Burnham’s unpopularity in Scotland makes a general election less likely

Andy Burnham has gone to Scotland, where the SNP annual conference is under way in Aberdeen. In his speech at Labour’s get together in Liverpool, he gave one of the most passionate defences of the Union by a major British politician since the Scottish referendum 12 years ago. Today he delivered a speech on devolution 150 miles away in Lanarkshire. He invited the SNP to join him in pushing power out of the capital and into the regions. Kemi Badenoch, the Tory leader, is also north of the border, urging Burnham to rule out another independence referendum. John Swinney, the SNP leader and First Minister, of course, is busy arguing that if Burnham wants to revisit the Brexit referendum result, the Scots should be allowed to have another go too. Scotland remains in the Union and is a central factor in Labour’s electoral success, so it will have an outsize bearing on whether the PM dares to call a general election in the spring. He is expected to announce an opening of the Jackdaw and Rosebank oil and gas drilling soon – decisions which have huge implications for Scottish jobs. If he cares about the Union, he should try to change views of himself in Scotland At the end of a busy week like this I also like to reflect on a few poll findings which have largely passed unnoticed. Burnham’s Scottish polling is fascinating, not least because Labour has never won a majority at Westminster without a decent haul of Scottish seats. Public attention has focused on a halving of the SNP lead over Labour. But the latest survey by More in Common shows that the Burnham bounce is much smaller in Scotland than it has been in England – and that Scottish voters are suspicious of Manchester Man and his driving passsion for the English regions. Most popular Brendan O’Neill The glorious spectacle of Timothy Miller wearing a burka Alys Denby Good riddance to Sally Rooney Steerpike Jenrick leaves BBC squirming over paedophile scandals Between May and October, Labour went up eight percentage points across Great Britain, but its support only rose two points in Scotland, according to More in Common. The same is true of the Tories, up three nationwide and level pegging in Scotland. Some 46 per cent of Scottish voters think that Burnham cares less about Scotland than other parts of the UK, while only 27 per cent think he cares the same amount. More than one third (36 per cent) of Labour’s voters in Scotland agree. This is not a crisis, but it does suggest that Burnham’s blokeish Englishness and strong identification with Manchester is not without its risks. It makes sense that, if he cares about the Union as much as he claims, he should try to change views of himself in Scotland. The running story this week has been the ITV exposé of Reform, which has led to some fairly vile footage of candidates letting rip with racist outbursts. This documentary has not remotely hurt the leadership as much as the Channel 4 programme which showed senior figures close to Nigel Farage apparently determined to bend or break election law (a reminder that Reform has cleared the pair). Ed Sumner, the comms director, comes out of the programme well, recommending the dismissal of all those exposed for racist views, and the recording of Farage himself shows him like any leader weighing up what to do. None of this is a smoking gun. However, the drip-drip of coverage of Reform’s donations, gifts and internal rifts over the past few months does seem to have had an effect on public views of Reform. And here is another interesting nugget from More in Common. Kemi Badenoch won plaudits – including from Burnham – for the way she condemned the views of ethno-nationalists who don’t think non-white people can be English. More in Common found that Badenoch’s popularity rose among those who were shown the clip of her condemning Reform. Overall, those with a positive view of the Conservative leader increased from 37 per cent of voters to 47 per cent. But here’s the interesting thing: the same was even more starkly true of those who are Reform supporters. Among that group, those with a positive view of Badenoch rose 17 points from 40 per cent to 57 per cent. This suggests that there are some Reform voters who want to support someone on the right, but might be queasy about some of the recent headlines on their party. Appearing tough doesn’t seem to be doing Badenoch any harm.