NICOLA Sturgeon has shared her views on the new Prime Minister, saying he has a “very southern view of what it means to be northern”.
In a talk at the Féile an Phobail (The Community's Festival) at St Mary’s University College Belfast on Thursday, she said she hopes Burnham succeeds in his tenure in No 10 because “him succeeding is potentially the only thing in England standing in the way of a Nigel Farage Reform government, and I definitely don’t want to see that”.
She also touched on a “massive fight” the pair had Covid-19 regulations when he was mayor of Greater Manchester.
The 2021 spat saw Burnham accused Sturgeon of “insulting” the people of Greater Manchester after imposing a Scottish travel ban on the area.
She said: "It didn't reflect well on either of us, but we'll leave that to one side."
Moving on, Sturgeon said: “I don’t think he offers much for Scotland or Wales or Northern Ireland.
“I mean the whole No 10 of the North, right? I mean, can you just humour me here for a second while I rant about this?
“Go and look at the 'No 10 of the North' on a map of mainland Britain. It’s in the bloody English Midlands.
“Manchester, if you’re in London or the south-east of England, Manchester’s north, you don’t even have to go to Scotland to start questioning that, you know people in Newcastle don’t see Manchester as the north.
“So he’s got this kind of very southern view of what it means to be northern, so I don’t think he’s going to offer much for Scotland, and so I’m not sure that he’s going to make much difference to the debate or the arguments for Scottish independence.”
Burnham is expected to work at the new headquarters, at Heron House in Manchester, once each week during his premiership, as part of his move to push power out of Westminster.
Sturgeon was deputy first minister during the independence referendum in 2014, and shared some of her reflections on that experience.
She said: “I had a kind of running joke a few years back with [Sinn Féin leader] Mary Lou McDonald about which would happen first: united Ireland or independent Scotland, and back then I was convinced it would be an independent Scotland. I’m more open to saying Ireland might get there first.
“There are differences as well as similarities, both of those campaigns stand on their own terms, but I do believe this: that if one happens, whichever one it is first, the other will happen pretty quickly after it.
“And so my prediction, and I think, don’t forget, and this is a massive thing that if somebody had said this even 10 years ago, the SNP have been in government now for 20 years, but if somebody had said 10, 20 years ago that one day, three of the four UK nations would be led by nationalist governments, nobody would believe that – that’s the reality right now.”
She added: “The bonds that held the UK together are breaking down and – certainly in a Scottish context – the only thing holding it together right now is Westminster refusing to let people in Scotland decide on this, almost holding us prisoner, that can’t stand.
“So I do think I said 20 years. I think it may well be sooner, we’ll have a situation where Ireland is united, Scotland’s independent, Wales more autonomous, independent.”
