Andy Burnham's attendance at the Scottish National Party conference has been extended to cover this year's gathering. As John Swinney prepares to address the Aberdeen conference on Saturday afternoon, setting out the party's position on a second independence referendum, some observers have noted that the build-up devoted considerable attention to the UK prime minister rather than to the SNP's own agenda.
Burnham is scheduled to travel to Scotland on Friday — the midpoint of the conference — in what some observers have described as a move to draw attention away from the SNP event. Attending a separate venue, the former Manchester mayor is nonetheless expected to cast a noticeable shadow over proceedings in Scotland.
Following his arrival at No 10 in July, Burnham has tended to steer clear of public clashes with opposition figures, with neither Nigel Farage nor Kemi Badenoch drawing notable attacks from him. His dealings with the Scottish first minister have followed a notably distinct path.
Of the politicians from other parties whom Burnham chose to name in his keynote address at last month's Labour Party conference, only two were cited: the SNP leader and Margaret Thatcher. At a gathering where pro-independence parties from Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland convened to mark the occasion of all three devolved assemblies falling under nationalist-led administrations for the first time, he brought up Swinney's forecast that the sitting prime minister would prove to be the UK's last.
Burnham disclosed that Swinney had done so on the very day his father passed away — adding that he raised it neither to invite sympathy nor to lay blame at Swinney's door. That detail was included so readers could appreciate the weight it carried for those involved.
Successive occupants of Downing Street have, by and large, kept their distance from devolved Scottish matters — setting aside the periodic question of a second independence vote. Burnham has put it on record that no clear agreement exists among those involved to hold another vote. Where predecessors held back, he opted to bring the argument for the union directly to Scottish audiences, putting the case openly on the SNP's own ground.
His arrival adds a layer of complexity to the SNP's ongoing effort to rebuild momentum behind the independence argument. Swinney has put on record a preference for holding another referendum before 2031. For more than twenty years, Holyrood has been governed by a party whose central platform rests on independence — a tenure shaped, in part, by the fact that Westminster governments during much of that period held different political positions and supported withdrawal from the European Union, circumstances that some argue have left Scottish priorities without adequate representation at the UK Parliament.
Three policy positions Burnham holds — a devolution push, an openness to reconsidering EU membership, and a £2 bus fare cap — present a distinct set of challenges to counter. His approval ratings hold across the SNP voter base as well.
According to a PF Global poll, 46% of people surveyed in Scotland reported a favourable view of Burnham — a figure that cleared the Labour Party's own rating by some distance and ran at roughly double the approval level Keir Starmer registered when he left office. Among SNP voters who backed independence in 2014, polling places only Swinney ahead of the prime minister in approval, a standing for a Labour leader not recorded at that level since the Corbyn era.
Notwithstanding those developments, several SNP politicians have sought to use Burnham's position on EU membership as leverage in arguments for holding a further independence referendum. Lara Bird — the MP representing Arbroath and Broughty Ferry — argued that Burnham was unilaterally reopening questions about the validity of past referendum results while maintaining that the same reasoning should not extend to Scottish independence. She also expressed the view that the union in its present form could not realistically continue.
In Aberdeen, the party is attempting to move past a difficult period that included Nicola Sturgeon's departure from office and the subsequent fraud conviction of her former husband and one-time SNP chair Peter Murrell, who received a five-year prison sentence after being found guilty of embezzling £400,000 from the party. Proceeds-of-crime proceedings involving Murrell have been set down for hearing in early December.
The SNP secured a fifth straight Holyrood victory that month, though the result left the party short of an outright majority and reliant on minority government arrangements. Early in her memoir, Sturgeon wrote that the campaign had lacked both strategic direction and wider ambition — a view she put forward at a point when the party was marking a victory. Swinney described the two of them as remaining on friendly terms.
Within SNP ranks, there are those who attribute a portion of the party's fortunes to voter dissatisfaction with Starmer's leadership. On the electoral map at Holyrood, Reform now holds 17 seats — matching Labour's total — while the Scottish Greens secured a record-breaking tally of 15, leaving the party navigating pressure from more than one direction. A by-election result in Aberdeen South during June offered evidence that the Conservatives retain the capacity to take seats from the SNP.
Notwithstanding the prospect of friction between Swinney and Burnham, voices across Scotland have been pushing for closer working ties between Westminster and Holyrood. Polling by Ipsos found that 42% of Scottish respondents were comfortable with the SNP government at Holyrood maintaining ties with Westminster — up 12 percentage points from the period when Starmer entered office — and that around 51%, a narrow majority, believed Scotland was on the wrong track, itself a rise of six points over the same period.
At this year's gathering, the SNP extended platform invitations to representatives from other parties backing independence or self-determination. Scheduled to address delegates on Friday, Sioned Williams — who holds the post of deputy first minister of Wales — is set to deliver a fraternal speech to the gathering. Mackay, a Scottish Green Party MSP scheduled to take part in a Saturday panel on the path to independence, conveyed that the cause extends beyond any single party — a view she said was shared by SNP members themselves.
Polling and commentary from various quarters has pointed to the SNP as the party viewed most capable of advancing the cause of Scottish independence. That sentiment extends well beyond SNP voters, reaching into a broader cross-section of Scottish society. Bird expressed the view that gathering and expanding that backing as widely as possible was a priority worth pursuing at this particular point in time.
