If you’ve been wondering whether Andy Burnham is simply a Labour version of Boris Johnson, then you’re pretty much bang on the money.

About to be crowned Prime Minister without his own general election mandate? Tick.

Hailed as the saviour of a party that’s having a collective breakdown? Double tick.

Trading on the utterly daft notion that he’s the kind of guy you’d like to hang out with? Big double tick (though the thought of having a pint with either would put me off drink for life).

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Cresting on vibes, flim-flam and low-grade rhetoric, rather than policy? Big fat double tick.

Using image to obscure vacuity? Super big fat double tick.

Knows absolutely sod all about Scotland but mouths off a lot? A tick so big it obscures the sun.

Burnham’s approach to Scotland is both disastrous – for him, Labour and Scotland – and thoroughly idiotic.

You can take it to pieces as easily as a Lego toy car. First – and most stupidly – of all, Burnham is using the same arguments that the Yes movement uses.

The central tenet of the Yes movement is that “Westminster is broken”, and Scotland must go its own way to escape the dysfunction.

Folk who read my columns in The Herald will know that’s fundamentally my principal reason for supporting independence.

I don’t do flags and nationalism or all that “wha’s like us” Little Scotlander nonsense. You can stick that.

I’ve simply been alive long enough to........

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