My conversation with Andy Burnham, Mayor of the Greater Manchester Combined Authority
Director of Policy and Research
Yesterday we held our very first in-person and live Meetings with Mayors event at the Labour Party Conference fringe in Liverpool. Andy Burnham joined us to speak with typical frankness about his experiences as Mayor of Greater Manchester, the contrasts between regional and national politics, and the future of devolution.
And of course, there was a bit of added context for this event. I was keen to explore Burnham’s critique of how the current Government is operating, and his apparent willingness to present himself as an alternative leader of the Labour party and Prime Minister. In the days running up to the conference, he has called for a much more fundamental change to the way the State at large should operate. To what extent are his comments informed by the model that has been made possible in Manchester by devolution? And does Burnham see himself as a national leader of a far more decentralised English political and economic system?
Some of Burnham’s comments were reported on the national news as the continuation of his critique of the Government – but beyond these headlines, the whole discussion was full of insight and clues about the Manchester Mayor’s leadership mentality and his vision for the future of the State.
Below, three quick reflections from me – and I’d recommend watching the whole conversation here.
Bottom-up policy… at the national scale?
Burnham spoke passionately about the advantages of place-based working and the mayoral model, arguing that the last decade in Manchester demonstrates that this is the right way to achieve economic growth and improved, integrated public services – as well as a much stronger, more personal connection with voters.
When I pressed him on how this could be sustained at a national scale – or maintained when one is not a mayor but a prime minister – Burnham said something important: that national government and national politicians could connect more closely with their constituencies, and could help to create the conditions – the policy environment – for a much more “bottom-up” system. This would be a very different model to the direct Whitehall managerialism which Burnham still thinks prevails across the country.
The “Manchester model” can work for devolution – but only if places work together
I asked whether the success of Manchester can really be replicated as Strategic Authorities – all at least somewhat templated on GMCA – spread across the country. After all, some of these will be much smaller in terms of population, far more rural in nature, and lack the clear metropolitan economic core of a place like Manchester.
Burnham’s solution to this is to embrace the opportunity to foster collaborations between Strategic Authorities at a pan-regional scale. This kind of approach is already beginning to emerge through structures like the White Rose Agreement in Yorkshire, close partnered working in the North West, and the growing connections between the East and West Midlands. Burnham sees these not as an indication that some of these jurisdictions are the wrong size to deliver on the strategic needs of the country, but that we are now finding the building-blocks for associations that will enable delivery.
This was a firm endorsement of current MHCLG plans – striking, because at another point Burnham was much more critical, pointing out that more radicalism would be needed to deliver stable local authority finances.
An attack on Westminster and Whitehall
Andy Burnham did not only make a positive case for regional and local policy, but also commented on the other side of the coin, offering a serious critique of the current Whitehall-centric model.
Without electoral reform, a radically altered Whips system, and further devolution, he argued, we are stuck with a system that sets up bad incentives. The results, he said, are clear: “Westminster makes a fraud out of good people”, producing a system that does not “like being answered back to.” That is one reason why, even after a decade and a half of Westminster politics, he thought “people didn’t know what I was truly about”.
This was a wide-ranging conversation, taking in local government finance, the tax system, public ownership, and more. You can watch the whole thing online here.