Andy Burnham has used his first major policy speech as Labour leadership frontrunner to promise the biggest shake-up of political power in modern British history, pledging to hand sweeping new authority to local leaders and relocate part of the prime minister's office to Manchester.
Speaking at the People's History Museum in the city where he spent nine years as mayor, Burnham laid out a 10-year plan to revive a UK economy he described as stuck in a rut since the 2008 financial crash.
"Growth cannot be ordered from the top down. Indeed, it can only be nurtured from the bottom up," he told the audience on Monday.
Central to his pitch was the creation of a new government hub in Manchester he dubbed "No. 10 North," which he said would become "the nerve centre of a rewired Britain." Regional mayors would receive expanded powers over housing, welfare and education under the arrangement, which Burnham framed as "the biggest rebalancing of power our country has seen."
The approach draws heavily on what he calls "Manchesterism" — a philosophy he has described elsewhere as "business-friendly socialism" and a rejection of trickle-down economics. During his mayoral tenure, the policy translated into initiatives including the Bee Network, Manchester's publicly-controlled bus system, and the Good Growth Fund, which directed investment into each of Greater Manchester's boroughs. Burnham is now betting he can scale that model up to national level.
