Editorial: Andy ​Burnham is an unknown quantity for Northern Ireland, and the UK as a whole

​Andy Burnham’s pledge to be a leader for all parts of the United Kingdom is exactly what you’d expect a Prime Minister in waiting to say.

​However, just days away from the new Labour leader becoming the country’s fifth leader in 5 years, it is unclear what his premiership will be about.

Devolution has perhaps been his greatest focus so far – with pledges to bring power closer to the people in the English regions.

What that means in the devolved nations remains to be seen, with detail scant about how further or ‘deeper’ devolution would work – particularly in Northern Ireland.

There has been a predictable pushback in Scotland, and the nationalist first minister has already raised the spectre of an independence referendum. That is something the new PM must nip in the bud. Scots had their say in 2014, and the UK does not need more constitutional instability.

Mr Burnham committed that he will be “a leader for the north, the south, the east, and the west, for Scotland, Wales, and for Northern Ireland” in his first speech as Labour leader. However, his address said very little about how he would govern the country differently.

On one hand, he promised more cross-party working, and on the other decried Thatcher’s economic policies in the 1980s and said he wouldn’t repeat the mistake of “wearing too many Tory clothes”.

On the economy, he has promised to be “a pro-business leader of the Labour Party”, as he said he was in Manchester.

Unionists want greater clarity on his position on NI’s place in the UK. He once committed to Labour running candidates here – against the nationalist SDLP. A failure to stick to that might signal how committed to the Union the new Labour leader really is.