Burnham might know all about buses, but his naivety has handed the SNP a free pass to cause constitutional chaos

It was reasonable to wonder during the early days of Andy Burnham’s premiership just how clued into the realities of national politics he had been while overhauling Manchester bus services.

Few doubted that, in his nine years as mayor of that city, he had plenty on his town hall plate. On local transport alone, there were 93 double-deckers to rebrand in a vibrant shade of yellow for something called The Bee Network – and fares to cap at £2 a journey.

Then there was the drafting of a local Good Landlord Charter – designed to ensure damp-proofing was in place for tenants and washing machine repairs were expedited timeously.

Mr Burnham had to be across all that municipal minutiae and more, and there is some evidence he rose to the challenge admirably.

But we are talking about a man whose political universe was, for nearly a decade, bound by a local ring road. That was why those of us outside the Manchester orbital were doing our wondering.

Well, this week, a mere 51 days after taking the keys to Number 10, Mr Burnham gave the sceptics among us their answer. During only his second PMQs, he showed that the Doubting Thomases were bang on the money.

He might know how to route a yellow bus through Salford; he is clueless about defending the constitutional integrity of the state his party has parachuted him in to govern.

The question he was asked by Dundee Central MP Chris Law was not a difficult one for any prime minister who had been paying attention to how predecessors in the role had answered it.

Andy Burnham's blunder has revived the moribund SNP's plans for another independence referendum. The PM is pictured with First Minister of Scotland John Swinney

And, for all their manifest flaws, Theresa May, Boris Johnson, Liz Truss, Rishi Sunak and Sir Keir Starmer had answered it well. Mr Burnham answered it like a rank amateur. Or, if you prefer, like the Mayor of Manchester. The Nationalist MP’s question was a crude rhetorical trap: the Good Friday Agreement has provision for a referendum on leaving the UK, but no equivalent provision exists for Scotland. Shouldn’t Scots have the same right to choose their own future?

A host of responses should have suggested themselves. The UK Prime Ministerial playbook has become replete with them over the last ten years. Of course, you would have to know the book existed.

The simplest, perhaps, is that the Scots chose their own future as recently as 2014 and the settled will of the people was to remain in the UK. Next question.

Mr Burnham could have reminded the house that, in the SNP’s own words, this referendum was a once in a generation – even ‘once in a lifetime’ – poll, yet the ink was barely dry on the ballot papers before they were clamouring for another.

He could have channelled the man he replaced in Number 10. Sir Keir Starmer was rarely impressive, but his defence of the Union was at least unequivocal: no second referendum on his watch.

He could have stated – again, as predecessors have done – that he considered his role as Prime Minister for the whole of the UK to be bringing its constituent nations together, not driving them apart.

Or, with even a rudimentary grasp of the catalogue of failures presided over by Mr Law’s party in Holyrood, he could have put him back in his box by reminding him just how thankful Scots should be that a referendum rerun is off the table.

Mr Burnham did none of these things. He marched right up to a bear trap so obvious it might as well have carried a neon sign reading ‘steer clear!’ – and jumped in with both feet. The foolish man told Mr Law precisely what he wanted to hear – that the position is ‘exactly the same’ in Scotland as in Northern Ireland.

That is, when there is a clear consensus in favour of independence then a referendum should be considered.

In a heartbeat, he revived the moribund party he should be seeking to put out of its misery. Gift-wrapped, with a bow on top, he handed the SNP a roadmap to independence – and, no matter how frantically he tries to backtrack, neither he nor we will ever hear the last of it.

This wasn’t just politically naive in the extreme; it was a fundamental misunderstanding of the differing legal realities attending Scotland and Northern Ireland. Yes, a provision in the Good Friday Agreement allows for a referendum on a united Ireland in certain circumstances. It was a uniquely tailored peace settlement designed to resolve decades of conflict and bloodshed.

For the record, the requirement that the Northern Ireland Secretary must call a referendum if a Nationalist majority looks likely is deeply unpopular in Unionist communities who, quite understandably, resent the fact their place in the UK is, in perpetuity, under review rather than settled.

On the most favourable analysis, it was the painful price to be paid to stop the bombing.

Scotland is on an entirely different footing. Our place in the Union is governed by the Scotland Act, not a peace treaty designed to pacify paramilitaries.

And, sorry to labour the point, Mr Burnham, but it really is key: we have had our referendum. It was ugly, divisive, exhausting and distracting; it was a political quagmire and, more than a decade on, we are still not out the other side. Yet you contrive to plonk us back in the middle.

Some facts about this referendum the Prime Minister may have forgotten about during his Manchester sojourn: Nationalists set the date of the poll; they set the question; they expanded the pool of people eligible to vote to include everyone in Scotland over 16. And they lost decisively.

Supporters at a rally for Scottish independence in Edinburgh last Saturday

The Unionists across the water have my sympathy. They are saddled with a mechanism which offers a permanent legal pathway for Northern Ireland to leave the UK based on the vagaries of opinion polls, with no reciprocal locking down of their place in the Union if the polls swing heavily the other way.

It is the height of political illiteracy for any leader of a Unionist party to suppose a similar arrangement should apply in Scotland. Why? Because it is precisely the kind of ‘neverendum’ the SNP has spent the past 12 years trying to engineer.

Hear them now – chipper, emboldened, heartily welcoming the PM’s ‘long overdue acceptance’ of the way things should be. Will Mr Burnham meet to discuss his interesting and progressive ideas on Scotland’s future, asks First Minister John Swinney. Shall we get this firmed up in writing?

There are many further north than Manchester who hoped to learn that they, too, were on Mr Burnham’s radar. They wanted signs of awareness in him of the 20-year hollowing out of Scotland – the wrecking ball taken to education, the chronic healthcare waiting lists, the decaying cities, the dying isles, the disastrous ferry fleet hastening their demise…

But no – this guy has given a leg up to the shower responsible. He has invited Mr Swinney not to clean up his mess but instead to say the word when he has manufactured a temporary polling spike.

Mr Burnham may have learned something about buses. He clearly knows nothing about stopping the wheels coming off the Union.