As imagined by Brian Beacom

A BIT of background here; there is as much chance of this ‘spat’ between me and Nicola Sturgeon being about border controls than there is of the Gallagher brothers singing He Ain’t Heavy, He’s My Brother in their mum’s living room this weekend.

There is even more chance of Matt Hancock saying, ‘Honestly, I was performing the internal Heimlich Manoeuvre.’

Let me explain; the First Minister’s resentment runs deeper than an Irn-Bru stain or your auntie’s new cream carpet. It has done since the Covid-payments battle with Boris and the papers dubbed me the King of the North. She likes to think that’s her title. Ha!

For years now, she’s run on her anti-Westminster campaigns and then I show up, Andrew Murray Burnham, Thunder Stealer. And I’m even more anti-Metropolitan than she is. I may have gone to Cambridge and made my way up the greasy political pole, but she hates that a Scouser can become a big noise without breaking wind.

So, she makes it a law that Scots can’t visit their Auntie Sheila in Salford, and stick their faces in her Eccles cakes for a couple of days and take in the Corrie tour. But tell me, does that deserve a Tasering?

Now, many Mancunians have asked me: ‘Why did Nicola Sturgeon not put a block on Dundee visits? Is it to do with the fact it’s the syringe-strewn, drug capital of Europe, where even the Escobars in their day would have steered clear of?'

I say, no. I don’t think so, because it also has the V&A and the brilliant Dundee Rep and the street with the twa fitba teams. And The Beano. Surely anyone would want to go there.

No, this is all about political expediency. Nicola Sturgeon goes through more changes and shifts than the Manchester Royal. One minute she’s backing her SQA, the next minute it's toast. One minute she’s ripping into Rangers supporters for spreading Covid, the next she’s hosting a party in Glasgow Green and dribbling at the mouth over Billy Gilmour.

But what really takes the barm cake is the cheek of the woman to suggest that my complaint is all about MY ambition. I could point out I’ve stood for leader of the Labour Party twice – and failed, the first time to Mr Ed – Miliband – and the second to Old Grey Beard, which suggests the party rates me slightly lower than Diane Abbott.

However, Ms Sturgeon doesn’t want to be reminded of my glorious failures when it suits the narrative of my so-called vaunting ambition.

Yet here this, I’m still a battler for the left-behind. My dad used to say to me, ‘Stop feeling you’re behind, Andrew’. And I know what he meant because I do feel it. I care about the homeless. I care about those with homes. And right now I care about those Scots who wish to come to our homes – well, not mine, not with three kids – but you know what I mean.