LONDON (AP) — Andy Burnham is a man in a hurry.Since entering 10 Downing St. on Monday, Britain’s new prime minister has traveled to the southeast, southwest and northwest of England, and to Scotland, spoken to more than a dozen world leaders and made a flurry of small but symbolic economic announcements: a tax cut on household electricity bills, a 2 pound ($2.70) cap on bus fares and a tax break for pubs.“We are on borrowed time if we don’t get a move on,” newly appointed Housing Secretary Angela Rayner told the BBC on Friday. “This is a down payment within the first week that says, ‘We get it.’”On Friday Burnham gathered Cabinet ministers, senior civil servants and regional mayors at “No, 10 North,” an outpost of the prime minister’s office in Manchester, 165 miles (265 kilometers) northwest of London.Burnham says he will work at least one day a week from the northern office, which will serve as the cockpit for his goal of spreading economic growth to “every post code” in the land.
Decentralizing power and spreading wealth from southern England to post-industrial cities and depleted seaside towns is key to Burnham’s platform, and he told staff as he arrived at No.10 North on Friday: “This might be the best day of my life.”Opposition politicians have called the northern office — housed for now in an office building shared with a branch of the cyberintelligence agency GCHQ — a gimmick. But Burnham said it will be “the nerve center for a rewired Britain.”
