Andy Burnham, United Kingdom's prime minister-in-waiting, vowed on Monday to deliver radical change to the nation's politics, pledging to give away a chunk of his power by handing greater autonomy to local leaders in a "circuit-breaker" for the sclerotic British state.
In a speech at the People's History Museum in Manchester, "one of my favorite places on earth," Burnham offered some detail of his plans if, as expected, he becomes Britain's seventh prime minister in a decade next month.
The former mayor of Greater Manchester also said he would move part of the prime minister's office from London's 10 Downing St. to northwest England as part of "the biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen."
"Growth cannot be ordered from the top down. Instead, it can only be nurtured from the bottom up," Burnham said in the speech aimed at bringing voters, Labour Party colleagues and financial markets up to speed with his economic vision.
Burnham is the strong favorite to replace Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who announced his resignation last week.
"If councils can't fix potholes, what chance do they have of bringing forward major regeneration schemes to get growth going?" Burnham said. He set out a 10-year plan to get "good growth in every postcode," in a country where wealth and power are concentrated in London and the south of England.
He said he would reverse almost two decades of low growth since the 2008 financial crisis through an approach dubbed "Manchesterism" – harnessing private and public money to invest in areas like transport, housing and infrastructure. He also pledged to create new industrial jobs and better educational opportunities, and to reform the U.K.'s inefficient and expensive privatized water and energy utilities.
During the speech in the city where he spent nine years as mayor, Burnham said a new government office in Manchester – dubbed "No. 10 North" – would oversee regional development and become "the nerve center of a rewired Britain," tasked with equalizing living standards across the country.
Regional mayors would get more power over housing, welfare and education as part of his planned reforms.
Burnham said he would build more social housing, give local governments more control over water and other utilities and take on a cost-of-living crisis, all while sticking to the current government's fiscal rules.
Burnham's rousing speech was short on specifics about where the government would find more money, and he didn't take questions from journalists.
In a pointed comment to Starmer, Burnham said he would end "the business as usual" approach to politics which he described as failing to lift the living standards of so many in the country.
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 Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR), a left-leaning think tank, said Burnham is right to focus on "rebalancing Britain."
"The U.K.'s concentration of power and opportunity in Westminster has held back growth, productivity and living standards for too long," said IPPR Executive Director Harry Quilter-Pinner. "The real test now is delivery."
Matthew Flinders, a politics professor at the University of Sheffield, said replicating Burnham's Manchester approach on a national level would require "a fundamental shift" in the way politics is done in Britain.
"And at the heart of that would be 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," he said.
Burnham will be aware that Starmer also announced a 10-year mission – the equivalent of two full terms in government – to transform Britain soon after he was elected in a landslide in July 2024. 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 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.
While Burnham is considered more charismatic than the stolid Starmer, he 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.
And like other NATO countries, the U.K. 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 Türkiye on July 7 and 8. Starmer's successor will be expected to stick to the commitments in the plan.
"Andy Burnham's big idea is to shuffle power between politicians," said opposition Conservative Party Chair Kevin Hollinrake. "Not fix the welfare system. Not cut the taxes strangling working families and British business. Not fund the defense our country desperately needs."
