LABOUR leadership hopeful Andy Burnham slammed nationalism as an “ugly” and “divisive” brand of politics yesterday in a border dispute with SNP First Minister Nicolas Sturgeon.

Mr Burham’s comments came as pressure mounts on Ms Sturgeon to reveal whether another independence referendum will be in the SNP’s manifesto ahead of the Scottish Parliament elections next year.

So far Ms Sturgeon has said that a referendum will happen “if and when the Scottish people decide.”

In an attempt to counter the huge surge of support for the SNP and Scottish independence, Mr Burnham declared that he would be instrumental in securing greater autonomy for Scottish Labour.

Mr Burnham said that he would seek to have “measures put through Labour conference this year, immediately, to give more autonomy to the Scottish party.”

He insisted that people north and south of the border want “solidarity, not separation” and said that the Labour Party must keep that principle.

“We are one party,” he said, with Scottish Labour granted autonomy over “organisational matters, selections, over policy.”

Alluding to Jeremy Corbyn’s successful anti-austerity campaign, Mr Burnham warned that Labour would “find it difficult” if Labour became “a party of protest” by putting forward “an agenda from the ’70s or ’80s.”

In response to Mr Burnham’s comments, Campaign for Socialism Scotland convener Vince Mills said that an independent Scottish Labour Party would preclude Labour’s “capacity to work in an integrated way to tackle the power of capital vested in the City [of London].”

Mr Mills called for a federal relationship which would “offer autonomy and solidarity in challenging the power of British capital.”