I'm sure that the First Minister wouldn't mind me saying that the implicit confirmation by a Welsh Labour Government that independence, though clearly not your favoured option, can be considered a progressive option, will be seen by many in the independence movement as a significant milestone. We do indeed, on our side, look forward to engaging constructively with the commission.

Whatever the report in the end concludes—whether it supports your preferred future, First Minister, of radical federalism, or our alternative future of independence—is not the commission's starting point as important as its end point, in this sense? Because it signifies a new, shared determination that we shouldn't wait for our constitutional future to be chosen for us by default by decisions in Westminster or, indeed, developments elsewhere in these islands, but that we should decide for ourselves; that we should neither be on the sidelines nor in the shadows of someone else's deliberations, but that we should place Wales front and centre of our own debate.