The Policy Challenges Facing Andy Burnham. Is “Manchesterism” enough?

Burnham successfully rebranded Manchester. Can he do the same with UK plc?

This week’s special guest post is by Pelham Consulting, which examines the policy challenges facing Andy Burnham, the new PM-in-waiting.

Stay tuned… This is part of a series of guest posts and interviews we’re running over the summer.

Older readers may remember the classic Two Ronnies Mastermind sketch, where Ronnie Corbett famously and hilariously gives the correct answer to the previous question.

For some years, the Labour Party has seemed keen on re-enacting the sketch. They have unerringly alighted on leaders who are keen to answer a previous problem. 

On this basis, Ed Miliband was brought in to correct the managerialism and international adventurism of the New Labour Years under Blair and Brown. His 2015 manifesto was not deemed strong enough meat by radical party activists, so they then plumped for Corbyn to provide a real taste of all-guns-blazing socialism. This didn’t play well with the voters and nor did its confused response to Brexit (Corbyn was not an EU fan). Consequently, the 2019 election saw Labour record its worst result since 1935. 

So Starmer was brought in to address the earlier problem, hose down the Party, purge it of antisemitism (confirmed by the 2020 Equalities and Human Rights Commission report), and revert to a more moderate policy platform. This produced a landslide in July 2024, but the new Government seemed strangely unprepared for office and made a number of high-profile U-turns. 

The commitment to deliver economic growth to fund new spending never materialised with sufficient strength to remove the need for tax increases or to reduce the need to borrow. Interest on the national debt currently costs the UK Exchequer £100bn per year and, as we are constantly reminded, the bond market is watching carefully.  

So now Starmer has gone and the Party has summoned the King Across the Water (or, at least, the Manchester Ship Canal) in the shape of Andy Burnham. For frustrated Labour MPs, he is now seen as the source of deliverance from Starmerite’s heavy-handedness and error-prone initiatives. At the time of writing, it seems possible that Burnham will be crowned with no contest. This did not work well for Gordon Brown or Theresa May, but “one more heave” seems to be the order of the day.

The Burnham Effect

If, as seems likely, Burnham takes control of Labour next month, he will find a split and divided party. It wants to deliver good things but lacks the means to do so. Borrowed up to the hilt and with fiscal rules that prevent yet more additions to the national credit card, what is actually needed will not be popular. 

Any new money that might be found tucked away down the back of the sofa needs to be spent bringing our defences up to date.  Even now, there are tensions between what Burnham’s camp is promising and Starmer’s keenness to resolve the issue and announce a new Defence Investment Plan ahead of the NATO summit in Ankara in the second week of July, whilst he is still nominally Prime Minister.  

The cost of welfare is rising inexorably as every perceived need is met with more borrowed money. Difficult choices, new priorities, and tough decisions need to be made on everything from the Triple Lock Old Age Pension formula to the number of people in receipt of PIPS or Special Needs Education, with their associated huge travel costs. The review of Social Care by Baroness Casey has been pushed into the long grass, although Burnham may choose to give it greater urgency. 

Starmer and Reeves’ problem has not been too little spending. It’s just that their commitment to output rather than input has failed to focus on growth, made it more costly to employ people, harder to remove poor employees and expensive to heat homes and workspaces. It might be time for a serious Business Forum to test-drive policy initiatives before they become set in stone or buried in Budget verbiage. Burnham might want to consider steering away from the Think Tanks, pressure groups, and policy wonks and making more use of people with genuine experience of setting up and growing a business.

So far though, he has not shown great resilience under fire. He went wobbly on the bond markets, has advocated costly public ownership schemes, and veered 180 degrees on membership of the EU, only pledging to respect the result of the 2016 referendum during the Makerfield by-election.

He also dropped his opposition to No Recourse to Public Funds (NRPF) for migrants and adopted a tougher stance on migration during the campaign. He advocates business-friendly socialism of the kind advocated during the partnership of Howard Bernstein and Richard Leese as Leader and Chief Executive in the successful regeneration of Manchester. 

