There are few things politicians enjoy more than announcing that they are giving power away, but Andy Burnham has made it something of a speciality.

Since entering Downing Street, the prime minister has promised to take decision-making out of Westminster and spread it across the country.

No10 North has been established in Manchester, and regional mayors are to get more responsibility and money.

Burnham talks endlessly of delivering growth in “every postcode”.

And this agenda is not limited to England.

In a speech shortly before becoming prime minister, Burnham claimed the people of Dundee could feel “just as distant from Holyrood” as they do from Westminster.

Rather predictably, the SNP was unimpressed.

Only last week, it accused Burnham of dressing up the creation of powerful regional mayors as devolution when, in its view, power would actually be sucked upwards from councils.

The party described his plans as “centralisation in a high-vis jacket”.

Whatever your view of this attack, the timing was certainly unfortunate.

Forty-eight hours later, John Swinney announced that Scotland’s 14 territorial health boards are to be replaced with just two.

Such a policy could be described as many things, but decentralisation is not one of them.

There is, of course, a........

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