The Manchester project encapsulating Burnham’s growth vision

Good morning. It’s Jen back standing in for Stephen, once again bringing you some musings on Andy Burnham. 

A rush and a push and the land is ours

(Be warned, I am going to overuse Manchester music references until I run out, which could take a while.)

The past couple of weeks have been a discombobulating experience. Subjects that have been front and centre among the political classes here for years — buses, powers over technical education, devolution, local industrial strategies — are about to be hot topics in SW1.

Or they should be, anyway, if people want to understand where Burnham has come from and what’s been shaping his thinking. You can expect a flavour of them in a curtain-raising speech next week.

That’s not to say these issues amount to an entire agenda for governing Britain, as I’ve said before. They don’t answer “what are your big fiscal trade-offs?” or “what is your defence policy?” But on certain matters, there are clues to Burnham’s direction of travel, underlined by the news that he may well move part of Number 10 to Manchester. 

It’s easy to dismiss as a messaging gimmick: Burnham certainly knows how to grab a headline and it’s no coincidence that Labour has a mayoral race to win here in five weeks. Its success will, of course, depend on who features in the Manchester operation, how often Burnham is there and what it’s doing, none of which we know.

There is also a risk that if Burnham goes too hard on Manchester then it creates resentment elsewhere, not least in other parts of the north.

But, particularly combined with a new government department for devolution, it could in principle have implications for the media ecosystem and the attractiveness of political and civil service roles in the north more broadly, all of which is drawn to power. Plus, perhaps, a cultural shift towards a better understanding of the economic worldview in cities beyond London, which have long been making similar arguments to Burnham. 

Beyond that, his likely entrance into Downing Street, wherever it is, will be flanked by many people who have spent much or all of their careers building this agenda. So their previous activities and thinking also provide an insight into where his government might go. 

Piccadilly palaver

One of the biggest and longest-standing fights Manchester has had with government since I’ve been covering it provides a useful lens. 

Ever since plans emerged for new rail lines into the city — both HS2 and Northern Powerhouse Rail — Manchester has insisted that the resulting new Piccadilly station must have an underground design. Beyond legitimate transport planning concerns, its intransigence came from something more economically fundamental: if you build on the surface, you take up prime development land. 

This may sound like a Mancunian vanity project, but the reasoning is sound. We need growth and northern cities need catalytic growth. Nonetheless, successive Treasuries have refused to find the sums needed for the underground. Labour started out in that camp too.

The issue eventually threatened to derail the government’s plans to launch its version of Northern Powerhouse Rail, with officials fearing that Burnham would refuse to endorse it as a result. But six months ago, at the last moment, there was a breakthrough.

A group of northern figures all in Burnham’s orbit — including council leader Bev Craig, now the Labour candidate to replace him as mayor; John Wrathmell, likely an incoming Number 10 economic adviser; transport special adviser Tom Whitney, Burnham’s former policy adviser and again a likely Downing Street addition; and the chancellor’s northern envoy Tom Riordan, former Leeds council chief executive and another lifetime veteran of the northern growth agenda — eventually came up with an agreement, with Treasury minister Dan Tomlinson also playing a key role at the government end.

Manchester would make its own financial contribution, on the basis that a further conversation was then had about a form of fiscal devolution to help it reach that end.

One potential option would allow Manchester to retain a portion of income tax revenues, as well as the uplift created by the growth that was stimulated by a new station and the development around it. The city could then borrow against that, as has long been the case with retained business rates under Manchester devolution and more recently elsewhere, including last year’s Leeds City Fund.

Or, the city could do a deal with an institutional investor. Pension funds could be far more convinced by an income stream guaranteed decades into the future than by the city’s current transport budget, which only gets secured from Whitehall for a few years at a time.

The premise has since found its way into the chancellor’s Northern Growth Strategy, published earlier this year.  

Clearly, it is a policy that comes with future trade-offs: income tax revenues that would have gone on other spending priorities would now go on an underground station. But politics is about trade-offs.

There are several reasons I think this is a salient example of where things might go. In economic terms, it is a classic example of the intellectual case long made from here: it is about trying to get past the Treasury “value for money” blocker that has long tortured regional cities starting on the economic back foot.

When Andy Burnham criticised Treasury orthodoxy to me in 2024, this may have been one of the things he had in mind.

A Burnham government may, if it follows the advice of Jim O’Neill, seek to address any concerns about the fiscal credibility of devolved transport schemes through an independent National Infrastructure and Service Transformation Authority.

Second, it’s replicable. You could also, points out one person I spoke to about it this week, potentially apply it to plans for the expansion of Leeds United’s ground, Elland Road, and its economic relationship to the city’s proposed tram network. 

Third, it’s sellable. A little like bus regulation, the policy itself is the preserve of nerds like me: fiscal devolution never won anyone any elections, any more than franchising did. But the thing it will build, and the message it sends about independence from Westminster? In the hands of a salesman like Burnham, that could have retail value.

Fourth, it already exists. Reeves has promised a “roadmap” to fiscal devolution off the back of the Northern Growth Strategy, so Burnham may well simply look to put rocket boosters under those plans.

The extent to which this sort of fiscal devolution — or indeed the retail value of big urban transport schemes — travels outside of cities, economically or politically, is another question.

I am reminded of an admission George Osborne made to a House of Lords select inquiry on fiscal devolution a couple of weeks ago. “The thing I never found the right answer to, and that I don’t think any government that I’m aware of has found the right answer to, is stranded towns,” he said. Satellite towns surrounding Manchester, Leeds, Newcastle or Bristol “can fit into the economic success of that city”, he noted.

“It’s the fishing town, the mining town. That’s a much harder effort.”

Finally a point on Burnham. The negotiations I describe above were not primarily carried out by the man himself. They were led by the details-oriented people listed above, among others. Burnham excelled as the frontman, so the northern thinkers and doers around him now will be key to any continuation of so-called Manchesterism.  

Nonetheless, Piccadilly encapsulates much about the past, present and potentially the future of the Burnham agenda. And if any of the SW1 ecosystem follows him to a new base in Manchester, he will be able to show, not just tell.

Now try this

I’ve been a total cultural desert over recent weeks thanks to round-the-clock Burnhaming.

But on Sunday I am going to do disco curling at Loft in Stockport. Which is what it sounds like: curling. With alcohol and dancing. And I can’t wait.

Top stories today

• Penned up | Keir Starmer is locked in a stand-off with his home secretary Shabana Mahmood after the prime minister refused to allow her to immediately sack Mike Tapp, her junior minister. In an article for The Times, Tapp said it was his “strong belief” that migrant care workers should not have to wait longer to apply for permanent settlement.

• What’s Burnham’s foreign policy agenda? | Andy Burnham’s views on foreign policy remain largely opaque — and it’s expected he will stick to Keir Starmer’s stance on Ukraine and Nato — but people close to him have approached figures such as Olly Robbins, the former Foreign Office permanent secretary, to discuss major foreign policy issues, according to people familiar with the matter.

• Tax ‘thicket’ | A government led by Andy Burnham needs to radically simplify the UK’s “stupendously complex” tax code and cut back the “thicket of regulation” if it wants to boost growth, Andy Haldane, one of his key economic advisers, has said.

• Not in Unison | The head of Britain’s biggest trade union has endorsed Ed Miliband as Britain’s next chancellor, opening up a split with at least two other major unions that are strongly opposed to him running the Treasury.