Why does Burnham keep slipping up on Scotland?

Andy Burnham’s premiership has got off to a good start, with the new Prime Minister retaining a net positive approval rating – even after his Budget (although admittedly it did drop two points).

But one of his weakest points is a pretty important one: Scotland.

This has haunted Burnham since he got into office. Not only did his pronouncement that he would set up a whole new Downing Street, No. 10 North, in Manchester ruffle feathers (there are almost 200 miles separating Manchester from the northerly capital of Scotland, which is in the lowlands), the devolution-focused Prime Minister managed to conduct a month-long summer listening tour of the UK without visiting Scotland once.

Burnham’s allies say that he did visit Scotland on two occasions during the summer – once for the Commonwealth Games in Glasgow, another time was to visit the King in Balmoral – but neither of these were policy-focused trips.

Subsequently the Prime Minister has been back to Scotland twice – but again, these were underwhelming. When the approval of the Jackdaw oil project finally came, Burnham sent his Energy Secretary Miatta Fahnbulleh up to Aberdeen, much to the annoyance of Commons Speaker Lindsay Hoyle.

Much to his party’s surprise and the SNP’s delight, the Prime Minister tripped up when quizzed on independence during an earlier Prime Minister’s Questions. Chris Law, MP for Dundee Central, asked Burnham whether, like in the Good Friday Agreement which sets out provisions for a border poll, conditions for a second independence referendum should be set out in law.

In response, the Prime Minister said: ‘On that question of a border poll, it is to be considered by the Northern Ireland Secretary when there is a clear consensus in the country – when public opinion has changed to the point where the call has to be considered. I would say that it is exactly the same situation in Scotland.’

Burnham’s clumsy language caused a furore among both his political opponents and his own MPs. First Minister John Swinney wrote to the Prime Minister to implore him to set out conditions for another referendum. In response, Burnham was forced to restate that, in his view, a second poll remained ‘off limits’.

A number of Scottish Labour politicians expressed bemusement in the days and weeks afterwards, with many pointing out that Burnham had been around at the time the Good Friday Agreement was written up. Nothing materially changed as a result of Burnham’s language – but it had scared his Scottish colleagues nonetheless. This was the biggest sign yet that the new Prime Minister didn’t grasp the strength of feeling behind the independence debate in Scotland – or, more concerningly, that he was simply too naive about Scotland more generally.

Today’s Prime Minister’s Questions won’t have helped. The focus today was energy: specifically oil and gas. Opposition leader Kemi Badenoch quizzed Burnham on when his government would finalise its decision on the Rosebank oil field in the North Sea. He responded that it was a ‘quasi-judicial’ decision and that it will ‘come in due course’. Pivoting to the UK government’s investment in energy, the Prime Minister spent much of today’s session highlighting £1bn of investment from the National Wealth Fund to help finance two new wind projects off of Norfolk. As well as this bung, SSE, which is based in Scotland, announced that its Berwick B wind farm is backing 2,677 jobs across Scotland and the north of England.

The two announcements coming at the same time perhaps explains Burnham’s response to the SNP’s Graham Leadbitter in the Commons today. The MP for Moray West, Nairn and Strathspey asked the Prime Minister whether he would commit to a Scottish Wealth Fund to ensure that money raised from the North Sea would go towards Scottish energy projects. In response, Burnham said he was surprised at the question coming ‘on the very day that the National Wealth Fund has committed a billion pounds of funding to support offshore wind off the east coast of Scotland’ – which confuses what the government actually put forward today.

The SNP have since called for the Prime Minister to correct the record in the Commons – with Leadbitter saying: “We all know geography isn’t Andy Burnham’s strong suit, given he thought Manchester was the north of the UK – but his apparent belief that Scotland’s territorial waters extend all the way down to Norfolk really takes the biscuit. This is yet another Burnham-blunder, from a man who has proved he just can’t keep on top of the detail.” STV News has contacted Downing Street for comment.

It’s not clear whether the Prime Minister will decide to clarify his comments in the House of Commons – but this is yet another example that hints that Burnham may not be on top of his brief when it comes to Scotland.