MANCHESTER, England — Andy Burnham said Monday he wants to move part of the prime minister’s office from London’s 10 Downing St. to northwest England and hand greater autonomy to local leaders, as he set out a 10-year plan for “good growth in every postcode.” The likely next U.K. prime minister wrapped the pitch in the language of renewal. The machinery underneath is older and meaner: a state that keeps power concentrated in Westminster, then sells decentralisation as a cure for the damage it caused.
Burnham, the former mayor of Greater Manchester, called the shift a “circuit-breaker” for the sclerotic British state and part of “the biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen.” He said, “Growth cannot be ordered from the top down. Instead, it can only be nurtured from the bottom up.” He also said, “If councils can’t fix potholes, what chance do they have of bringing forward major regeneration schemes to get growth going?” The line is neat. The reality is less poetic. Councils are still being asked to manage the fallout of a system built around central control, private capital and a state that decides who gets resources and who waits.
Power, just moved around the map
Burnham said his approach, dubbed “Manchesterism,” would harness private and public money to invest in transport, housing and infrastructure, create new industrial jobs and better educational opportunities, and reform the U.K.’s inefficient and expensive privatized water and energy utilities. He said a new government office in Manchester, dubbed “No. 10 North,” would oversee regional development and become “the nerve center of a rewired Britain,” with regional mayors getting more power over housing, welfare and education. That’s the language of managed reform, not liberation. The state remains the broker, the planner, the gatekeeper. The market stays in the room too, because “private and public money” is the formula now, whether the bill lands on workers, tenants or bill-payers.
Burnham gave the speech at the People’s History Museum in Manchester, the city where he spent nine years as mayor. He won praise for his role in revitalizing and regenerating Manchester, but he has not served in a U.K. government for almost two decades and may struggle to replicate “Manchesterism” on a U.K.-wide scale. The gap matters. Local branding can’t hide the fact that the same central state, the same fiscal rules, the same privatized utilities and the same property-led growth model still set the terms.
The Institute for Public Policy Research, a left-leaning think tank, said Burnham is right to focus on “rebalancing Britain.” IPPR Executive Director Harry Quilter-Pinner said: “The U.K.’s concentration of power and opportunity in Westminster has held back growth, productivity and living standards for too long.” He added: “The real test now is delivery.” Matthew Flinders, a politics professor at the University of Sheffield, said replicating Burnham’s Manchester approach nationally would require “a fundamental shift” in the way politics is done in Britain. He said that would mean moving from “a very traditional, elitist, centralized model of politics toward something that is in many ways far more European, far more based on power-sharing in order to develop long-term policymaking capacity.”
Westminster, Labour and the same old squeeze
Burnham is the strong favorite to replace Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who announced his resignation last week. Burnham won a special election for a seat in Parliament on June 18 and was sworn in as a lawmaker on June 22, the same day Starmer announced that he will resign as soon as a successor is chosen. Burnham is so far the only contender in the Labour Party leadership contest. If no one challenges him, he will become prime minister by July 20. The electoral circus keeps moving. The office changes hands. The structure stays.
The article said Burnham will be aware that Starmer also announced a 10-year mission — the equivalent of two full terms in government — soon after he was elected in a landslide in July 2024. It said Starmer is leaving after two years in office marred by missteps and judgment errors that eroded his standing with his party and the public. Burnham will face many of the same political and economic challenges, including a sluggish economy, tattered public services and a cost-of-living squeeze. He will also be constrained by the platform the center-left Labour Party was elected on in 2024, with its pledges not to increase taxes on working people.
Then comes the familiar NATO chorus. The article said the U.K., like other NATO countries, is under pressure to dramatically increase defense spending to counter a more aggressive Russia and less reliable United States. The government’s long-awaited defense investment plan, which sparked the resignation of Defense Secretary John Healey on June 11, is expected to be published before a NATO summit in Turkey on July 7 and 8. Starmer’s successor will be expected to stick to the commitments in the plan. So while Burnham talks about potholes, housing and “good growth,” the war machine keeps its appointment with the budget.
Opposition Conservative Party Chairman Kevin Hollinrake said: “Andy Burnham’s big idea is to shuffle power between politicians. Not fix the welfare system. Not cut the taxes strangling working families and British business. Not fund the defense our country desperately needs.” The sentence accidentally does the job of describing the whole arrangement. Politicians shuffle power. Workers get the squeeze. NATO gets the money. The state calls it renewal.