SINCE the SNP came to power at Holyrood almost 20 years ago, they’ve been able to keep the independence case strong by pointing to both Tory and Labour governments uninterested in improving relations with Scotland and implementing right-leaning policies at odds with the country’s values.
But as Keir Starmer packs up boxes ready to depart Number 10, Greater Manchester mayor Andy Burnham looks all but certain to be the next UK prime minister, and he may pose a whole new challenge for John Swinney’s party.
He has been a strong supporter of more regional devolution, he took buses back under public control in Manchester, and has at points advocated for a wealth tax. In 2022, he even said he understood “sentiments” regarding Scottish independence.
So how should the SNP be dealing with Burnham? Are we likely to see a change in strategy, or is Burnham’s supposedly more liberal stance unlikely to trouble them in the end?
‘A more difficult story to tell’
LAST week, The National revealed that in a book he co-authored with Liverpool mayor Steve Rotheram in 2024, Burnham revealed he wanted to replace the Barnett formula – which works out how much money the Scottish Parliament gets from Westminster – with a “modern funding formula which works for the English regions and the home nations”.
While Burnham’s team have since said this week he will not throw out the system, this does suggest we could see a future where a prime minister attempts to put English regions on a more level playing field with devolved nations.
Judith Sijstermans, a politics lecturer at the University of Aberdeen, said this could pose a challenge for the SNP who may have a “harder story to tell” on independence in this context.
“In terms of intergovernmental relations, I would expect Andy Burnham would have a more conciliatory tone towards the Scottish Government, that he might invest more in it,” she said.
"So how the SNP balances that when the goal is independence is going to be a challenge. How do they articulate why, for them, independence is the only answer to the quandaries that Scotland faces?
“For the last few prime ministers there hasn’t been that emphasis on intergovernmental relations. They [the SNP] almost may need to reengage with this old narrative of gradualism vs fundamentalism.”
She went on: “It’s certainly a more difficult story to tell. Saying ‘we’ve got a UK Government that’s putting us on the same par as English mayors, that’s offensive’ is more difficult [to tell] than ‘we’ve got a difficult UK Government that won’t give us anything and we want to be independent’."
A fight for Scotland as a nation?
IT does pose the question of whether the SNP will end up fighting for Scotland’s status as a nation if Burnham goes down the path of, as Greens co-leader Gillian Mackay put it, “playing Scotland off against English regions”.
But experts are doubtful as to whether this is an approach that will materialise from Burnham.
Even if it did, Fraser MacDonald, a former SNP head of communications, told the Sunday National any attempt to pivot towards defending Scotland as a nation in the UK would have “limited reach” for the SNP.
He said: “In terms of motivating the base and the kind of core support of the SNP, you can absolutely see that working as a strategy, but I think it has limited reach.
“The big takeaways of the Holyrood election in terms of people’s key priorities were the NHS and cost of living. The ‘we’re a nation, not a region’ has a part to play in a wider strategy, but in terms of mass appeal, the focus I suspect will fall on what we can do about the cost of living.”
Sijstermans was also of the view that while Burnham is known to be a fan of more regional devolution, it is unlikely Scotland’s status as a nation will come under significant threat.
"Andy Burnham feels that English regions, these combined authorities, these new English devolution deals, should be on a par with those offered to Scotland and Wales,” she said.
“For people who are committed Scottish nationalists that doesn’t come across well in terms of the claims of a deeper nationhood for Scotland than regionalism. But I’m not sure that that narrative of ‘we’re being downgraded’ or ‘the First Minister is being put on the same platform as mayors’, which might feel uncomfortable for hardcore Scottish nationalists, will work well with the wider public.
“It may be [though] that the options become less clear and more muddied. We’ve seen post-2014 this kind of polarisation between Unionism and nationalism, so if Andy Burnham is muddying the waters there by reforming the devolution deal or offering another solution, that muddies the water in terms of the debate.”
Is more devolution really a problem?
THERE was once a school of thought that investing in more devolution in the UK would kill independence sentiments dead, but the opposite has proved to be true.
So while Burnham has voiced support for more devolution, there are doubts as to whether this is really a bad thing for the SNP's independence mission.
MacDonald said: “If they’re able to show that they [the Scottish Government] are able to do more with more powers, it doesn’t take a big convoluted strategy to say ‘well, if more powers equals better lives for people in Scotland, then surely independence is going to be the best option’.
“This idea that [more devolution] could be a drawback to the independence movement, I just don’t believe.”
Professor Rob Johns, a founding investigator on the Scottish Election Study series, also warned there is a major assumption being made that Burnham is interested in devolution beyond simply shifting power from London to Manchester.
He said: “Politicians at Westminster don’t have a great record of giving powers away; they usually have to be dragged kicking and screaming, so I doubt the SNP will be presented with a strategic problem in which he is actually devolving significantly more powers, not just to the English regions but to Scotland and Wales.
“I think his biggest strategic problem is how he avoids being seen as being the person who wants to move power from London to Manchester as opposed to from London outwards more generally.
“That’s actually easy for the SNP to say ‘well, thanks for moving it from one English city to another, but that’s not what we’re after’.”
Will Burnham’s image really last?
THE other question is whether the image Burnham has presented to the public as someone who is to the left of Starmer and wants to “transform Labour” can actually last, and the SNP will be hoping it doesn’t.
“If we think of the SNP as a party that wants to win elections and continue as a dominant force on the centre-left, I think there is more short-term danger because I think he [Burnham] will be somewhat more appealing ideologically than Starmer,” said Johns.
“This is assuming he’s governing as his image has suggested he will. Interestingly, Starmer before he began was ‘oh I’ve been in Corbyn’s Cabinet’ and there were reasons to believe he might make a shift to the left from the kind of Blairite period, but in the end he was so associated with things on the cultural right like saying negative things about immigration or being so Israel over Gaza.”
He added: “There is this group that Burnham could tempt [in Scotland], but there’s no reason to suppose the usual damage won’t be done to his reputation once he’s in office. It was really noticeable looking at the last two Ipsos polls that Burnham’s reputation in Scotland fell by more than it did in general [across the UK].”
In an Ipsos poll earlier in June, Burnham had the highest net favourability ratings among Scots out of Labour leadership hopefuls, but his overall rating was still negative (-10).
This contrasts with Ipsos’ Britain-wide polling from mid-May, which found Burnham had a net positive rating of +8 across the British public as a whole.
Johns and MacDonald believe Burnham will be distracted by attempting to appease the parliamentary Labour Party once he gets into Number 10.
“The commentariat tends to overestimate the effect of leaders on parties’ ratings, and underestimate the effect of parties on leader’s ratings. Leaders get dragged down by their party’s reputation and Labour’s reputation is not great,” said Johns.
MacDonald added: “There is potential for a Burnham premiership to cause a bit of difficulty to SNP support but also to slightly left-leaning parties, but when push comes to shove and he’s got a parliamentary Labour Party to try and placate and win over, in doing that job that is going to harm their [Labour’s] potential to make massive gains.”
