Celtic leaders doubt Burnham’s devolution drive will go beyond England’s borders

Andy Burnham told an audience in Manchester that devolved powers for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland must go ‘deeper down’, but did not give details. Photograph: Alastair Grant/AP View image in fullscreen Andy Burnham told an audience in Manchester that devolved powers for Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland must go ‘deeper down’, but did not give details. Photograph: Alastair Grant/AP Analysis Celtic leaders doubt Burnham’s devolution drive will go beyond England’s borders Bethan McKernan Wales correspondent Would-be prime minister has made basic missteps in pitches to Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland Andy Burnham’s devolution promises are yet to impress sceptical Celtic administrations hoping for a reset with Westminster, sources in Cardiff and Edinburgh have said. Burnham, who is expected to take over from Keir Starmer as prime minister on 20 July, has made much of his support for the devolution of power and resources in England, pledging in an agenda-setting speech last week to make a new “No 10 North” the “nerve centre of a rewired Britain”. But the would-be leader of the UK has already made several missteps with the pro-independence parties in government in Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales. “If Burnham thinks Manchester is the north, I’ve got a map to show him,” a senior Scottish government source said. “To us, it sounded like the first-ever speech by a first minister of England.” The only reference the former mayor of Manchester and newly elected Labour MP for Makerfield has made about devolution in the other nations of the UK is that powers must go “deeper down”. This has left the Scottish National party (SNP), Plaid Cymru and power-sharing members of the Northern Ireland executive wondering what such changes could look like . View image in fullscreen Plaid Cymru MP Liz Saville Roberts. Photograph: Richard Townshend/UK Parliament Plaid Cymru MP Liz Saville Roberts said: “The muscular unionism that we saw from Keir Starmer and his government is what brought Labour’s 100-year dominance in Wales to and end. If Andy Burnham truly wants to deliver for Wales, he cannot keep heading in the same direction.” Burnham’s assertion in his speech that “the people of Dundee and Bangor feel just as distant from Holyrood and the Senedd as they do from Westminster” did not go down well – not least because they are SNP and Plaid strongholds respectively. And a pitch by Burnham to Scottish voters published in the Scotsman last week contained several basic errors , suggesting a shaky grasp of which powers are already devolved. In Belfast and Cardiff, there has also been disappointment that Burnham has seemingly U-turned on a pledge to scrap or reform the much-maligned Barnett formula , which determines Treasury allocations for the Celtic nations to the greater benefit of Edinburgh. In a 2024 book, Head North: A Rallying Cry for a More Equal Britain , Burnham argued in favour of a new system in which funding is “allocated based on social factors