Burnham warned not to sideline Scotland as PM and appoint Scottish Secretary 'who actually wants the job'

In an interview with LBC, Professor Dugdale took a swipe at how current Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander has run the Scotland Office, saying his replacement needs to be someone who wants the job, "not just to be in the Cabinet."

She said she was "excited" at the prospect of a Burnham premiership and he had the potential to become a reforming Prime Minister capable of delivering the "big structural change" Labour promised voters.

However she said his government risked repeating past mistakes if it failed to improve relations with Holyrood.

Without naming a preferred successor, she said the next Scottish Secretary needed to be committed to rebuilding relationships across Scotland.

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"The criterion needs to be somebody that wants to be the Secretary of State for Scotland more than they just want to be in the Cabinet," she said.

"Somebody who's prepared to spend all their time and energy in Scotland building relationships with the big sectors and big groups that drive this country's policy agenda."

Asked whether that meant she expected current Scottish Secretary Douglas Alexander to move on, she said: "I suspect it's likely that Douglas will have another role within Andy Burnham's set-up."

Stressing she had "no inside intelligence", she added: "I do think it's important that you have a Secretary of State who's based in Scotland and wants to be in that role more than they want to do anything else."

The former Scottish Labour leader, who is now Associate Director of Glasgow University's Centre for Public Policy, said she had become increasingly aware of the lack of engagement from the UK Government with Scotland's policy community.

"I'm in a lot of spaces these days as an academic, where you see Scottish Government officials and representatives all of the time," she said.

"Then you see representatives of the UK Government dip in for 15 minutes.

"It's really obvious to me now that those relationships, which are required to make the country work effectively, just aren't there from the UK Government perspective."

Prof Dugdale also told LBC she was concerned Scotland was not yet at the forefront of Burnham's thinking.

"I have a slight worry that Scotland isn't high enough up his agenda at the minute," she said.

"I think he needs to think really carefully about who the Secretary of State for Scotland is, and who his advisers in Scotland are. That's really important in terms of setting the right kind of tone between the Scottish Government and the UK Government."

She also believes that Burnham will usher in a very different style of leadership from Sir Keir Starmer.

"The first thing Keir Starmer did when he came in was tell everybody how awful it was going to be and that things were going to be worse before they got better," she said.

"From Andy Burnham, you'll see the opposite of that. A bit of hope, a bit of positivity, and some early signs and decisions that will show us things are going to get better across the country."

But she added: "Good vibes in and of themselves are not enough but it is a really good start and I think what he's also got to his credit is a united Labour Party behind him that realises they now only have three years left in office and the big change they promised in that election 2024 really has to be delivered now.

"So I hope he acts like it's the first day after the last general election. He's got 3 years to make a big difference."

She said there would likely be an early focus on social care and tackling the cost of living, but that Burnham was likely to pursue more ambitious constitutional reforms.

"I really like him because he paints in big primary colours," she said. "He's interested in fixing things that are fundamentally broken in the country, like the electoral system, like recognising that the House of Lords is outdated.

"I think he's worked really hard to become Prime Minister. He's going in there with an agenda to do some of the big structural stuff that's at the heart of why this country is so unequal. I'm really hopeful about what he might be able to achieve."

On Scotland's constitutional future, she suggested Burnham's long-standing support for a written UK constitution could eventually see him tackle difficult questions about the Union - namely what the bar should be for a second independence referendum.

"If this union is voluntary, how do you leave it?" she said. "I don't think that is a question that's going to arrive on his desk on day one or even in the first 100days but at some point in the next three years, if he really wants to change the wiring of how Britain works for the better, he is going to have to engage with the Scottish Government about fundamental questions."

She also argued Burnham would need to broaden his vision of devolution beyond England's regions.

"He's made huge amounts about his own northernness," she said. "He needs to understand what his idea of northernness means to folk that live in Dundee and Aberdeen and Shetland.

"He's going to have to find a new language, a new story to tell that also recognises that Manchester is by no means the north of the country that he seeks to govern."