Corbyn identifies himself as a democratic socialist. During the seventies I allied myself (though never joined, as I don't wish to be bound by ideology) to a true Marxist group in London trade union politics, along with Blair Peach and others. We regarded Jeremy Corbyn and his allies, who were our contemporaries, as non-revolutionaries a bit to the right of us, and they in turn distanced themselves from us. Call me a Marxist and I may or may not wear it as a badge of honour. Mass media calling Corbyn a Marxist, unreconstructed or not (in itself a pejorative word), is both an intended demonising slur and a downright lie.

As for democracy, here are some things that are not undemocratic:

Suggesting that the LibDems disband

Suggesting that the LibDems split the vote

Criticising the LibDems for splitting the vote

The LibDems declaring that they would scrap brexit without a vote if they got power

Calling for a third referendum (the second one was on June 23 2016 and I don't recall the brexit brigade objecting to THAT one)

Here are some things that are undemocratic:

Deliberately oversimplifying extremely complex issues by sloganising ("get brexit done")

Lying about what voting in 2016 meant ("the people voted to leave the single market and customs union" when you can bet your bottom dollar that the vast majority of the electorate didn't have a clue what they were or even knew of their existence at all)

Lying that the referendum delivered "the will of the people" when only 38% of the electorate and 25% of the population voted leave

Lying about the amount of money per week we would save by leaving

Lying about immigration by using a photograph of mostly non-white refugees

Lying about controlling our borders when we don't control the non-EU immigration that we COULD control and when we can't control people leaving

Lying about "regaining sovereignty" when leaving means handing much control over trade to the US and China

Lying about future border controls between the UK, Northern Ireland and the Republic

Lying about the future numbers of nurses and new hospitals

Lying about Corbyn's character, that he's an unreconstructed Marxist, that he hates Jews, that he's the friend of terrorists, etc. (I'll stop there...)

If you cynically lie to the electorate you are subverting democracy by trying to give people (who are largely gullible and politically naive) false choices at the election. The downright lies I've listed, and there were plenty of others, are not the same thing at all as putting your best foot forward and indulging in a bit of spin. I witnessed "news"papers propagating these lies time and time again and I witnessed BBC interviewers routinely failing to pull up Tories when they were lying. Lying with impunity is a very worrying development in western politics and is the one thing that will ultimately see off democracy altogether.