WITH the imminent likely coronation of Andy Burnham as the UK’s seventh prime minister in 10 years, most of us will by now have pairs of socks which have outlasted the average occupant of 10 Downing Street.
All of these out-socked prime ministers have had their own defining characteristic which an excited media told us was going to ensure their success, yet all have crashed and burned. Burnham’s unique selling point is that he’s the “King of the North”.The UK is so southern-centric that almost all of what is called “the north” is in fact well to the south of the geographic centre of the United Kingdom.
By one calculation, including Scotland’s islands and Northern Ireland, that is located about three miles north of the town of Morecambe in an area of quicksand in the middle of Morecambe Bay.
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The metaphors write themselves. The unstable morass which is the true centre of the UK is significantly further north than Lancaster, Blackpool, Preston, Bradford, York, Leeds, Manchester, Sheffield, Hull, and Doncaster.
What British politics likes to call the north is really still the south. Some people in London even consider Birmingham and Leicester to be in the “north”. In British political discourse, it is anywhere north of Watford.
Scotland doesn’t count as the north in this Anglo-centric scheme of things – in fact, Scotland doesn’t count full stop. It falls off the northern edge of the Westminster universe, the Ultima McThule of British politics, a strange, distant and mythical land far beyond the boundaries of Westminster civilisation.
Scotland also fell off the edge of Burnham’s keynote speech as he set out his Anglo-centric plans for a “rewired Britain” which he pledged would include a “Number 10 North” to be based in Manchester.
His “Number 10 North” is still located in the southern half of the UK and as such dismisses Scotland as an irrelevance.
Burnham wants a radical shake-up of devolution to transfer power out of Westminster but is so lacking in commitment to devolution that he has not bothered to consult any of the devolved governments in his plans. Top-down devolution imposed by Westminster is no devolution at all. It’s simply more of Westminster dictating what it thinks is good for us, the very antithesis of devolution.
It’s abundantly clear from Burnham’s speech that the political universe of Burnham, like that of all the six prime ministers before him in the past 10 years, does not extend further than Newcastle. Scotland isn’t even an afterthought – it’s scarcely thought about at all.
To be fair, there were some vague mentions of Scotland in Burnham’s speech. He said he would offer “new opportunities to extend devolution in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland by taking power deeper down”, adding that “the people of Dundee and Bangor feel just as distant from Holyrood and the Senedd as they do from Westminster”.
This is a highly arguable assertion, but one which is very on brand for a Westminster politician. Burnham also said he will introduce “powers for areas undergoing industrial transition” and referenced Aberdeen.
It looks suspiciously as though what Burnham has in mind for Scotland is yet another iteration of Westminster’s divide and rule and the bypassing and undermining of Holyrood by Westminster which we have seen in recent years, and not an extension of devolution in the sense of strengthening the powers of the Scottish Parliament.
Labour figures such as Anas Sarwar have previously spoken about their wish to introduce regional mayors on the English model to Scotland, not provosts as Scotland has traditionally had.
This was billed by Labour as strengthening and deepening devolution, but its true purpose is to create alternative power bases in Scotland which the Labour Party has a chance of controlling. They would help to neutralise a Holyrood in which Labour’s chances of returning to power diminish with every passing year.
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As always with the Labour Party, it’s about what is best for the Labour Party, not what is best for the country. Labour included a commitment to introduce elected regional mayors in Scotland in its manifesto for May’s Holyrood election.
That election saw Labour go down to their worst-ever defeat in a Scottish Parliament election. Scots voted on what Burnham is proposing and resoundingly rejected it.
Yet, under Burnham, Scotland could well find this policy being foisted upon it despite voters telling Labour just a few weeks ago that they’re not interested.
While there are solid grounds for decentralising power away from Holyrood in an independent Scotland – indeed such a move is vital in an independent Scotland, in the current political context.
With Scotland having only a devolved parliament with limited powers within a UK which is the most highly centralised state in Europe, it is imperative that Holyrood is as strong as possible in order to better resist Westminster’s entrenched centralising instincts.
A national parliament, even one with limited powers like Holyrood, has much more of the political and moral authority necessary to resist the depredations of a power-grabbing Westminster than a regional authority such as a glorified Glasgow City Council.
What Burnham’s speech revealed is that like so many Westminster leaders before him, he does not grasp the nature of the UK as a multinational association of different nations in a supposedly voluntary union.
Burnham's model of devolution remains that of an English regionalism in which Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland are viewed as essentially the same as regions of England, certainly not to be equated with or compared to England as a whole, and absolutely not to be permitted to vie with Westminster as alternative seats of national power and authority.
It is highly unlikely that Burnham’s new devolution will extend to giving the people of Scotland the powers they voted for, such as the devolution of energy policy or the right to hold an independence referendum.
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Yet there is an opportunity here. Control of local government in Scotland is very firmly within the remit of Holyrood, so should Burnham seek to introduce English-style regional mayors to Scotland, he’d need the approval of the Scottish Parliamentto do so.
That gives the Scottish Government political leverage which it could use to extract important concessions elsewhere, such as the important field of energy policy or a route to another independence referendum.
It looks like we are headed for a clash between the Scottish Parliament and a British prime minister who does not understand that regional mayors and national parliaments are fundamentally different political creatures.
The signs point to Burnham quickly being revealed as yet another English politician who fails to grasp the political realities of Scotland and the nature of the United Kingdom as a supposedly voluntary union.
The King of the North will prove to be concerned with the interests of areas south of the quicksand in the centre of Morecambe Bay.
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