The contradiction at the heart of Andy Burnham’s attitude to devolution

Richard Wyn Jones

There is a contradiction at the heart of Andy Burnham’s attitude to devolution. On the face of it, the new UK Prime Minister’s commitment could hardly be clearer. Last week he told readers of The Guardian (23.7.2026) that when ‘When I entered Downing Street, I told staff that the era of fighting devolution is over. No one in government loses when power is shared. When you lift up a place, you lift up Britain .’

Yet his appointments to the territorial ministries – the Secretaries of State for Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales – tell a very different story. These are the cabinet posts involving most day-to-day interaction with actually-existing devolution.

All three are now occupied by politicians who hold distinctly sceptical views about devolution as it has developed around the periphery of the state and whose first instinct is precisely to fight and obstruct.

There is now a tradition of Secretaries of State for Scotland who regard their role as leading the fight against successive SNP governments in Edinburgh.

Scottish voters must be shown the error or their democratic ways! Reappointed to the role by Burnham, Douglas Alexander is merely the latest in this now long line.

Rhondda MP’s (Sir) Chris Bryant surprise appointment as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland has been the source of some bemusement among those journalists who follow the Labour party’s internal politics most .

There is, however, no doubt that Bryant is on the devo-sceptic wing of his party. In a post on Elon Musk’s X in February, he condemned the idea of ‘standing up for Wales’ as ‘separatism’.

Readers of Nation will need no reminding that this was the slogan of the pro-devolution ‘Welsh Labour’ faction of the party that had subsequently been appropriated by Plaid Cymru .

Given that Northern Ireland’s devolution arrangements are, in effect, guaranteed by the UK’s international treaty obligations, and that Bryant new role is to try to make them work more effectively, it remains to be seen how he approaches that task. But an instinctive devolutionist he is not!

The new Welsh Secretary, Stephen Kinnock, may well be the scion of one of our most prominent anti-devolution families, but with his profile at least as high in Denmark as it is in Wales, his views on Welsh devolution had been something of a mystery.

Following his appointment, however, he wasted little time in making clear that he would ‘need to be convinced’ of the case for more powers even in areas such a justice where Labour’s own Welsh conference has overwhelmingly supported the case for devolution.

How do we explain the contradiction between Burnham’s enthusiastic championing of devolution and the deep devo-scepticism of his territorial Secretaries?

It’s worth noting, first, that Burnham’s choices for Scotland and Wales are very much reflect the thinking of this own party’s Scottish and Welsh MPs who are, with remarkably few exceptions, deeply suspicious of and even hostile towards the devolved governments of their respective countries.

Political capital

In Wales, this was even the case when Labour was in power in Cardiff! For the new Prime Minister to challenge such views would involve expending political capital taking on entrenched party bureaucracies.

He may well have decided that it is simply not a battle worth fighting when the next general election will be won or lost in England.

Second and relatedly, the Scottish Parliamentary Labour Party, in particular, has become adept at using pro-devolution rhetoric as a veil for its hostility towards actually-existing devolution.

Their argument is that power should be devolved from Holyrood to more local levels. But whatever the rhetoric, in reality, they have become champions of bypassing Edinburgh.

This means, continuing with the approach of previous Conservative governments who sought to cut-out devolved government by working directly with local government.

In Scotland, this is a level of government where Labour councillors regularly cooperate with their Conservative and even Reform counterparts in order to ‘dish the nats’.

There are clear signs that this is the approach now favoured by influential figures in the Welsh party. But there remain countervailing forces that may well make aping the Scottish approach difficult.

There are, for example, obvious anomalies in the current devolution arrangements that Labour will find it hard to defend. One looks forwards to hearing Kinnock try to explain why Andy Burnham in his previous role of Mayor of Manchester should have enjoyed more power in relation to policing than the Welsh Government.

There are, in addition, prominent figures in the Welsh party who will oppose attempts to undermine devolved government in the name of some abstract and frankly disingenuous commitment to ‘deeper devolution’.

On last week’s edition of the BBC’s ‘Gwleidydda’ podcast, former First Minister (Lord) Carwyn Jones, made it clear that he was ‘totally opposed’ to any attempt to bypass the government in Cardiff in this .

Support

Finally, at some point before the next UK election, surely even Welsh Labour MPs will recognise the need to win back the support of those voters who switched from Labour to Plaid Cymru in May’s Senedd election.

As Jones also pointed out, this simply isn’t going to happen if the party is regarded as being hostile to devolution.

Whether it be deliberately or not, the UK’s new, ostensibly devolutionist Prime Minister has given succour to some of the most devo-sceptic elements within his own party in Scotland and in Wales. It remains to be seen for how long this can be sustained as a direction of travel.

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