After weeks of speculation, Andy Burnham’s vision for Britain is finally beginning to take shape. Last week, the would-be prime minister set out a ten-year mission to raise living standards, centred on devolving power away from London and making essential services more affordable.
In seeking to remake the British state, Burnham is also trying to put clear water between himself and the deeply unpopular prime minister he is set to replace. The self-styled “King of the North” has even given his emerging economic programme a name: ‘Manchesterism’.
Burnham presents Manchesterism as an antidote to the failures of the past four decades. It is intended to reverse what he calls the “four horsemen” of Britain’s apocalypse: deindustrialisation, privatisation, austerity and Brexit. In their place would come a “rewired Britain”, delivering prosperity in every postcode.
It sounds bold. It sounds fresh. But it is not particularly new, at least for those of us living north of Hadrian's Wall. Because the closest thing Britain already has to Manchesterism is not to be found in Manchester at all. It is Scotland.
For Scots, much of Burnham’s agenda will sound strikingly familiar. Most obviously, Scotland already enjoys extensive devolution. The creation of the Scottish Parliament has brought genuine democratic and economic benefits. Since it was established, Scotland has grown faster per capita than the UK as a whole, while public trust in Holyrood consistently exceeds trust in Westminster. There is every reason to believe that a meaningful redistribution of power within England could deliver similar gains.
Yet it is in the economic sphere that Manchesterism takes on a distinctly tartan flavour. While many of the details remain sketchy, its direction of travel is clear: greater “public control” over essential sectors such as water, housing, energy and transport. In other words, a more interventionist state seeking to reduce the cost of living – whether through public ownership of key infrastructure, stronger price controls, a renewed programme of council housebuilding, or some combination of the three.
North of the border, much of this feels familiar. Scotland’s water industry was never privatised and remains in the hands of state-owned Scottish Water. Scotland’s national rail service, ScotRail, returned to public ownership in 2022. Edinburgh has run a highly successful integrated municipal bus network for decades, while the Scottish Government has piloted a £2 bus fare cap and pledged to extend it nationwide. On housing, Scotland retains a far larger stock of council homes than England, helped by the abolition of Right to Buy in 2014. And after introducing temporary rent caps during the pandemic, Holyrood last year legislated for permanent rent controls.
The point is not to portray Scotland as an economic utopia. Far from it. For Burnham, that is precisely the problem. Despite embracing many of the policies now being championed under the banner of Manchesterism, Scotland continues to suffer from many of the same economic ailments as the rest of the UK: stagnant living standards, weak productivity growth, and chronically low investment. On both sides of the border, real wages are barely higher today than they were before the financial crisis. Britain is approaching a second lost decade.
The truth is that a substantial dose of Manchesterism has not insulated Scotland from Britain’s wider economic malaise. Nor has it produced a fundamentally different or more dynamic economy.
None of this is to argue against the policies themselves. Burnham is right to call time on England’s disastrous experiment with water privatisation. The case for cheaper energy and public transport is overwhelming. Britain desperately needs a new generation of council housebuilding. These are sensible, pragmatic reforms that would materially improve people’s lives. But successful economies require more than strong foundations. Better buses and cheaper utilities may be necessary for economic renewal, but they are not sufficient.
The uncomfortable truth is that Britain has been without a convincing growth model since the financial crash of 2008 exposed the limits of a finance-led economy. If Burnham genuinely wants to raise living standards and “rewire” Britain, he must answer a much harder question: where will future prosperity actually come from?
Vague promises of “reindustrialisation” are not enough. In an era in which China is decimating much of Europe’s industrial base, nostalgia for a lost industrial past offers little guidance for the future. The real challenge is identifying Britain's comparative advantages in a rapidly changing world, and then backing them to succeed. This is a far more difficult task. It requires not simply devolving power or relocating government, but building a state capable of driving investment into the industries of the future. It means breaking free from fiscal rules that trap Britain in a cycle of managed decline. And perhaps most importantly, it means confronting the vested interests that have blocked meaningful reform for decades.
Make no mistake: Manchesterism can provide Britain with stronger foundations. But Scotland shows it is not a cure for a sclerotic economy. Without a more compelling vision for economic renewal, Burnham will struggle to succeed where his predecessors have failed.
