(Image: Peter Byrne)
Andy Burnham has suggested Sir Alex Ferguson could make an “effective” mayor, as the Greater Manchester leader called for Scotland to embrace "deeper" devolution.
The Prime Minister made the tongue in cheek suggestion during a speech in Motherwell on the need to move power out from Westminster and Holyrood.
Asked whether that included elected mayors in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen, the Prime Minister said: "Well, I'm thinking of some people in my part of the world. Sir Alex would be quite effective there. One of those places he's got connections to me."
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Sir Alex, a longstanding Labour supporter, managed Aberdeen from 1978 to 1986, breaking the Old Firm's grip on Scottish football and winning the European Cup Winners' Cup in 1983 with a victory over Real Madrid in Gothenburg.
He then spent 26 years at Manchester United, winning 13 Premier League titles, before retiring in 2013.
Andy Burnham was speaking in Motherwell. (Image: Jeff Mitchell)
Mr Burnham, a Man City fan, quickly added that mayors for Scotland was "not a question for me" and that he was "not coming here to impose a model".
He added: "Obviously, as a former mayor, and dare I say, as a mayor that created the fastest global city region, played my part in doing it, the whole place created it, it works. It does work, and you can see Liverpool now growing faster than the UK economy.
"That is an amazing thing to say, because there are Scottish cities that have grown slower than the UK economy, and the gap has got bigger, but you can see how that level of devolution in England is now really starting to change things.
"So I would say it's for Scotland to decide the model of deeper devolution, not me. And I'm not going to impose something. Say, oh, you must have this if you. It just has to be true deeper devolution that people at the local level and the regional level, the powers are there for them to use."
There is little consensus on the case for elected mayors in Scotland, with the divide firmly down party lines.
Writing in The Herald earlier this year, Gordon McKee, the Labour MP for Glasgow South, argued that the Glasgow region was still reeling from the 1996 abolition of Strathclyde Regional Council. He said the 12 authorities created in its place were "not drawn up by an independent body, but by the ministers themselves and remain with us today".
He said the first step to closing the gap was "having someone actually responsible for solving it".
The Centre for Cities has estimated that Glasgow is underperforming by £7.3 billion a year. The think tank says the city region generates around a third of Scotland's jobs and output but ranks 35th out of 63 UK cities for productivity. It has called for Glasgow City Region to elect its first metro mayor at the local elections in May 2027.
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However, Susan Aitken, the former SNP leader of Glasgow City Council and ex-convener of the city region cabinet, told this paper the case had not been made.
She said: "There is an assumption that this is all about an individual, a role, a symbolic figure — and that Scotland would simply replicate the systems used in England. It feels lazy and not properly interrogated."
She added: "You would be inserting a new tier of government between local authorities and Holyrood."