Why Andy Burnham must treat SNP as allies in fight against far-right populism – Joyce McMillan

That the two parties are the secret twins of British politics has long been obvious, after all, to anyone who takes the time to examine their policies, or the political dilemmas they face. Both are broadly social-democratic in principle, but struggle to put those principles into practice under the conditions created by 21st-century global capitalism.

Both are interested in the kinds of modest ameliorative policies – £2 bus fares, the Scottish government’s child poverty measures, or a few quid a month off electricity bills – that can make our society feel a little more just, without creating a backlash from those already over-endowed with wealth and power. And although the Scottish government has often in recent years taken popular positions to the left of UK Labour, well so has Burnham, as mayor of Manchester; and often for very similar reasons.

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‘Agree to disagree’

As the Prime Minister and First Minister observed in their first telephone conversation this week, though, their big difference is on Scotland’s constitutional future, where Burnham seems as intransigent as his recent predecessors. The question facing them both is therefore how far they can “agree to disagree”, in Burnham’s words, and collaborate effectively on policies that will make life easier for ordinary citizens, in Scotland and across the UK.

That they should both strive to meet this challenge seems to me unarguable, under current political conditions. The question now facing all politicians of the centre and left – across Europe and beyond – is how to rebuild a social democratic politics that will enthuse voters, genuinely improve their lives, and begin to reduce the anger and despair that fuels the hate-filled politics of the populist far-right.

Burnham owes his rise to power to the widespread panic in Labour circles that Keir Starmer’s government was simply failing to combat the rise of Reform in opinion polls. Since this a subject on which both John Swinney and Burnham feel strongly, it’s clearly one on which the Westminster and Scottish governments, alongside the UK’s other devolved administrations, should seek to find common ground, as a matter of urgency.

That this challenge to cooperate will be difficult goes without saying. The first tribal instinct of most SNP politicians and supporters, faced with Burnham’s rise, is to ridicule and dismiss him as yet another failed UK premier in the making, one who promises “change”, but who never wills the means to make it happen.

At this point in its political history, though – intellectually tired after 19 years in government, and losing support like all mainstream parties – the SNP simply cannot afford a response to Burnham that looks like mere party-political point-scoring; and it is to be hoped that, under Swinney’s leadership, they can manage to present themselves as adults in the room, in the quest for policies that genuinely promote social justice, wellbeing and stability.

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Labour still in denial about 2007

In the end though, it is Labour in Scotland that faces the far bigger challenge, in trying to work constructively with the SNP. As former First Minister Lord McConnell pointed out this week, Scottish Labour has been in some degree of denial about the SNP’s rise since the moment in 2007 when it overtook Labour as Holyrood’s largest party. The party never conducted a proper inquiry into the reasons for that eclipse; and remarkably, it has continued ever since to behave as if the SNP’s electoral success is some kind of illusion or mistake, shortly to be rectified, and never to be taken seriously.

If Burnham is serious about constructive co-operation with the SNP, he will have to tackle that culture of denial, in at least two ways. In the first place, he should cease to condone or perpetuate the laughable accusation – still beloved by Labour politicians at Westminster – that the SNP’s commitment to Scottish sovereignty makes it a right-wing nationalist party on a par with Nigel Farage’s Reform, and instead focus on developing a broad social-democratic front that embraces the SNP and Plaid Cymru as obvious centre-left allies.

And secondly, he should seek to end Westminster’s entrenched culture of ignorance about the actual policies of the UK’s devolved administrations. Indeed the utter failure of Westminster parties and their attendant media, over the last quarter century, to show any rational interest in policy developments in the devolved nations, and to compare and contrast the success of different approaches across the UK, rather than simply hurling exaggerated abuse, is a standing indictment of the very Westminster self-obsession and centralisation that Burnham claims to oppose.

A genuine partnership of equals

Whether the new Prime Minister will do any of those things remains in doubt. Indeed, this week he showed every sign of continuing to take the worst possible advice on Scotland, as – in a demonstration of old-school Westminsterism at its worst – he elevated Scotland’s failed Labour leader Anas Sarwar to the House of Lords, in order to make him a UK business minister.

Beyond the horizon of all this low politics, though, there lies the prize of a new future for these islands in which all four elements of the old union fully recognise each other’s sovereign existence, and move forward in a genuine partnership of equals.

It’s a vision, after all, which was present at the founding of the Labour party, 120 years ago. And in government, Burnham may find that the logic of his own thinking on decentralisation and the shortcomings of Westminster gradually begins to lead him back towards it – if, that is, he is to have any chance at all of fulfilling the radical promise that brought him to power.