In his big speech this week, Andy Burnham said politicians need to cooperate more and spend less time arguing and more time “pulling in the same direction” (north, presumably). But something Mr Burnham said in the speech about Scotland has, with grim inevitability, caused a disagreement with the First Minister John Swinney, specifically a disagreement about what people might be thinking in Dundee. Mr Burnham says one thing. Mr Swinney says another. And there goes the new age of collaboration.

I guess you could say it was Mr Burnham who started it really because he was the first to mention Dundee. Everyone knows, because he tells us, that Mr Burnham was a DJ and everyone knows, because he tells us, that he’s a fan of The Smiths, which makes me wonder if his choice of Dundee as an example in the speech was influenced by his days in the 1980s listening on his Manchester stereo in his Manchester bedroom in his Manchester house to lyrics about DJs in provincial towns being led triumphantly to the gallows. Maybe.

But whatever the reason for choosing Dundee in particular, his argument is that the city and other places like it need more devolution. The UK, he says, is one of the most over-centralised countries in the world and his mission is to change that by extending devolution further: “taking power deeper down”. He said in the speech that “the people of Dundee and Bangor feel just as distant from Holyrood and the Senedd as they do from Westminster,” which is the bit that’s caused the disagreement with Mr Swinney.

The First Minister’s response to Mr Burnham was that Dundee doesn’t feel distant from Holyrood at all, far from it. “The city of Dundee just re-elected SNP members of the Scottish Parliament and the Labour Party got terrible results in the city,” he said. He also said Mr Burnham’s remarks about Dundee demonstrated his........

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