“Imagine a rambling stately home. It has a rickety old electricity system which means that the power is only on in some rooms,” wrote Andy Burnham in his book Head North, “upstairs, directly above the living room, is the main bedroom. There, the lights flicker but they do work. Let’s call that room Scotland.”

This is the dim view of the crumbling British state, and Scotland’s nearly three-decade experience of devolution, that Burnham took as he came to power. In his analogy, Wales and Northern Ireland were smaller rooms, the northern cities ones with even dimmer lights. Now he is setting out on his renovation project, and a visit to Motherwell last week to deliver a speech on Scotland’s future was the first step.

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