The Manchester Rebrand

For Burnham, “Manchesterism” is a redefinition of the character of the City once associated with the bracing Free Trade of industrial capitalism. It seeks to actively link economic development with social investment and has been enabled by the creation of City Mayors and a degree of devolved power. Critics say that it hasn’t yet reached into the poorer corners of the Authority.

Manchesterism has certainly been a branding triumph, but the reality is that the post-war welfare state has sought to do exactly this on a national scale with varying degrees of success. It has been the main vehicle for redistributing resources from rich to poor and from south to north in a country that is massively centralised, where the reach and influence of the Treasury across every department and initiative are notorious. 

The difficult bit has been achieving the required level of growth to sustain the easily made provision of social relief. Since the financial crash of 2008, this has become progressively harder across the Western world. Voters are bribed with ever-more generous pledges of provision, which are not always easy to deliver. 

In the UK, as Starmer has discovered, it becomes painfully problematic when the engine of growth fails to deliver the promised level of support. It’s akin to milking a cow that hasn’t been properly fed. When the Cabinet doesn’t contain a single minister with any direct business experience, it is even harder. 

The civil service is not comfortable looking outside its own structures for relevant experience, so perhaps the devolved authorities provide a potentially useful model of improved partnership working, and Burnham could import elements of it to Westminster.

Manchester’s inner city was indeed transformed by the Leese/Bernstein measures, and other cities have learned how to attract rather than repel business and to work in partnership. 

This could point the way forward if Burnham brings Manchester’s dynamism to the wider public sector. It may also provide a renewed focus on obtaining value for money. 

The Bee Network has been a serious attempt to integrate transport modes across Greater Manchester, with a central authority contracting routes and setting fares for private operators, who receive an agreed-upon contract fee. Fixed fares of £2 are intended to make it easier for residents to travel to jobs. Upgrades to Northern Rail should help, unless they undermine the viability of the bus network.

Procurement outcomes in many public services are loose and costly. Licence conditions are not nearly rigorous enough. Monopolies are able to trim costs and raise prices in a way that properly competing companies find much more difficult. Making products and services that people want to buy at a price they are prepared to pay gets lost in the world of monopolies. 

Water consumers, currently dependent on inefficient monopolies, could also benefit from revised models of ownership. Not the full nationalisation of 1970s Britain, where capital for upgrades was always in short supply, but neither the over-competitive, under-regulated private utilities modelled in the 1990s, where the water goes off, the price goes up, and the quality of the product deteriorates. 

Maybe, though, Manchesterism as a brave new model is a mere chimaera. It’s simply sensible, pragmatic governance fed with a steady diet of funding from London. Of course, there is a precedent for the successful application of local government experience to Government. Joseph Chamberlain, the Liberal Lord Mayor of Birmingham in the 1870s, introduced world-leading innovations in slum clearance, public utilities and health improvement before going on to serve as a radical innovator in Gladstone’s Cabinet and irrevocably splitting the Liberal Party over Irish Home Rule. 

He then joined the Conservative Party, where he advocated protection. His son, Neville, was castigated for his foreign policy by Churchill, who famously quipped that he “saw foreign affairs through the wrong end of a municipal drainpipe”. 

Burnham will not want to split the Labour Party, and his views on foreign policy, in an age of considerable turbulence, are a closed book. If it is to be a coronation, there will be no kicking of the tyres, which a proper leadership contest may have afforded. And without any form of road-testing, only time will tell whether Manchesterism works.

Written by: Nick Paget-Brown, MD, Pelham Consulting.

About Pelham Consulting: After years of low growth and amid rising international tensions, the UK is experiencing extreme political volatility. The long-standing two-party system is being challenged by new parties with very different agendas.

Pelham Consulting provides essential tools for monitoring policy developments in the UK. Our Manifesto Tracker classifies policies on almost 200 key issues by topic. Manifesto pledges, policy developments, consultations and new policy announcements are grouped by topic. Notes provide additional information or links to relevant websites.

Pelham’s Trackers provide essential information for policy analysts, risk managers, consultants, investors, research departments and diplomats. They are available directly in electronic format for distribution or in printed form. Pelham also offers a range of briefings and seminars on key topics.

For more information or queries, please email: npb@pelhamconsulting.uk.

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