raising wealth and wellbeing everywhere and functional economic areas get to co-design social and physical infrastructure projects with national departments.  

The current government isn’t going to allow total place. But we should have control of the regional transport system, a regional wealth fund, and land value uplift powers, all under democratic control.    

Our analysis shows that borrowing just £500 million for a regional wealth fund would create 14,000 good jobs and allow the local state to own equity shares in growing businesses. It will also pay for itself, even under the current economic model.

Land value capture means the public purse benefiting from public investment.  

In the North of Tyne, we’re reopening the Ashington-Blyth-Newcastle rail line.  

It’ll cost around £160m. The land value will increase by at least that much.  

All that increase in wealth goes to landowners. A charge on the increase in value would mean that when the land is sold, the increase attributable to the public investment is repaid.  

This would allow us to borrow to fund infrastructure up-front, creating jobs and tackling climate change.  

In the coming weeks, the Labour Party is launching a constitutional convention.  

The labour movement can retreat to imperialist symbolism or advance by embracing economic democracy and devolution.