Until recently, I made the trip to Manchester from Scotland on an almost weekly basis to visit my daughter, who was at school in Britain’s second city for six years.
If she was still there, I would have no hesitation in continuing to make the journey, despite Nicola Sturgeon’s misjudged travel ban on Manchester and Salford.
As many others have been quick to point out, the move – perhaps the worst example of Nationalist mission creep since the outbreak of Covid – is unenforceable.
What is to stop people taking the Transpennine Express from Glasgow or Edinburgh to Carlisle (not banned) then boarding a train to Manchester, or driving to the Lake District (not banned) and then embarking on an excursion further down the M6?
Train services on this route have not been cut, the police have not set up roadblocks to stop Mancunians from crossing the border, and Greater Manchester Police said they can’t enforce Scottish regulations.
Creating laws that cannot be enforced not only opens the Scottish Government to ridicule, it also makes it harder to take any future Holyrood legislation seriously.
But if we in Scotland – those of us who do not kowtow to every authoritarian Nat diktat – were angered by the latest episode of anti-English baiting from the SNP, Manchester was angrier. Especially its mayor.
Andy Burnham fired his first shot on Sunday morning and was still going strong yesterday. He was particularly incensed by the manner in which Sturgeon’s travel restrictions were announced, on television, without any consultation with him.
🗣️ "Our 2.8 million residents deserve to be treated with due respect and proper consideration when restrictions are being implemented which will affect their lives."
The Mayor has written to Nicola Sturgeon, First Minister of Scotland.
Read 👇 pic.twitter.com/ohKaFLWl7Y
— Mayor of Greater Manchester Andy Burnham (@MayorofGM) June 21, 2021
Here, we are used to the First Minister using her BBC platform to deliver surprise government decisions that should be made in parliament, where there is at least a chance they will be debated.
But to a former Labour minister the contempt for protocol was plainly shocking.
In a letter, sent to Sturgeon on Monday, Burnham said if Westminster had imposed a similar ban on Scotland without advance warning there would have been hell to pay, or words to that effect.
Sturgeon suggested Burnham should have picked up the phone but, as he pointed out, how was he to know she was going to target his city.
A good pandemic and a mature mayor
He also questioned what criteria Sturgeon had used to justify her new rules, given that Covid rates in parts of Scotland, such as Dundee, were higher than in parts of Greater Manchester but travel between Scottish cities was permitted.
And he demanded compensation for businesses that will be hit by the loss of trade and for people in Manchester having to cancel travel plans to Scotland at the last minute.
Burnham has had a good pandemic; along with other northern city leaders he took on Boris Johnson last year over Downing Street’s local lockdown policy, insisting on greater clarity and better financial support.
He showed how much he has matured politically since taking on the mayoral job, and putting behind him the embarrassment of two failed attempts at the Labour leadership.
His spat with Sturgeon is more evidence of his standing, among the 2.8 million residents who elected him with 63% of the vote in 2017, and in the country generally.
When he accused Sturgeon of trampling on his constituents’ civil liberties it made some of us in Scotland wish we too had a leader so ferociously protective of our interests, instead of one preoccupied by her party’s partisan agenda.
But the most enjoyable aspect of this clash – and it is a gift that keeps on giving to anyone scunnered by Nationalist supremacism – is Burnham’s unambiguous opposition.
Burnham is the first Labour boss in a long time to lay a glove on the First Minister and in doing so he has exposed her hypocrisy to a national audience
In Scotland we have become used to Labour leaders either trying to befriend Sturgeon in the hope of siphoning off some of her support among constitutional fence sitters, or too terrified to square up to her for fear of alienating the same.
Burnham is the first Labour boss in a long time to lay a glove on the First Minister and in doing so he has exposed her hypocrisy to a national audience.
And he is not finished yet. Yesterday he said he had not ruled out legal action against Sturgeon over her ‘discriminatory’ travel edicts. Bring it on!
She is clearly riled. She tried, laughably given her own grandstanding, to paint his attack on her as politicking, a ploy to advance his next leadership challenge.
Probably no one else in Britain read Burnham’s intervention that way. Spontaneous fury in a politician is hard to conceal.
However, he has not denied he would like to lead his party if the opportunity arose again. On his present form, let’s hope he gets a third go at the top job.
He has earned it, he would provide a credible and, what’s more, electable alternative to the long Tory hegemony, and, best of all, he would not tolerate any more of Nicola Sturgeon’s nonsense.
