(Image: Derek McArthur)
The following article appears as part of the Unspun: Scottish Politicsnewsletter.
Andy Burnham needs some help.
Over the weekend, Downing Street put out an advert for a special adviser for Scotland. The post, which can be based in Downing Street, at No 10 North in Manchester or at the Scotland Office in Edinburgh, will "play a pivotal role in advising the Prime Minister and shaping Government-wide policymaking".
The new Scottish Spad will lead on "Scotland Office business, intergovernmental relations, devolution issues and the Government's priorities in Scotland", working with the Cabinet Office and the Treasury as well as No 10 and the Scotland Office.
So if you have the "tenacity to drive for outcomes in a high-pressure environment", get your CV off to SW1A.
It's not a bad paying gig, with wages in the third of four salary bands the Cabinet Office sets for special advisers, somewhere between £81,650 and £119,254.
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For previous Scottish Spads in Whitehall, the job was mostly explaining devolution to colleagues whose eyes glaze over at the prospect of anything north of Hemel Hempstead.
This new Prime Minister, however, is actually quite keen on things north of Hemel Hempstead.
The advert went up on LinkedIn shortly after Mr Burnham's speech at a college on the old Ravenscraig site in Motherwell last Friday.
Unsurprisingly, given SNP conference was on at the same time, coverage of his first big event in Scotland as Prime Minister was dominated by independence and his unwillingness to rule out indyref2, but there was a lot more in the speech worthy of proper scrutiny.
Mr Burnham's argument was that devolution was always meant to go deeper than Holyrood and hasn't. Scotland, he argued, is the most devolved nation in the UK, and is itself one of the most centralised in Europe.
He made three offers. The first, a joint process to design, within months, a new model of regional economic empowerment. The second, what he called DWP devolution, a localised employment support system shaped by Holyrood. And third, a look at giving Scotland's regions the say over research and innovation spending that English mayors now have.
It marks a real shift, I'd argue. The UK Government has long insisted that further devolution within Scotland is a matter for the Scottish Government.
Here was Mr Burnham saying clearly that Whitehall has a role too.
Interestingly, last week also saw the publication of the new Local Innovation and Economic Dynamism index.
The research by the Social Mobility Commission scores all 361 UK councils from 0 to 100 on 16 indicators covering business dynamism, the labour market, housing and earnings, and innovation.
It ranks Edinburgh fourth and Glasgow ninth, ahead of Manchester (18th), Liverpool (37th), Newcastle (61st) and Leeds (72nd). No council in the North of England makes the top 15.
That perhaps sits awkwardly with Mr Burnham's warning that Scottish cities risk becoming underpowered while northern English ones power up.
It is also worth noting Glasgow and Edinburgh managed to outscore Manchester without a directly elected mayor.
Where the index unquestionably backs the PM is internal inequality.
Scotland has the widest gap between its best and worst councils of any UK nation or region, from Edinburgh to Dumfries and Galloway, the lowest of all 361.
On this evidence the gap to fill isn't between Scotland's cities and England's, but between Scotland's cities and the rest of Scotland.
An important caveat. The index ends in 2023, the year Greater Manchester and the West Midlands signed their trailblazer deals, so it can't show what those settlements are delivering.
That's the worry in Glasgow, I'm told. It's not where the city is now, but slipping back as English city regions gain powers and resources it lacks.
Which brings us back to Mr Burnham's speech. It lacked any detail on money.
There was no figure for the regional offer, no mention of the income tax and business rates share he's giving English mayors, and nothing on the Barnett consequentials that Glasgow and Edinburgh city region leaders say should follow English mayoral funding.
Instead these were matters, he told me, to be discussed at the upcoming National Economic Council.
Mr Burnham's diagnosis of Scotland's centralisation is acute, and the regional disparity is indisputable.
But solving it requires more than rhetoric about rewiring the state, or even the offer of more powers.
It demands hard cash.
Whoever lands that six-figure Scottish Spad gig, their first job may need to be warning the boss that his regional revolution can't be done on the cheap.