You take the high road: why is Andy Burnham ‘crashing’ the SNP conference?

Andy Burnham’s making his “first substantive visit” to Scotland since becoming prime minister, and the timing “appears purposeful, if not provocative”, said the BBC’s Scotland political editor Glenn Campbell. The avowedly pro-Union PM is turning up north of the border just as the Scottish National Party gathers for its conference in Aberdeen, and “that’s surely not a coincidence”.

Burnham is scheduled to deliver a speech 150 miles away in North Lanarkshire but there’s little doubt he’s crashing the SNP conference in all but name. First Minister John Swinney has responded good-humouredly – by inviting Burnham to join him in Aberdeen for talks on a second Scottish referendum. “Bring it on,” said SNP minister Stephen Flynn. “We are winning the argument” for Scottish independence.

What did the commentators say?

This “thinly veiled attempt to overshadow the SNP gathering” shows that Burnham has Swinney in his sights, said Patrick Greenfield and Eve Livingston in The Guardian. The SNP leader was the only politician from a rival party – “apart from Margaret Thatcher” – name-checked by Burnham in his Labour conference speech. Unlike his predecessors, who “paid little attention to Scottish internal affairs”, Burnham has decided to “loudly make the case for union on Scottish soil”. Swinney and his party “may regret” their part in shining a spotlight on his visit.

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Burnham’s “carelessness and thoughtlessness” in his flat-out refusal last month to countenance a second Scottish referendum has led this supposedly pro-EU, devolution-friendly prime minister into a “political cul-de-sac” from which “he has no option but to reverse course or be condemned for double standards”, said former Labour MP Tom Harris in The Telegraph. Yes, he could deny the SNP a referendum while offering the UK a chance to rejoin the EU but this is “inconsistent and perhaps a little dishonest”. Burnham is taking a “grotesquely reckless approach” to governance.

“I hae ma doots” about Burnham’s motivations, said Lesley Riddoch in The National. The prime minister’s representatives say he’s not trying to “muscle the SNP off the stage” but if the timing of his trip was an “oversight by busy people”, and not a “calculated snub”, then it’s clear that, “for the King of the southern North”, Scotland is “nowhere that really matters”. If it is, indeed, a deliberate “salvo against Scottish independence”, that could backfire. Burnham’s advocacy for devolution in the form of regional English mayors triggers the questions about “devolution as Scots mean it – more powers for Holyrood”. Either way, he will need “good luck to avoid stirring hornets’ nests”. Perhaps “it’s not too late to call off sick”.

What next?

“There is an unwritten rule” that party leaders don’t step on each other’s toes in conference season, said LBC’s Scotland political editor Gina Davidson. So the PM choosing to derail the SNP’s “annual shindig” only proves Swinney’s belief that he’s “got into Burnham’s head”

If Labour is to hold on to its 37 Scottish MPs, Burnham needs to approach the country “not with panic but with a plan”. He needs to offer “tangible action that Scots will feel” on the cost of living crisis, on fuel bills and on security. And if he really wants to “put John Swinney’s gas at a peep”, he should “announce the go-ahead for Jackdaw”. Otherwise, this visit will grab Scotland’s attention but it’s not clear Burnham will “be able to keep it”.